By Nelson Schneider - 07/30/23 at 01:31 AM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! August is nearly here, and I’ve already gotten the worst gift possible. The very same day, I decided to pre-order the next volume of the “DragonLance Destinies” trilogy in spite of my trepidation about where this newest series will ultimately take my favorite High Fantasy campaign setting. Let’s see if the Games Industry has anything that will make me feel any happier… I doubt it.
There’s quite a bit of shovelware coming in August, and it covers all three subcategories of crap. In the Licensed Swill category, we’ve got an ‘Agatha Christie’ tie-in, “Smurfs Kart” (Do today’s kids even know what a Smurf is?), a licensed tie-in for “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” Horror movie IP, and “House Flipper: Pets Edition,” which is either based on the “House Flipper” reality TV show or should have a different name to avoid confusion. In the 2Cazul category, there’s a new entry in Sega’s long-in-the-tooth-but-not-recently-relevant Rhythm series, “Samba de Amigo: Party Central,” and a new Virtual Pet title, “Pups and Purrs Pet Shop.” Finally, the Annualized Swill That Comes Out Every Year contains two new retreads: “Madden NFL 24” and “F1 Manager 2023.”
The port spam hasn’t slowed down even slightly, and the Nintendo Switch is still bearing the brunt of it. Switch is getting “Loop Hero,” “Unsouled,” “Smile for Me,” “Norn9: Last Era,” a compilation of Taito games in “Taito Milestones 2,” another compilation of NIS RPGs in “Rhapsody: Mari Kingdom Chronicles,” “The Rumble Fish 2,” “Die After Sunset,” and “Nuclear Blaze.” A couple of those are also hitting Sony’s platforms, alongside “Desperate: Vladivostok,” “Endzone: A World Apart,” “Dead Cells,” and “Metal Tales: Overkill.” *sigh* It’s mindboggling that I would prefer Nintendo and Sony platforms were more like Xbox in that Xbox doesn’t get very many ports… at all.
In spite of the overwhelming amount of crap and old crap coming out in August, there are still quite a few new multiplatform titles coming, in a reasonably wide variety of genres. “Under the Waves” is yet another diving-themed exploration game. “Noob: The Factionless” is quite possibly the most generic-looking Turn-Based RPG I’ve ever seen. “Harvest Days: My Dream Farm” is yet another clone of ‘Harvest Moon’ trying to cash in on that sweet, sweet “Stardew Valley” money. “Ride 5” is a motorcycle Racing game, and the 5th in the series… so, that’s… fine. “Armored Core 6” is the first game in From Software’s iconic Mech Driving series since 2012. While I used to love the ‘Armored Core’ series, It did become stale and always had an undeniable amount of clunkiness to it… and with From Software exclusively focusing on clunkiness and awfulness in Soulslikes over the last decade, I’m afraid of what this latest ‘Armored Core’ will be like, in the end. “Immortals of Aveum” is a magic-themed FPS that looks to be equal parts intriguing and cringeworthy. “Gord” is a Dark Fantasy RTS that might appeal to someone like MJ’s Erstwhile Videog/Photog, but without cooperative multi-player, the rest of us have no reason to touch it. “Atlas Fallen” is the latest release from Deck 13, the Focus Home (read: Eurojank)-published studio that previously brought us the abominable Soulslikes in ‘The Surge’ and ‘Lords of the Fallen’ series. However, “Atlas Fallen” is apparently NOT a Soulslike, but an attempt at a more tolerable flavor of Action game that looks to blend aspects of the 3D entries in the ‘Prince of Persia’ series with giant boss battles, ala ‘Monster Hunter.’ Lastly, there’s “Spells & Secrets,” which I stopped researching as soon as I saw the Steam tag ‘Roguelike.’
Unfortunately for people who still buy consoles for exclusives, there are none to speak of coming in August. So sad.
There are a number of games coming in August that I’m ambivalent about, like “Immortals of Aveum” and “Atlas Fallen.” They could be decent sleeper titles, but they’re just as likely to turn out to be complete duds. Out of all these games, only “Armored Core 6” actually found its way onto my Wish List… and at the slightest whiff of Soulsiness, it can just as quickly find its way off!
Backlog Embiggened: +1
