By Nelson Schneider - 12/30/17 at 03:42 PM CT
The Two-Faced God’s month is here again, which means the old year is behind us, while we have all of 2018 to look forward to with joy and anticipation… or more likely, dread and trepidation. Let’s take a look-see if the New Year will start off with a bang or a wet plop.
Only one piece of multi-platform shovelware will be ringing in the new year! That’s good! But it’s another ‘Dragon Ball Z’ game, which is pretty much as low as you can go without being underground when it comes to licensed anime games. There’s also an exclusive licensed ‘Digimon’ RPG sequel coming to the PS4.
Only two ports will be bothering us in January as well, which is a nice, refreshing break from what is becoming a regular epidemic. The 2017 remake of “Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap” is getting a physical release on PS4 and Switch, while the oft-delayed remaster of “Velocity” will likely/maybe hit PS4 and Vita too.
Three legit multi-platform releases are coming in January, and they’re all in different genres… and none of them are generic military FPS or zombie idiocy! “Railway Empire” and Tokyo RPG Factory’s second game, “Lost Sphear” will be hitting all the major platforms simultaneously, while the new, mainstreamified ‘Monster Hunter’ sequel, “Monster Hunter World,” will be hitting PS4 and XBONE in January before bringing the definitive experience to PC gamers later on in 2018.
There aren’t too many exclusives coming out of the drunken Holiday Season to start the year strong. PC is getting “Iconoclasts,” a snazzy-looking Metroidvania that has been on my radar for a couple years already, while PS4 is getting a ‘Final Fantasy’ J-Fighter spin-off sequel in “Dissidia NT,” and Nintendo is bringing a new ‘Kirby’ game to the still-twitching corpse of the 3DS… but “Kirby Battle Royale” is a friggin’ Casual Party game instead of a legit ‘Kirby’ platformer.
Despite making the MeltedJoystick list of Top Fails for 2017, VR isn’t quite dead yet. The VR-exclusive, PS4-exclusive first-party title, “The Inpatient,” will allow PSVR owners to experience yet more psychological horror on top of what they already experience daily due to having wasted so much money on the PS4/PSVR ecosystem.
I’ve already had “Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap” on my Steam Wish List for months. “Lost Sphear” has been there too, but without a price, as it hasn’t officially been released yet… and what do you know, “Iconoclasts” has been there too! So there are two brand new games coming in January that I’ve been excited about for a long time. Yay! Maybe 2018 is getting off on the right foot after all…
Oh, wait… the fact that the MeltedJoystick Crew is constantly on the lookout for cooperative things to play together, and the fact that Nick’s willingness to scrape the bottom of the barrel until we’re drinking splinters has us ‘enjoying’ “Warhammer: Vermintide” right now, means that suffering through “Monster Hunter World” – a series I despise only slightly less than ‘Dark Souls’ – as a group is, unfortunately, not off the table. Nick will probably pick it for his next turn on the merry-go-round just to spite me, as he is wont to do.
Backlog Embiggened: +2 (maybe, grudgingly +3)
