Really didn’t have much to talk about this month. Didn’t really have a good reason to do reviews other than Mario RPG. Like, I finished Ghostrunner 2, that was okay. Almost finished Hardhat Wombat (newest game by some people who worked on Plants vs Zombies), that’s pretty fun. Played a whole lot of Mahjong Soul because I decided to be good at Mahjong and rank up (and I did). But there’s not much I really felt like posting about… Oh and I picked up Cyberpunk, maybe that’ll be okay, I’m not super sure about it yet.

So here I’m highlighting: 3 multiplats, 2 Switch releases and 1 PC release. There’s very little. One of the most hype games of the year… and that’s about it. There’s a few things I decided on purpose not to highlight, and a lot of stuff that didn’t manage to catch even a little bit of my attention…  Like, am I really supposed to highlight a shitty VR FNAF game? Fuck that, just watch the 50 videos MatPat will make out of it. Several other games I say that I don’t feel warrant the highlighting. Also Apple Arcade is not a real platform… Just a reminder.

Oh and Xbox is getting BG3, but I didn’t find a precise date so it’s not in here.

Let’s go and wonder why I bothered posting this!

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

SteamWorld Build 12/01 (Switch, PC, PS4, Xbone, PS5, Xbox X/S)

The newest game in the SteamWorld series seems to be a city-building sim, but there’s also an underground area you can build up which functions kinda like Dungeon Keeper’s gameplay. Actually looks pretty interesting.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora 12/07 (PC, PS5, Xbox X/S)

Speaking of games that look pretty interesting… this is not one of them. It being a Ubisoft game is a big negative against it already. The gameplay doesn’t look really awful, it just doesn’t look particularly… worth having been made. Just seems like Far Cry Avatar… with a lot of boring, annoying gameplay elements for minimal elements like picking fruit.
I think it will be very average.  Not bad just not… special. I might grab it when it falls to 5$ in a month.

Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising 12/14 (PC, PS4, PS5)

Well it’s the original game with extra characters, but also I hear there’s some gameplay changes that improve it quite a lot. I haven’t played the original release, so I don’t know exactly what was changed, but comments about the beta have been pretty solid and it does look good. Basically it’s a “if you want to jump into the game now’s the time” kinda deal.

SWITCH RELEASES

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince 12/01

There it is, the only interesting game coming out in all of 2023.
The demo was good, I hope the full game is even better. We’ve waited so long for more of this series in the west, I’m happy it’s finally here. Seems to follow a similar style to the previous games in the series with different dungeons to find monsters and monster fusion to build your team.
… They really should’ve released the ROM of the original game (like they did in Japan) to generate a bit of extra hype, no idea why that’s only out in Japan when an english translation literally already exists.

Batman Arkham Trilogy 12/01

I don’t wanna highlight this. But there’s fucking nothing coming out this month I kinda have to.
TBH I have no idea why this wasn’t out years ago. Also Asylum is the best of the three and it’s frequently on sale for like 3$ on Steam, just get that.

PC RELEASE

Pioneers of Pagonia 12/13

I’m padding this shit out man. Really just putting whatever I could find in this list so it’s not, like, 3 games. However, this is actually fairly interesting. It’s a game in the style of the classic The Settlers series, made by people who worked on those games originally. Looks very similar gameplay-wise, a bit less cartoony graphically. Might be cool, I dunno, I wanted stuff on the list.