Okay, October wasn’t that busy as far as reviews, and I think we’re gonna be in a moment where I have to build a backlog though because there’s lots of big long games coming out soon. I also have a post of games I played but haven’t reviewed this year, I’ll post that probably in December. I’m playing the new Mario + Rabbids game now, and both Bayonetta 3 and Star Ocean are out this week, and then November is not lacking in games I’ll play and review… The problem isn’t that I don’t have games to play, it’s that I don’t have enough time to play them and review them in a timely manner.
So November… Actually a lot of games. Some big ones too. Here I’m highlighting: 13 multiplatform releases, 4 Switch releases (5 if you’re weird) and 3 PC releases. There’s 8 of these I’m buying for sure, plus a few maybes. It’s gonna be busy.
Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, some more niche stuff I may notice, and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.
MULTIPLATFORM RELEASES
Doraemon Story of Seasons: Friends of the Great Kingdom 11/02 (Switch, PC, PS5)
It’s Harvest Moon with a nice Doraemon coat of paint. I’m sure this is pretty okay.
Harvestella 11/04 (Switch, PC)
Speaking of farming games, this is a new one coming from Squeenix. You farm, get crops, make food, and explore the world to do some action RPG shit. Looks like it might be fun. I’ll probably check it out. Legitimately I have not played a farming game since Harvest Moon… on the SNES.
Sonic Frontiers 11/08 (Switch, PC, PS4, Xbone, PS5, Xbox X/S)
This is one I’m a bit wary about. I mean, it’s Sonic. There’s not a lot of post-Genesis Sonic games that are good. This one… well, the “big empty open world” concept certainly isn’t inspiring confidence, but I’m always going to give Sonic a chance. Because I am a fanboy.
I think one of this game’s biggest problems right now is how the gameplay for it was revealed, with very limited gameplay demonstrations with fucking nothing happening and things that were there for no reason (the first IGN video had a tower Sonic could climb… that had nothing on top… and a later video had Sonic climb up that same tower again, getting HIGHER on it, and still there was nothing… why are you showing us this?), so I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt that maybe they just suck at marketing.
God of War Ragnarok 11/09 (PS4, PS5)
The previous God of War is the one in the series I disliked the least. There’s a lot about it I didn’t like though, still. The camera was ass, the combat design was pretty unremarkable, the puzzles felt like a waste of time, I got glitches… But it was kinda okay anyways. I’m in no hurry to buy this PS4 game. Maybe I’ll get it on PC in a couple years.
Tactics Ogre: Reborn 11/11 (PC, Switch, PS4, PS5)
This is a remaster of the remake of the first Tactics Ogre… I think. It features some minor gameplay changes and stuff. Tactics Ogre is good shit. I played this on PSP though I don’t think I still have my copy of it. It’s on my maybe list, but only once I run out of things to play at some point, which I don’t think is happening soon.
Garfield Lasagna Party 11/15 (Switch, PC, PS4, Xbone, PS5, Xbox X/S)
This is Mario Party with Garfield. Who asked for this?
Pentiment 11/15 (PC, Xbone, Xbox X/S)
I think this was shown at the Xbox thing in June. It’s Obsidian making it, which might be interesting… if it didn’t look so boring. Maybe there’s something about this that is actually interesting. It’s possible it’s not the kind of game that shows its strengths in trailers. I’ll certainly… try and watch someone play this for a few minutes or something. Maybe Tenma will play it, she plays weird stuff sometimes.
Goat Simulator 3 11/17 (PC, PS5, Xbox X/S)
Such a good sequel they skipped the first sequel. I guess that’s just meant to be a joke, it’s a bit random. I dunno man, Goat Simulator was little more than a crappy physics simulator youtubers used to make video where they’d scream at stuff and be really, really boring… Maybe this is just gonna be the same again. I dunno.
Adventure Academia: The Fractured Continent 11/17 (Switch, PC, PS4)
I’m not clear on the release date for this one. I might have it wrong, I dunno. It’s a bit of a weird one since this IS out on Steam, but is japanese-only at the moment. This is actually a spin-off of the Class of Heroes series. Class of Heroes were these grid-based first-person dungeon crawlers where you’d make custom teams of adventurer students. This is very different, as it’s a top-down semi-real-time grid-based strategy game of sorts. I think it looks interesting.
Evil West 11/22 (PC, PS4, Xbone, PS5, Xbox X/S)
This game looks fucking cool. 3rd Person action game, where you punch the shit out of monsters and have guns and electric equipment and stuff. Gives me some minor God Hand vibes, on a gameplay level. It’s a more traditional kind of action game and I respect that. I will for sure play this. The only issue I have is that it does the “camera way too close to the character” thing the newer God of War games do, but maybe it deals with it a bit better.
Gungrave G.O.R.E. 11/22 (PC, PS4, Xbone, PS5, Xbox X/S)
GUNGRAVE! Keeping on with the idea of traditional action games, I believe this is a sequel to the PS2 Gungrave games (and you may also be familiar with the anime), which are games I had some fun with back then. It seems a bit more simplistic in its combat than Evil West (enemies don’t move around much, in the clips I’ve seen), but it also looks like some pretty fun stuff. I’m definitely also grabbing this.
The Knight Witch 11/29 (Switch, PC, PS4, Xbone, PS5, Xbox X/S)
This is an interesting one. It’s a Metroidvania, but you can fly. It also has a bit of a shmup/bullet hell style to its combat and some card-based system for magic attacks or something I think. Might be good. My one note is that the writing in the demo was absolute blah, but that’s just story, if the gameplay’s good that’s fine.
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide 11/30 (PC, Xbox X/S)
I’m 99% sure I had that on a previous list. Did it forget to come out then or something? Anyways… it’s Vermintide in 40k… what more is there to say?
SWITCH RELEASES
It Takes Two 11/04
It’s a pretty ass-y game with kinda boring gameplay, but because it’s 2-player-only I guess that warrants GotY awards from the worst award show in existence… So that’s something.
Sifu 11/08
Sifu is one of the better games this year. Now it’s on Switch too. Check it out if you haven’t, it’s good shit.
Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet 11/18
It’s a new Pokemon. I watched the announcement trailer, and nothing else. I did get end up catching a few small things (part of the tera mechanic and some of the new pokemon), but I’ve kept myself as spoiler-free as I could. I mean, it’s Pokemon. I’ll get it, it’ll be decently good as usual, no matter how much people are probably complaining about it right now.
Front Mission 1st Remake 11/30
EDIT: November 30th was announced
We don’t have a release date yet for this other than a vague “November 2022”. But it’s coming. This is a remake of the SNES Front Mission. This didn’t come out in America originally (because it was back in the day when Squaresoft was a bit weird about what they’d localize… and they still are (at least as far as Dragon Quest goes), so yay), but many may have played it from fan translated roms. It was fun stuff.
PC RELEASES
Valkyrie Elysium 11/11
I haven’t seen too many people talking about this one, but I saw my CEO Obake Pam playing the demo and I thought it looked pretty cool. It’s a new Valkyrie Profile game, that’s a cool thing in and of itself. I will be getting this.
9 Years of Shadows 11/14
I’m pretty sure I had this in a previous list… guess it got delayed! At least it wasn’t too much of a delay, though there was a delay for the Switch version for later next year so it’s just on PC for now. Anyways, this looked like a pretty cool side-scrolling action game. Not sure if Metroidvania.
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales 11/18
The PS4 Spider-Man was a pretty bad game that got a lot of love despite the meh gameplay design and boring open world. I didn’t get this PS4 sequel because the first one was so disappointing, and I’m not getting it on PC either.
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