Weird how Geoff keeps saying this is the 10th anniversary for the Game Awards when they started in 2003, and he just renamed the VGAs.

Also really fucking weird that he gave a random vanity award to a Tencent director for no reason at all.

Anyways, just ask any rando on the internet what their games of the year are, it’ll be more credible than Geoff Keighley’s shitshow.

I actually played several games in August. Most of them were smaller releases, but it was still a busier month as far as new games played.

Of course there’s the big boy Black Myth: Wukong, but there’s a variety of other games too, with a few retro-style games and some more unique things.

So let’s go and talk about them!

August had a bunch of stuff, for me at least. Some stuff that was even good! I’ll talk about those in the august gaming update, but it was pretty nice for me.

For September 2024 I am highlighting: 19 multiplats, 1 Switch game, 5 PC games and… hey look a PS5 game too! It’s not a bad month overall, there’s 8 of these I’m probably buying at/around launch (depending on what I’m playing), and like 5 maybes. That’s a lot. Very few of these are big massive games, but I think they’re pretty cool.

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. This is not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. Of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

July sure was a month that… had games? Yeah not really. I actually planned on having one more game in this, Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess… but that had a demo so I tried the demo and… yeah that didn’t feel fun at all, unfortunately. I did try a few other demos, specifically Trepang2 and Mullet MadJack, those were really good, though I’m keeping them on the backburner for now as far as getting the full games.

So outside of Mahjong, and getting back into Balatro a bit… there was not much else, I only had 2 full new games to talk about for this post. Oof.

Well let’s go I guess…

July was a bit of a bust, I did play a couple things but… big oof overall. Maybe August will be better. Clearly it won’t have one of the worst games this year, right? Actually there are a few cool things coming, so it might be fine actually. But it does have two of the worst games of the year not named Suicide Squad.

So for August 2024, we’ve got: 19 multiplats and 1 PC early access release that’s interesting… and 1 Switch game I totally forgot about lol (had to edit this post). I have 2 “for sure” games I’m getting and a few maybes too. Depending on my thoughts on it, I might even write a review for one of them! Haven’t done that in a bit.

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. This is not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. Of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

When this movie was rumored and eventually properly announced, my excitement was basically at zero. We already had a perfect Mario movie back in the 90s that is unironically really fun even though it’s only a Mario movie in name, and this was being made by Illumination… who didn’t make very good things in my limited exposure to them (I’ve only seen bits and pieces of the Despicable Me movies, and those weren’t… very convincing).

But trailers happened and they were weirdly solid, the movie came out in theaters and the reception was wildly positive… so I picked it up when it came out on Blu-Ray.

So let’s see if it’s good why don’t we!

This was revealed in a State of Play, to basically no one even realizing it was there.

I saw a few reviews that were quite positive when it came out, so I figured, why not. I know people won’t be talking about this one much at all, whether it’s good or not, so let’s put a bit of a spotlight on it.

Let’s see if it’s good, I had no idea before buying it.

I’m never gonna say no to more Shin Megami Tensei. Soul Hackers was a pretty decent spin-off for Sega Saturn (actually a spin-off of another spin-off called Devil Summoner). It never got localized until an improved port for 3DS, which I had some fun with. Not the best of SMT, but decent enough.

I was pretty excited to see a new one, but I was really confused at the lack of a Switch version. So I grabbed it on PC. It was pretty clear it would be a bit different from the previous one.

So let’s go, see if it’s fun!

It’s really a rarity for me to jump into retro games as far as reviews go… mostly because they’re old and generally a well-known thing. It’s not because I don’t like them, I actually do have a somewhat sizeable game collection, spanning from the Magnavox Odyssey to… now. I have a lot of appreciation for all of gaming and I do feel like gaming used to be considerably more interesting.

That said, this game shows a massive gap in my gaming knowledge. I vaguely knew about the Neo Geo Pocket Color but I never touched one. So there are actually some pretty cool-looking games for it I never played. This is one I heard a lot of good about. This recent shadow-dropped Switch release includes both the SNK and Capcom versions (and you can trade cards between them), though both games are essentially the same, just a different starter deck and a few minor differences otherwise.

So let’s go and talk about this cool game!

I saw a lot of people being pretty excited about this game. I wasn’t convinced by the videos I was seeing, but I’d somewhat frequently see people calling this the game of the year for 2021. I know people exaggerate a lot, but I saw that enough times to think there may be something there… And then it popped up on Game Pass which I have a temporary account for, so why not play through it!

Not much to say here, let’s review this! Very quickly, this is not a long review.