Well, this is it folks, it’s the Fall video game season! Every week from now until the end of the year is going to have at least one major, AAA title coming out. I hope your wallets are full and your expectations are low, because you’ll be shelling out some major cash for games that are, at best, just okay.
Top Releases:
Star Wars Outlaws (PC/PS5/Series X|S) – Releases Aug. 30th
Developed by: Massive Entertainment
Published by: Ubisoft
Our first “just okay” game of the Fall season is Ubisoft’s open world take on the very successful, very oversaturated, very polarizing Star Wars franchise with Star Wars Outlaws. In this game, players take on the role of smuggler/scoundrel Kay Vess who works for whichever cartel/gang pays the most. Hoping to wipe a massive debt, Kay travels across the galaxy, avoiding the Empire and any gangs she’s double crossed (which pretty much all of them), taking on odd jobs and, just maybe, finding out she has a heart of gold.
Like last week’s Black Myth: Wukong, Outlaws comes with some baggage. The same right wing CHUD’s that praised Wukong for being “anti-woke” are decrying Outlaws for being the most liberal/woke game ever made because…the main character is ugly, I guess? This whole argument is tired and I wish it would go away. Can’t we all just agree that a game sucks because a game sucks? I’m not saying that Star Wars Outlaws is going to suck, though. In fact, the reviews have been mostly positive so far, with the game sitting around 77 on Metacritic.
This is, however, a Ubisoft game. Not just that, it’s a Ubisoft open world game, and if you’ve played one then you’ve played them all. This company is not known for its risk taking or diversity of gameplay, so keep that in mind. The final sticking point, for me, is the absurd price tag, with the standard edition costing $70, the gold edition (with early access and season pass) costing $110, and the fancy pants, ultimate edition (with extra doo dad’s and a digital art book) costing $130. As Han Solo would (probably) say, get fucked.
Visions of Mana (PC/PS4/PS5/Series X|S) – Releases Aug. 29th
Developed by: Ouka Studios
Published by: Square Enix
While not as high profile as Star Wars, the Mana series is a big name in the RPG genre, and a new entry has been long anticipated by fans. With Visions of Mana, Square Enix are taking players back into the world of the Mana Tree after a long, 18 year drought. This game should be pretty recognizable to anyone who played the Trials of Mana remake from 2020, as it contains similar gameplay. Players take on the role of Val, a “Soul Guard” who brings two companions along on their journey to restore the flow of the Mana Tree. This is one of my most anticipated games of the year and I can not wait to dive in!
On the indie side of things, we’ve got the game Crypt Custodian, in which players take on the role of a cat who has been assigned to be the janitor of the Underworld…forever. This is not the afterlife you were hoping for, so you must go on a quest to figure out how to, you know, not be a janitor for eternity. This is a metroidvania/Zelda-like game that should please the indie crowd.
Crypt Custodian (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Aug. 27th
Developed by: Kyle Thompson
Published by: Top Hat Studios/H2 Interactive Co. Ltd.
Rounding things out are the action title Gundam Breaker 4 and the visual novel Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club. In Gundam, players create their own robot fighters and will take on various challengers. As you fight, you’ll be able to break off the appendages and parts of your enemies, collecting them for your own use; fun.
In Emio, players will take on a brand new case in the Famicom Detective Club series, the first new case since 1989! This game is supposed to be pretty hardcore when it comes to violence, not what you typically expect from Nintendo. The plot of the game is less supernatural, moving away from the realm of ghosts & spirits, and into the world of urban legends. This more grounded, realistic story is supposed to make the case more vivid and intense, at least that is Nintendo’s hope.
Gundam Breaker 4 (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch) – Releases Aug. 28th
Developed by: Crafts & Meister Co. Ltd.
Published by: Bandai Namco
Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club (Switch) – Releases Aug. 29th
Developed by: Nintendo EPD/Mages
Published by: Nintendo
Everything else:
- Dead by Daylight: Castlevania (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Aug. 27th
- Shadow of the Ninja – Reborn (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Series X|S) – Releases Aug. 29th
Notable Releases from 10, 20, and 30 (and sometimes 40) years ago:
Moving on to notable releases, this week sees us going all the way back to 1984, a year we haven’t discussed since May! I’m excited to check these games out, are you? Yeah you are; let’s go…
First up, from 2014, we’ve got the very, very popular game, The Sims 4. Going back a bit to 2012, EA labels President Frank Gibeau gloated that he had green-lit ANY single player games; all of EA’s upcoming titles would be fully online, fully multiplayer, requiring players to be connected to the internet in order to play. This included traditionally single player franchises like SimCity and The Sims, with SimCity (2013) being the first title to employ this new strategy. How did that work out?
To say the “always online” requirement was a disaster for SimCity (2013) is an understatement. Players were unable to play the game for several days after launch due to constant disconnection from the servers, while other bugs would erase progress and, in some case, completely nuke a players entire city. EA tried to dig in their heels and force the online requirements, but poor sales and a rapidly declining reputation meant they would need to axe all of their future “always online” plans for SimCity and The Sims 4.
That isn’t to say the The Sims 4 didn’t arrive with controversy, because it did. EA had mentioned that some content from The Sims 3 would not make it into the next entry, including two popular ones, “Open Worlds” and “Create-a-Style”. EA blamed this on a short production cycle, a new engine, new character AI, and just a general update in how the game worked. EA wasn’t opposed to adding missing features but indicated that they might appear in later updates.
At launch, The Sims 4 received mostly average reviews, with critics calling it boring and sterile. Many of the furniture options found in The Sims 3 were no longer available in The Sims 4, with everything just sort of stripped out. Going from a wide array of furniture, clothing, player personalities, activities, etc., to the bare bones world of The Sims 4 was jarring for players. EA has, since release, put out multiple expansions and game packs, 28 in total, as well as other free updates.
The Sims 4 might not have been the “always online” game that EA wanted, but their continued post-launch release schedule has ensured that hardcore fans of the series will need to shell out a consistent stream of cash in order to have access to every piece of content and feature. On the one hand, it’s nice that EA keeps adding stuff to the game, on the other, players will need to spend almost $1,200 for everything available. That averages out to $120 a year to play the most up to date version of The Sims 4, far too much money, and points to the greed and cynicism over at EA when it comes to this franchise. It’s at the point where you just kind of need to pick and choose the expansions that interest you the most and ignore the rest.
Heading over to 2004, we’ve got the role playing game Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. Set 400 years after the events of Star Ocean: Second Story (around 2858 AD), players take on the role of a young man named Fayt Leingod. While on vacation, Fayt is separated from his family when the planet he is on gets attacked. Fleeing in a space ship, Fayt must enter an escape pod when the ship is attacked, marooning him on a backwater planet where the locals live in a society that resembles 16th century Earth. Fayt then spends the rest of the game trying to get back to his family and figure out why the planet was attacked.
Star Ocean: TtEoT, was initially released in Japan in 2003 but, due to multiple bugs at launch, was a critical and commercial failure. The game’s then publisher Enix (pre Square merge) blamed Sony for the problems, indicating that they gave them some kind of faulty hardware, or something. Sony denied this and basically told Enix that they fucked up. Post merger, the new Square Enix decided to re-release the game a year later with a “Director’s Cut” subtitle. This new version fixed the bugs found in the original release and included new content, and this would be the version that we’d end up getting in the West.
The critical reception to Star Ocean: TtEoT was mostly positive, and the game was a hit with players as well. Overall, TtEoT would sell over one million copies world wide, with a little over 600k coming from North America, overcoming its initial launch problems in Japan. In 2017, the game would be ported to the PS4, allowing modern players to experience this title as well. Check it out if you’ve got the hours to spare.
From 1994, we’ve got a relatively unknown game (at least I think it’s unknown), the strategy title King Arthur’s World. Developed by Argonaut Games, the team behind Star Fox, Stunt Race FX, and another SNES game released in September of 1994 called Vortex. In King Arthur’s World, players take on the role of the eponymous King, and must raise an army of units to march from point A to point B. Along the way, the player will encounter traps and enemy units that will deplete their army. However, as long as King Arthur survives and makes it to the end point, the player completes the level.
I don’t really have a lot to say here about the game. It wasn’t a huge hit, as Argonaut couldn’t seem to match the success of their Nintendo published games with their own original properties. I guess the most notable ting about King Arthur’s World is that it is one of the few titles outside of Mario Paint to use the SNES mouse as a controller. This game has been long scrubbed from the video game history books, don’t expect it to pop up anywhere anytime soon.
Moving on to 1984, we’ve got the arcade classic Karate Champ. While most of us would probably agree that Capcom’s Street Fighter II popularized the fighting game genre, making it one of the biggest and most successful in the video game industry, you can’t have the success of Street Fighter without Karate Champ.
Developed by Technos Japan and published by Data East, Karate Champ is considered the first video game to establish & popularize the fighting game genre in arcades. The initial release only had players fighting against the computer, but it was it’s “Player vs. Player” re-release that really saw the game start to take off. In Karate Champ, two players compete in a head to head battle, where the first one to score two points (out of three) is the winner.
Unlike later fighting games where you must deplete your opponents life bar, Karate Champ is a one hit, one kill, game. Players are either scored a full point or half point (though I don’t know how this is determined), with the game screaming back at you in a digitized voice indicating the point type. The prize for your victory, as you travel around the world fighting, is, well, women. As you defeat your opponent you will claim the girl and then, I don’t know, fuck her, I guess? It’s not explicitly said, but, come on, what else are you gonna do? Go have brunch with her parents?
In between your fighting & fucking trip around the world, players will take part in minigames where they must destroy clay pots and wooden boards; fun. Karate Champ was a huge success, helping to establish the arcade as THE place to play video games, while consoles still felt the sting of the 1983 crash. Karate Champ would, however, receive home console ports, though it was the PC versions that became the most popular, where it was tied with Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? for the title of best selling PC game of the 1980’s.
The success of Karate Champ led to multiple clones and copy cats, including original titles like Konami’s Yie Ar Kung-Fu and a blatant rip-off from Epyx called World Karate Championship. I also don’t think you can ignore that Karate Champ released just a few months after the hit 1984 film The Karate Kid, with a population of young men already hyped on the film ready to take in even more karate content.
While the game is archaic compared to what would arrive even just a few years later, Karate Champ no doubt inspired the games that would create the fighting game craze in the 1990’s. Technos Japan would go on to make other arcade and console classics like Double Dragon and River City Ransom, further cementing their role as one of the most influential pioneers in the video game industry.
Those were some great game, let’s see if our notable films are just as good. Starting things off, from 2014, we’ve got director Richard Linklater’s, dare I say, masterpiece, Boyhood. This ambitious film, shot over the course of eleven years with the same cast, tells the story of a boy named Mason, as he grows from age 6 to age 18. Filming on Boyhood began in 2002 with an incomplete script, as Linklater only had a rough outline of where the story would go. Once or twice a year, the cast and crew would get together and film for a few days. Linklater would have discussions about how the actors were doing, what was new in their lives, and he would, sometimes, incorporate their real life experiences into the script.
The reception to Boyhood by critics, audiences, and even the cast, was overwhelmingly positive. Actor Ethan Hawke, who play’s the boy’s father, talked about how amazing it was to see the finished product. He described the film as almost being shot in a time lapse, seeing all of these actors grow and morph in front of your eyes. Critics had a similar sentiment, calling the realism of the film jolting, but brilliant. The gravity and brilliance of Boyhood was so great that even it’s detractors still ended up giving the film a high score, with Boyhood being only one of nine films in Rotten Tomatoes history to achieve a perfect score of 100.
By the end of the year, Boyhood had found itself being called the best movie of 2014 by over three dozen outlets and critics, 23 of those put the movie in the #1 spot. At the Oscars, Boyhood was nominated in six categories, Best Picture, Best Director (Linklater), Best Supporting Actor (Hawke), Best Supporting Actress (Patricia Arquette), Best Original Screenplay (Linklater), and Best Film Editing (Sandra Adir), taking home only one trophy, Best Supporting Actress (the film would lose most of hit categories to Birdman, which took home the trophy for Best Picture).
Boyhood is, without a doubt in my mind, one of the greatest and most ambitious films ever made. Richard Linklater can be hit or miss, but he never shy’s away from taking big swings, and I love him for it.
2004’s notable film, Hero, is a bit of a cheat as it was released in China first back in 2002, with the studio Miramax holding the North American distribution rights. Miramax held onto the film for nearly two years, unsure what to do with it, and it would take filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, a huge fan of the move, to convince them to finally release it. By 2004, Tarantino had, once again, found himself having a huge influence on American cinema thanks to the success of his recent kung-fu revenge flick, Kill Bill, a major hit for Miramax. In releasing Hero, Tarantino agreed to have his name attached to the marketing under the banner of “Quentin Tarantino presents…”, and I gotta say, the marketing worked on me.
The film centers on an assassin calling himself Nameless (played by Jet Li), who asks to speak with the king of Qin, one of ancient China’s many warring states. Nameless says that he has killed several of the king’s would be assassins, protecting him from death. Impressed, Nameless is allowed to tell the story of how he killed each one. It is a complex, moving tale, filled with love and tragedy. Hero would surprise film pundits by debuting at #1, pulling in $18 million on its opening weekend. The film would make $53 million in North America, making it fifth highest grossing non-English language film of all-time in the U.S., a remarkable achievement for a film that Miramax had to be coaxed into releasing.
From 1994, we’ve got the kids comedy Camp Nowhere, a film where a bunch of junior high kids get the bright idea to con their parents out of money so that they can spend their Summer vacation at a fake camp with no adult supervision. Well, there’s ONE adult, an aging ex-hippie played by Christopher Lloyd who is just there to sign the paperwork for the run down resort the kids rent out for the Summer. Like other kid-centric power fantasies of the 90’s (Home Alone, Blank Check, Rookie of the Year, etc.), Camp Nowhere succeeds on the premise that these kids can do anything they want, whenever they want, with no consequences.
Hell, even at the end of the film when the kids are, predictably, caught, all it takes is one mediocre speech and a Spartacus level mass acceptance of punishment, to make every parent forget that their kids just conned them out of $3k each (about $6k in 2024). Camp Nowhere is pretty bad, no, scratch that, it’s really bad. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t like it as a kid and that I don’t still find it enjoyable today. I loved going to Summer camp, so seeing these kids do whatever they wanted was major wish fulfillment on my end. I still wish I could do whatever I wanted at Summer camp, why’d I have to get so fucking old?
Our last notable film is the 1984 horror film C.H.U.D., an acronym for “Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers”, well, sort of (there’s another, more sinister name but that would spoil the movie!). While the film has largely been forgotten, it is a cult classic with a dedicated fan base. However, a recent watch of the film had me begging for something, ANYTHING, interesting to happen. The biggest sin of C.H.U.D. is that it is so fucking boring. The most notable thing about the movie is that its title is now used as a put down when describing sexist internet trolls. Don’t bother checking this one out, folks, there’s nothing to see here.
Alright, it’s time for notable albums, if you’re still reading, thank you very much. From 2014 we have the album V by Maroon 5; great, moving on. 2004 saw the release of Leviathan, the second album from heavy metal group Mastodon, and is responsible for launching the band into the mainstream. With Leviathan, the band decided to go with a concept album, a theme they would revisit many times over their career, with all of the songs having some kind of connection, or finding inspiration, with the novel Moby Dick. The song “Blood and Thunder” was the big single that helped the album and band reach mainstream heights, but my favorite, by far, is the driving speed metal tune “Megalodon”. That’s a killer track.
1994’s notable album is the all time classic II by the R&B group Boyz II Men. Featuring two number one hits, “I’ll Make Love to You” and “On Bended Knee”, Boyz II Men became only the third artist to replace themselves at number one on the Billboard Charts, the other two being Elvis Presley and The Beatles. II would be the first album to win in the Best R&B Album category at the Grammys, beating out Anita Baker, Tevin Campbell, Gladys Knight, Me’Shell NdegeOcello, and Luther Vandross. I was not a huge R&B fan back in the 90’s, and I’m still not, frankly, but “I’ll Make Love to You” is just one of those songs that you know, regardless of your musical tastes, it was everywhere.
Finally, from 1984, we’ve got the David Bowie album Tonight, his 16th! Following the massive success of his 1983 album Let’s Dance and it’s subsequent Serious Moonlight tour, Bowie found himself in a creative and existential rut. Nearly 40, the enigmatic singer/songwriter felt he no longer knew his audience was, nor what they wanted. While on vacation with another singer/songwriter, Iggy Pop, Bowie decided to collaborate with his long time friend on a new album. Putting together ten songs, five of which were covers, with three of those being Iggy Pop songs, the album that came out was Tonight. A collection of well recorded songs that just didn’t fit together.
Critics panned the album, smelling it for what it was, a likely cash grab, that tried (and failed) to capture the same kind of dance-pop energy of Let’s Dance. The album would spawn three singles, “Blue Jean” (my favorite), “Tonight” (a duet with Tina Turner), and “Loving the Alien” (one of only two songs from the album that Bowie would still play live in subsequent years; “Blue Jean” being the other). Tonight almost killed Bowie’s career, with fans and critics wanting something more dynamic and original, instead they were given songs that felt like they were cutting room floor rejects from Let’s Dance.
Bowie barely did interviews following the album’s release and seemed apologetic when he did. This setback would lead Bowie to experiment and collaborate even further, famously joining forces with Mick Jagger to record a version of the song “Dancing in the Streets”. Bowie would later reflect on this period, spanning 1983 to 1987, as a time when he just kind of stopped caring and let other people tell him what to do. He lost his creative spark and he was adrift. Thankfully, Bowie would snap out of this funk and return with the more well received Black Tie White Noise in 1993.
The Sims 4 (PC) – Released Sep. 2nd, 2014: Wiki Link
Notable Film Release: Boyhood – Starring Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater, and Ethan Hawke
Click here to watch the trailer
Notable Album Release: Maroon 5 – V
Click here to listen to the album
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (PS2) – Released Aug. 31st, 2004: Wiki Link
Notable Film Release: Hero – Starring Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Chen Daoming, Donnie Yen, and Zhang Ziyi
Click here to watch the trailer
Notable Album Release: Mastodon – Leviathan
Click here to listen to the album
King Arthur’s World (SNES) – Released Sep. 4th, 1994: Wiki Link
Notable Film Release: Camp Nowhere – Starring Jonathan Jackson, Christopher Lloyd, Andrew Keegan, Marnette Patterson, Melody Kay, Thomas F. Wilson, and M. Emmet Walsh
Click here to watch the trailer
Notable Album Release: Boyz II Men – II
Click here to listen to album
Karate Champ (Arcade) – Released Sep. 1984: Wiki Link
Notable Film Release: C.H.U.D. – Starring John Heard, Daniel Stern, Christopher Curry and Kim Griest
Click here to watch the trailer
Notable Album Release: David Bowie – Tonight
Click here to listen to album
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