Got a good amount of posts out this month, which is always cool. 10 posts in a month is quite solid. Don’t have much in the oven since I just posted a bunch, but Xenoblade 3 is coming out tomorrow so yeah.

August may be lacking in HUGE releases, but it does have some COOL SMALLER releases. I like me some less budget-intensive, good games. Here I’m highlighting: 20 Multiplats and 2 PC games. I’m probably getting 6-7 of those. Shame Massage Freaks was delayed for stupid reasons.

Let’s go!

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.

A bit of a random pick-up from me, as I wasn’t super sure I wanted to pick it up… but I did. The trailers looked kinda fun. It’s obviously a take on Contra. It’s been said that it’s by the devs of Contra 4, though I’m not sure if people say that just because it’s a WayForward game, or if it’s the same actual people working on it, but either way, there’s some good possibility of them making a good game in this style since WayForward did some amazing work on Contra 4.

So let’s go and check it out!

This game came out last year. I played the demo, thought it might be okay, put it on my wishlist, and waited over a year to get it.

I am calling this a review, but honestly I wouldn’t normally do that. But I DID finish the game, I just don’t know if there’s anything more to it because… well… read the review. I might actually be wrong about some things here.

Let’s go? This will be a short one because there’s weirdly little to talk about here.

This is from a classic series that started on the Famicom as Kiki Kaikai. It came to the US later, on the SNES, and was renamed to Pocky & Rocky, probably because a title like Kiki Kaikai would be a harder sell. It was a shoot ’em up, except you have control over the scrolling, and you can shoot in 8 directions. It got a sequel on the SNES and one on GBA called “Pocky & Rocky with Becky” which seems a bit more similar to the NES original than the SNES games from what I’ve seen (never played it myself).

There has been a few games kinda like this since, such as Heavenly Guardian on PS2 and Wii, and Mamorukun Curse on PS3 (which took on a more bullet hell approach), but Pocky & Rocky itself has been dormant for quite a while.

I was really hyped to try this one, let’s see if it’s a good revival!

This popped up at the recent Nintendo Partner direct, as a shadow drop (and a new announcement, as far as I can find). I thought it looked fun. So I picked it up.

That’s it. That’s the intro. Let’s see if it’s good!

I feel it’s been quite a while since we got a good Turtles game. The last I played is Mutants in Manhattan, by Platinum Games in 2016. That game sucked balls, unfortunately. This, however, is hell-bent on bringing back the classic style of TMNT games in the NES and SNES era, either from the arcades or home consoles. And it looked great in the 2 trailers I saw. And it’s Tribute Games who made good shit before. And DotEmu who has been responsible for publishing very good shit as well. So it certainly had my interest.

Let’s see if it’s good!

I did get a bunch of posts out in June, but I still have at least 2 reviews I was hoping to have out earlier, and I’m late on this post as well. Blah. But I will try to get the TMNT and Neon White reviews out very soon. And I’m playing a couple of other things, and this month isn’t empty, so there’s plenty for me to post still.

July does seem to have a decent amount of games. Actually less than June when it comes to sheer numbers, but there’s some good stuff here. Here I’m highlighting: 10 Multiplats, 4 Switch games, and 2 PC games. I’m probably getting 7 of these (and putting some in the maybe list).

Let’s go!

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, small interesting ones 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.

I know basically nothing about the Metal Max series. I know it’s long-running, I believe originally from the Famicom. I believe the only game in the series to have made its way to the West before Xeno (and Xeno Reborn) is Metal Saga on PS2, a game I did not play (it does look pretty interesting). I know they’re these cool RPGs where you build tanks and explore a post-apocalyptic kinda world, but I never played any of them, until now. The only thing I know is that the sequel to Metal Max Xeno Reborn was just cancelled like a week ago, so that’s fun.

So anyways, let’s see what I’ve been missing, and see if this game is good! I hear it’s the worst in the series, so… yeah.

I am disappointed. I really wanted to like this game, and technically there’s a lot to like about Souldiers, but it has a lot of small issues that mount up to me… not liking it.

I’m a whole 27 hours into this game (maybe a bit less, I did keep it open a few times while eating), and I’m actually probably almost done with it, but no. I’m just tired of it.

So I will not review it, but I will talk about it. I can’t review it, because I’m not done with it, thus I can’t have a fully-formed opinion of it. But I can at least explain why I’m done with it.

So let’s go and talk about it a bit in this non-review! This will be pretty scattered, since it’s not a review, and I won’t quite go through the same kind of points I would in a review.

I’m super happy E3 was not a thing this year. The ESA sucks and E3 has been very pointless for a while, providing nothing good for the consumer. With the internet being a thing for a long time now, we should have evolved beyond E3 LOOOOOOOOOOONG ago. Nintendo, with their Directs, set the stage to how game announcements should happen. Sony badly copied Nintendo with their State of Play presentations (there’s been only ONE of them that has been any good so far (the March 2022 one)), but went a step further by dissociating from E3 pre-pandemic. That’s good. All companies need to dissociate from E3.

With E3 gone in 2022, people thought there’d be nothing, because people are idiots who thing the gaming industry revolves around E3 for some reason. But the presentations came just the same. Of course they would, game companies don’t just… stop announcing games because there isn’t an expo for journalists.

So let’s talk about this year’s not-E3 and see if any of the presentations were any good! Hint: no.