By Nelson Schneider - 12/29/19 at 03:40 PM CT
The Boring ‘20s are right around the corner, and as a new year and a new decade prepare to land upon us like so much parasite-riddled excrement from an unwell ruminant, it’s somewhat peaceful to soak-in the tiny, insignificant January Games Industry release schedule. Indeed, the Two-Faced God, Janus, whose name is attached to the first month of the year, symbolically looks forward and backward at the same time. If he ever actually existed, old Janus would get a real charge out of the Games Industry because they JUST CAN’T STOP LOOKING BACK. You know what that means: More crap, more ports, and more ports of crap.
Two pieces of licensed tie-in garbage are coming in January that were supposed to have graced us with their presence months ago already. But sometimes to ensure that your crap is thoroughly excremental, you have to delay things, since making truly garbage games takes time and effort (just ask From Software). We’re getting both the oft-delayed “Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot” (and let me tell you, putting the Latin for ‘poop’ and the English for ‘decay’ in your shovelware’s title is really ballsy) and the oft-delayed “Terminator: Resistance” (which is also a console port, since it hit PC in November, 2019). If I wasn’t already clear, let me just address you directly, dear readers: If you buy these games and games like them, you are directly contributing to the degradation of the medium!
But, alas, that ‘Terminator’ game isn’t the only port. Consoles will be getting a port of a 5-year-old Roguelite/Horror abomination that initially launched on Steam, “Monstrum,” as well as a slightly-fresher port that only launched on Steam in August, 2019 in “Hunt: Showdown.” The only good news regarding ports as the new decade kicks off is that the Switch, which has been infested with them for years now, is only getting ONE, and it’s a port of a truly abysmal WiiU game, “Tokyo Mirage Sessions,” so… yeah.
Janus’ forward-looking face… won’t really have much to look at. There are two multi-platform games coming in January that haven’t already been flogged around the market before. One is a B-rate building management Simulation called “Buildings Have Feelings Too,” that literally nobody is talking about. The other is “Journey to the Savage Planet,” which looks painfully like a “No Man’s Sky” knock-off… for a whopping two players at a time. Sure.
Exclusives? Janus don’t need to steenking exclusives!
I tend to be a believer in patterns. Most things operate in a recognizable cycle, whether it’s immediately apparent or not. The fact that the start of 2020 is marked by NO exclusives; few, poor multi-plats; shovelware; and no interruption in the stream of ports leads me to the inescapable conclusion that we’ll still be dealing with all the same garbage from the Games Industry well into the foreseeable future. Happy New Year/Decade!
Backlog Embiggened: +0
