Games

Resident Evil 9 headlines this week’s releases with another installment in the series Capcom has turned into one of those “event” franchises that publishers love to cultivate. Therefore, expect coverage from both Tom Chick and contributor Woodlance shortly. Another notable wallet threat is the high-altitude city-builder Laysara: Summit Kingdom, in which you build settlements in inaccessible mountainous areas. What an irresistible premise if done right! I’ll be scanning for reviews with my wallet on standby.

Last year the long dormant Tokyo Xtreme Racer series made a well-received comeback on PC, and it shifts this week into console ports with a PS5 release. Rise of Piracy looks like a hearty attempt at a modern version of Sid Meier’s Pirates, but avast, ye mateys, the game only launches into early access, so all but early adopters can keep their pieces o’ eight.

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Can you out-Janeway Janeway in Star Trek Voyager: Across the Unknown, getting Voyager home to the Alpha Quadrant? Can you add an X to the Ys in a console rebundling of the 2023 action RPG Ys X: Proud Nordics? Can you build a deck to loose a Death Howl on your console system? Can you stealth the goblin Styx for the third time in Blades of Greed? Can you early Zelda-like, but Under the Island? Do ducks really crave coffee as Strange Brew implies? Only you and your wallet can answer such questions this week.

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The variety of this week’s releases should pose a widespread and possibly extreme threat to wallets. We could be experiencing condition red! Suda51 returns with a new level of absurdity in Romeo is a Dead Man, a time travelling action adventure through different eras. Disciples also returns with the fourth game in the turn-based fantasy strategy series. Mewgenics is a well-reviewed turn-based battlecat showdown with, uh, tactical breeding. Relooted promises archeological reconstruction in a puzzle-heist in which Africans liberate artifacts from the Western museums that have arguably stolen them. Log Riders looks like a really fun co-op platformer about you and your partner reaching a goal. Will Nintendo’s Mario Tennis Fever come up with more of the special abilities that make tennis fun for everyone? Can an “extreme” Yakuza 3 remake bundled with a new Dark Tides adventure incentivize people to revisit a hoary Playstation 3 title? Will High on Life 2 draw you back into a world of talking guns and crazy Rick & Morty universe aliens?

But wait, there’s more! 

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You know what’s my favorite level? Sea level. Still, I can understand the allure of mountain climbing. It’s the feeling of being literally and figuratively on top of the world. A selfie on top of a mountain is that one photo everyone has on social media.

That being said, there are not that many mountaineering games and even fewer games about rock climbing. Most games about climbing are drab or intentionally goofy and sadistic, in the vein of Getting Over It and Baby Steps. When I heard that The Game Bakers (Furi, Haven) were making Cairn, a climbing game, I knew they would add just the right amount of pizzazz to the concept.

Confession time: when I tried the demo a few months ago, I absolutely hated it. 

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A couple of huge blockbuster releases this week. The latest Nioh game is here to cater to your ninja fantasies. And the famous Dragon Quest VII gets a remake this week. DQ7 is one of those shorthand names I’ve heard mentioned that I’ve never checked myself, like “Ultima” and “MOO2”. What’s a MOO, anyway?. Wait, I eventually did check out MOO2 and it’s amazing. And now we can all check out a modernized version of DQ7. Hopefully someone will remake Ultima 7 one day so I can finally check that out.

The Dragon’s Quest remake brings to mind a recent headline about the latest Tomb Raider in development, a remake of the original Tomb Raider with its difficulty “tuned to modern tastes”. Should I picture the popularity of Souls-likes lately or a smoother and less difficult game?

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Welcome to a cold week of hot new releases! The biggest name this week is Code Vein 2, a sequel to a Souls-like that very few people actually clamored for. The original got fair reviews and a mixed reception [ed. note: Tom really liked it!] The release that people have been highly anticipating is Cairn, a realistic simulation about finding the best holds and placing your hands and feet seamlessly with simple controls. 

Size Five Games, the studio behind Time Gentlemen, Please!, Ben There, Dan That! and Lair of the Clockwork God, is releasing a new game this week. They have a sense of humor that really tickles my funny bone, so I’m looking forward to Earth Must Die, a point-and-click adventure where the protagonist refuses to touch anything, and must therefore solve problems indirectly through conversational coercion.

Also of note, is Highguard. We saw a trailer for it at the end of the Game Awards last month, and then the game wasn’t heard from again. Is it being sent out to die? Or are they hoping word of mouth gets the job done after release as was the case with Apex Legends which was a surprise drop? 

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2XKO is the big triple A release this week, as well as the port of Final Fantasy VII Remake to the Xbox and Switch 2. But a lot of the smaller games coming this week look really attractive and polished. MIO: Memories in Orbit looks like a neat Metroidvania, and Gooey looks like a cool 2D platformer. TR-49 looks like an intriguing new game from Inkle concerning WW2 cryptography. Hermit and Pig and Escape The Ever After seem to set RPGs in contemporary settings (kind of) to go for laughs. And MAVRIX seems like a really thrilling bicycle game that would be a red alert wallet threat to me if it wasn’t still going to be Early Access even after it hits consoles this week.

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We’re at the point in January where we see some big releases. Like the Switch 2 version of Animal Crossing, the game that was all the rage during the pandemic. And a Trails JRPG set on a planet that’s about to go into space for the first time. I thought Trails RPGs were set in fantasy worlds?

On the indie games front, I have some serious nostalgia for playing Lemmings back in 1991, so the Lemmings-style game Craftlings has caught my eye. It seems to bring a lot more complexity to the Lemmings gameplay. 

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As we cast back our thoughts to which games we enjoyed the most in 2025 so we can vote in the Quarterlies, new games continue to vie for our attention. I don’t know much about the Pathologic series, but from what I understand it’s well regarded. A sequel is coming this week. Spear looks like a neat action-platform puzzler that came out in May 2025 for the PC and is well regarded, and it caught my eye for the Xbox port coming this week. To my eyes, the most striking game from this week’s slate is Past Fate, an MMORPG that’s coming to early access this week and seems to go for a very bleak look and feel.

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Consoles may not have announced any releases this week, but PC indies have some gas left in the 2025 tank. How about combining tower defense and match3 games? Or an RPG where you play the worst knight in the kingdom? A new minimalist puzzle game? A bullet hell with a name google refuses to not correct? How about a metroidvania? Already too many of those? Then how about a Christmas-themed Papers, Please clone about giving gifts to kids released five days after Christmas? Missed it by that much!

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Another week filled with releases no one’s heard of. Another week where the wallet threat is mostly game sales. Although some of the elevator pitches for this week’s games make them sound pretty cool though, so keep reading and don’t assume your wallet is entirely safe.

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There’s a smattering of indie games this week to threaten the wallet, from a scene thriving, imaginative, and incredibly crowded. Let’s hope the gems get the attention they deserve. But most of the biggest wallet threats this time of year come with the winter sales that tempt us into games that will forever live in our backlogs. I’m personally tempted by Divinity: Original Sin 2, which Larian Studios shadow-dropped today for current-gen consoles. It’s a free upgrade if you already own the respective last-gen versions of the game. 

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Several ports caught my eye this week. An Owlcat RPG coming to the Switch 2 set in a universe almost incomprehensible to me. An amazing Flight Simulator that’s hopefully fixed now that it’s coming to PS5. A game about digging a hole that’s coming to Xbox and Game Pass. The critically acclaimed Thank Goodness You’re Here, whose humor is very British apparently, finally making its way to Xbox. A tower defense / exploration / mining hybrid coming to Xbox and Game Pass this week. Some Christmas themed horror games ported to Xbox that might or might not be terrible. Current gen upgrades of the Yakuza 0, 1 and 2.

But enough about the ports. How about those shiny new games? The delayed Terminator 2D: No Fate should finally make its way to literal shelves this week, since it was delayed to coincide with the physical release. Skate Story looks really trippy and weird and could be very cool. Unbeatable, a two-button rhythm game, finally makes its way to us after being a success on Kickstarter about five years ago. And hopefully Drywall Eating Simulator can bring some good comedy to us in a bite-sized adventure (their joke, not mine).

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Originally announced at E3 2017, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, after changing developers, is finally coming to the Switch and Switch 2 this week. Will it be worth the wait? Will Retro Studios’ gamble of adding a chatty sidekick pay off? I’m keeping a keen eye out this week to see how this game turned out.

And if you think that’s a long time between announcement and release, wait until you hear about Routine. Originally announced back at Gamescom in 2012, it comes out this week on PC and Xbox. This one actually holds more appeal for me. Exploring a lunar base’s decline and interacting with the environment sounds a lot like the Metroid Prime games in theory, but this one seems to have more System Shock vibes than Metroid Prime vibes.

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I don’t see this week’s new releases as much of a wallet threat. If I had to pick one to play myself, it would likely be Project Motor Racing, though I continue to be perplexed that from the almost infinite possibilities of how to make a driving game, so many games seem to want to crowd into this very narrow niche of making games based on realistic race cars going around well known tracks.

On the other hand, I appreciate the break. It’s Thanksgiving week for those of us who celebrate it. I’m grateful and thankful that this community is here and we can talk about games, movies, TV shows, books, music, politics and the oxford comma.

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