Rock8man

I’ve been such a sucker for 3D platformers ever since 1996’s Super Mario 64. Unlike 2D platformers, 3D platformers have built-in leeway. Instead of relying on lightning reflexes and pixel-perfect jumps, 3D platformers are okay with you getting the jump timing just a little wrong. Probably because you’re also in charge of controlling the camera. So when I first saw Super Meat Boy 3D news, I thought, well, finally here’s a Super Meat Boy game for me! I probably don’t have to be perfect to get through this one. But it turns out there’s a fixed camera so you don’t have to futz with it, and can devote all your attention to timing pixel-perfect jumps. Only now in 3D.

Among the other interesting games coming out this week are some wonderful looking Metroidvanias, platformers, and roguelikes. Or how about a new super-fast paced FPS named Guns and Nuns? One genre that I’m particularly delighted to see explode is city builders. There’s just something about watching little people expand their city and go about their lives that I find so irresistible. This week we get All Will Fall, which looks like a city builderinspired by the movie Waterworld.

Comments

Two games stand out to me this week. Screamer is an anime-themed arcade racer, but I’m always nervous about arcade racers since they have to make up their physics. Sometimes I love the physics they’ve made up, sometimes I hate them, and sometimes I can’t even grok them. The other game that looks interesting is Damon & Baby. A demon teaming up with a baby is already an intriguing premise, but then there’s the top-down shooting and crazy traversals I’ve seen in the trailer.

Comments

Is Crimson Desert going to be a compelling world to explore or a repetitive and janky hackfest? Have you been waiting to use your PC to hit the beach in Kojima’s Death Stranding: On the Beach? Will a relatively retro graphics engine bring the Starship Troopers universe and its swarms of flesh-rending bugs to teeming life? Is a Thomas and Friends game from the developer of Train Sim a potentially brilliant idea? Is the annual iteration of MLB The Show ready to play ball? Is Dragonkin: The Banished ready to compete with Grim Dawn, Path of Exile, and Diablo?

Comments

Wallet threat level red for the sheer breadth of releases this week! No matter what kind of videogames you like, your wallet might be in trouble. If you and three of your friends are Left 4 Dead fans, John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando could be a quadruple wallet threat. If you’re a fan of the PS2 horror classic Fatal Frame II, load your film and brace yourself for the remake. Fans of the shmups and specifically the R-Types get a remake of R-Type Tactics 1 and 2 on all modern systems this week. If you’re a fan of prequels, Greedfall: The Dying World precedes its namesake. And if you’re a fan of city builders, get ready to sink your oversized incisors in the beaver-themed city-builder Timberborn, which promises one dam thing after another.

If you’re a Minesweeper fan, Dungeon Sweeper upgrades the grid clicking with an autobattler. If you’re a Dungeons & Dragons fan, the early access release of Solasta II will let you roll virtual d20s to your hearts’ content. If you’re a Japanese action RPG fan without a console, pining for the days of 2014 mobile games, the PC port of Granblue Fantasy aims to serve all your JARPG hack, slash, and loot needs. If you’re a parkour fan without a PC, the console ports of Parkour Labs brings fancy legwork to couch potatoes. If you’re a fan of old-school space sims, maybe Stellar Wanderer DX will be your ticket to the stars. And if you’re a fan of the bubonic plague in Medeval Europe, firstly, what is wrong with you? And secondly, 1348 Ex Voto is out this week.

Comments

A few potential behemoths arrive this week to threaten your wallet. In an event so rare it’s marked by decades, Bungie releases a new game, albeit with a very old title: Marathon. A new type of Pokémon spinoff comparable to the Xbox 360 “life simulation” Viva Pinita arrives in Pokémon Pokopia. And for the roguelike card deck building fans, early access begins for the sequel to the seminal Slay the Spire. For fans of indie strategy games and rogue AIs, the time has come at last for the full release of Arcen’s Heart of the Machine. Finally, vampire aficianados will be able to revisit a legacy favorite with Legacy of Kain: Definance Remastered.

Comments

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.

Comments

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.

Comments

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! 

Comments

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?

Comments

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? 

Comments

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.

Comments

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. 

Comments

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.

Comments

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!

Comments

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.

Comments