By Nelson Schneider - 08/24/24 at 06:22 PM CT

Welcome back to another look into the near future! Labor Day will soon be upon us, signaling the official “end” of Summer, even though all the Genderqueer, Non-Binary Kiddies will have been back in their indoctrination mills for a month already. The only reason Summer Vacation even exists as a concept is because of MY industry, Agriculture. In the past, all the Kiddoes would be called away from school during the Summer growing season to plant, maintain, and harvest the crops on their family farms, powering the engine of America’s prosperity. However, with Child Labor Laws now being a thing, along with automation, illegal immigrant labor that can flaunt red tape by virtue of being ‘illegal,’ and the dwindling number of family farms being replaced by Corporate Industrial Farming, the entire concept of letting children (and teachers) piss off and be worthless for three months seems incredibly archaic. But they’re not the only ones, as the Wage Slaves of Industrial Gaming all seem to do the same, finally coming back in the Fall to hurriedly push out a bunch of absolute crap in time for the Winter Holiday Shopping Season. Ah, Commercialism.

We’ve got a whopping DOZEN Swill titles that are best handled with a shovel: That is to say, Shovelware. And we’ve got all three major subvarieties represented as well! In the Licensed Swill category, we’ve got: “Loony Tunes: Wacky World of Sports” tying into one of my favorite classic cartoons that… doesn’t really exist anymore, “Matchbox Driving Adventures” tying into the classic toy cars that… kids don’t play with anymore, “The Karate Kid: Street Rumble” tying into nostalgia for the ‘80s movies that has been churned up due to the streaming release of “Cobra Kai,” “Star Wars: Jedi Survivor” trying desperately to milk the last drops of relevance out of the faux-sci-fi IP that Disney has actively destroyed, “Funko Fusion” which seems to be making good on a threat about turning Funko-Pop figures an NFTs into a videogame, and “Disney Epic Mickey Rebrushed” a remaster of a mediocre 7th Generation platformer that didn’t make a splash then, and definitely won’t now. In the Casual Swill category, we’ve got two ‘My Universe’ compilations, one involving ‘Style,’ the other involving ‘Cullinary.’ There’s also “Fitness Boxing feat. Hatsune Miku,” which I couldn’t decide whether to lump into the previous shovelware category or this one, but went with this one. And there’s “Games Advent Calendar 2024,” which definitely lends credibility to my hypothesis about the Industry pooping this kind of garbage onto the market in an attempt to move X-mas gifts. Finally, there are two entries in the Annualized Swill category, with usual suspects EA and 2K giving us Soccer and Basketball respectively.

Sadly, the influx of shovelware did nothing to stem the tide of ports. Apparently, the Games Industry believes it has enough bandwidth to flood the audience with BOTH. There are nearly TWICE as many ports, remakes, remasters, compilations, and other old things pretending to be new coming in September to a variety of modern platforms. The Nintendo Switch is still at the forefront of this phenomenon with an eye-watering SEVENTEEN such titles being dumped on it: “TriggerHeart Exelica” (originally released on the Dreamcast), “Risk System, “Sanabi,” “DreadOut 2,” an ‘Ace Attorney’ compilation, revisited versions of “Uno” and “Monopoly” from Ubisoft, “WitchSpring R,” “Nocturnal,” “Fabledom,” “Born of Bread,” “Wingspan,” a compilation of remasters (ouch!) of the original ‘Tomb Raider’ PS1 games, “The Bridge Curse 2,” “Balatro,” “Cocoon” (not based on the Wilford Brimley movie from the ‘80s), and “Let’s School” (to which my knee-jerk response is, “Let’s EFF-ing Not!”).

PlayStation is still getting plenty of portage action of its own. Aside from the numerous titles also hitting the Switch in September that are also hitting PlayStation (and maybe Xbox), Sony’s platform is getting “Lempo,” “Pneumata,” a physical release of “High on Life,” “El Paso, Everywhere,” and “Planet Zoo.” But poor Xbox… it’s remarkable how little the junk peddlers who come up with ports actively target Microsoft’s mistake.

Finally, with all the shovel-ready and flushable titles out of the way, we can take a look at legitimate new releases coming in September, starting with multi-platform titles. There’s quite the variety of titles coming next month for people with… divergent tastes. There’s “Selfloss,” a puzzle-centric ‘exploration’ game steeped in Slavic myth that gives off some mildly-interesting vibes. Another ‘exploration’ game, “Albatroz,” comes across as a bit more aimless… and depressing. “Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator” seems to be trying to push the youth into career paths where we still actually need more employees… but in order for that to work, the right youths are going to need to be exposed to the concept at the right time in their lives… which seems incredibly random, leaving most people to completely ignore the game. “Reynatis” is a weird, super-weebie Action-“RPG” that both looks incredibly dated and incredibly irritating. “Enotria: The Last Song” is yet ANOTHER EFF-ing Soulslike, so can/should be completely ignored. “Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire,” however, caught me off guard, as it seems to offer a Turn-Based RPG experience that draws heavy inspiration from both “Panzer Dragoon Saga” and “Skies of Arcadia,” so… wishlisted! “Wild Bastards” is exactly like “Void Bastards,” but with a different thematic setting… so it’s still a Roguelike and still garbage. Car fanatics like Nick can look forward to “Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown” for some motor-vehicle porn. ‘Warhammer’ nerds can look at “Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2” and be pissed-off that it’s yet another ‘Warhammer’ game adaptation that’s in a completely different genre from what ‘Warhammer’ is actually supposed to be. “Cat Rescue Story” is a new Simulation title for would-be pet activists who would rather spend their time pretending to run a cat shelter than actually volunteering at a real one. Lastly, “SINce Memories: Off the Starry Sky” is one of those Japanese Visual Novels with a bizarre title and bizarre premise that will only ever appeal to an incredibly small niche audience.

Finally, we come to exclusives. After ALL of that stuff above, is there ANYTHING that the platform-holders thing will get people to buy-into their now-long-in-the-tooth 9th Gen platforms? Well Microsoft seems to think it can excite people with the long-time-coming “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl,” and I would have been right there, ready to grab a Windows copy on Steam. Buuuut… I made the mistake of attempting to enjoy the first “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.” (in all three of its parts) a couple years ago, and the experience was so bad it put me off the entire IP.

Sony is leaning into one of its newest IPs, with a sequel to “Astro’s Playroom” entitles “Astro Bot.” I’d give it a shot if they ported it to Steam… but a couple of cute platformers is not enough to make me go crawling back into Sony’s dungeon voluntarily.

Last, there’s Nintendo with a third-party exclusive! WHAT?! Nintendo hasn’t gotten third-party exclusives since the SNES era, has it? Well… sometimes. The Switch has gotten a few, but nearly all of them are niche Visual novels… and “I*CHU: Chibi Edition” doesn’t change that.

*Bleargh* That was a LOT of game releases, all of which can be winnowed down to nearly nothing. I might give “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2” a shot if it gets good word of mouth and completely defies the paradigms of its predecessor, but I’m not holding my breath. Likewise, I’d be willing to throw Sony a few bones to play “Astro Bot” on my platform of choice, but getting me to buy a PlayStation in the 2020s and beyond would require an act of god. However, I’m mildly interested in the puzzling, explorative gameplay shown-off in the “Selfloss” trailer, and a spiritual successor to two of the best RPGs to appear on Sega platforms has my hopes high for “Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire.”

Backlog Embiggened: +2