By Nelson Schneider - 10/02/23 at 04:25 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! The month of horror is upon us once again… and I have a strong suspicion that the game release schedule will be the most dreadful, terrifying abomination the world will see this month (come on, Putin, Xi… prove me wrong!).
After years of relative dormancy, shovelware really came roaring back onto the scene last month, and it’s EVEN WORSE for October! While in September, ports (etc.) were so numerous, the browser tabs wouldn’t all fit on one screen, in October that’s how bad the shovelware is.
We’ve got a butt-load of Licensed Swill coming in October, plus I threw in the Atari (delenda est) published re-whatever of “Haunted House,” since it clearly exists solely due to the presence of Halloween this month. But, yeah, we’ve got games based on Disney, Dreamworks, ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Barbie,’ ‘Spongebob,’ ‘Hot Wheels,’ ‘King Kong,’ ‘Robin Hood,’ ‘Papa Troll,’ ‘Inspector Gadget’ (How is this relevant in 2023?!), ‘The Grinch,’ Schleich Dinosaur toys, the ‘Sword Art’ anime, the ‘Shin-Chan’ anime (with its butt-ugly art style), ‘Transformers,’ ‘Spider-Man,’ and ‘Batman.’
Unfortunately, there are also a handful of Annualized titles, with one of them, “Just Dance 2024 Edition,” also fitting into the Casual Swill category. The others are both EA products, unsurprisingly, and both Sports games, unsurprisingly: UFC and NHL.
After shoveling-away an absolute MOUNTAIN of trash, we are free to move on to… an EVEN BIGGER MOUNTAIN of old stuff being peddled as new stuff. Yes, the plague of ports, remakes, remasters, reboots, compilations, and other rehashes is STILL going strong after many years, and it seems to become even more dire in proportion to the amount of shovelware coming in a given month. These mo’fos would fill TWO monitors with tabs, if I had a multi-monitor setup. *sigh*
Unsurprisingly, Nintendo is still getting dumped on, as if when gamers complain that “Nintendo doesn’t have third-party support,” what we’re saying is “Nintendo doesn’t have enough crappy games that are available everywhere else.” What we actually mean by “Nintendo doesn’t have third-party support” is “Nintendo doesn’t have good third-party exclusives that provide more compelling reasons to own a Nintendo device.” The Switch is getting dumped with: “World of Outlaws: Dirt Racing,” “Strife,” “Coffee Talk,” “Neon City Riders,” a compilation of ‘Skautfold’ games, “Borderlands 3,” “Good Pizza, Great Pizza,” and “Young Souls.” The Switch is also getting a bunch more titles at the same time as other platforms (mostly PlayStation): “Frank and Drake,” “Dolphin Spirit,” a compilation of ‘Train Valley’ games, a compilation of ‘Metal Gear Solid’ games (and it’s only Volume 1), “Shady Part of Me,” “Operation Wolf Returns,” “Mineko’s Night Market,” “Akai Katana Shin,” “Battle of Rebels,” “Supraland,” “Tin Hearts,” “Red Dead Redemption” (which still isn’t on Steam for some reason), “Formula Retro Racing,” and “Vengeful Guardian.” If you’ve never heard of most of those, we’re in the same boat!
Outside of the portage it’s sharing with Nintendo, Sony still has an unhealthy amount of it all to themselves. The PlayStation 5 is getting most of these, but the device that earned the moniker of ‘PortStation,’ the PlayStation 4, is still – INEXPLICABLY – getting port… sup-port… *groan* There’s “Mayhem Brawler,” “Skautfold: Usurper,” “Enchanted Portals,” “The Caligula Effect 2,” “Mythic Ocean,” “The Light Brigade” (which is hitting PlayStation VR2 after a debut on SteamVR), “Humankind,” and “War Mongrels.” Then there are the ports coming to PlayStation AND Xbox at the same time! No, really! Games coming to Xbox… like a remake of “Alone in the Dark,” a remaster of “Lords of the Fallen,” “Trepang 2,” and “Scorn.” And, believe it or not, Xbox is getting one whole exclusive port (oxymoron) of its own in October: “Warhammer 40K: Darktide” (read: “Vermintide” in space).
OOOOOOHHHHHH my EFF! So much craaaaaaap!
*Ahem* Moving on to actual new releases on… page 4 of the raw article… (EFFing Hell) we’ve got… nearly 20 titles! Are there any good ones in here? We’ll see… “HappyFunLand” is a dark satire of DisneyLand combined with Survival Horror… so we’ll pass on that. “Endless Dungeon” is some sort of Cyberpunk-themed Roguelike… so NOPE! There are two new hospital Sims, “War Hospital” and “Animal Hospital,” which are niche as Hell. “Crymachina” is yet another crappy NIS-published ‘Action’/RPG, so we’ll pass on that. “Archetype Arcadia” is a Kemco-published Visual Novel… so no thanks. “Inescapable: No Rules, No Rescue” is a knock-off of other weeb-tastic ‘Investigation Games’ like ‘Dangan-Ronpa’ and ‘Phoenix Wright’… so Chriswouldlovethat but I would not. “Wild Card Football” is… Football… eww. “Desolatium” is the last new IP getting a multi-platform release in October, and appears to be some sort of Lovecraftian ‘Myst’ clone… so… yeah, no thank you. The remaining multi-platform releases coming in October are all SEQUELS to existing IPs: “Way of the Hunter: Hunting Season One,” “Ghostrunner 2,” “Cities: Skylines 2,” “Overpass 2” (never heard of “Overpass,” tho), “Everspace 2,” and “Disgaea 7” all have numbers in their titles, while “Assassin’s Creed: Mirage” and “Sonic Superstars” do not. None of those numbered sequels hold any interest for me, while the unnumbered ones do. Unfortunately, Ubisoft is attempting to placate traditional ‘AssCreed’ fans instead of continuing to build their amazing historical Sandboxes, so “Mirage” is of no interest to me, while Sega appears to have the possibility of a truly excellent ‘Sonic’ game on their hands with “Superstars,” as it will support 4-player local coop and is a return to classic 2D ‘Sonic’ gameplay and level design. *fingers crossed*
Once again, the dwindling and withered supply of exclusives upon which hardware makers can depend to sell systems is mostly unimpressive. At least all three consoles have something coming in October! PlayStation (VR, even!) is getting “Tennis On-Court,” Xbox is getting a new iteration of “Forza Motorsport,” while Nintendo’s Switch is getting “Detective Pikachu Returns,” a bland-looking Hack ‘n Slash called “Silent Hope” from Xseed and Marvelous, and a new 2D ‘Mario’ sequel called “Super Mario Bros. Wonder”… which I’m REALLY looking forward to.
Wow, what year is it? Why am a looking forward to a new ‘Sonic’ game and a new ‘Mario’ game… and literally nothing else? Oh, yeah, I waded through a mountain of ports and shovelware, so it’s the ‘20s. Anyway, I’ll probably pick up “Super Mario Bros. Wonder” for closer-to-full-price than I’d like, simply to have something decent to put in my Switch. “Sonic Superstars” will have to wait for a Steam sale, but I think both of these games look genuinely good and fun. I’ll definitely have to rope some people into cooping them with me.
Backlog Embiggened: +2
