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New Game Releases 11/05/24 – 11/11/24

Andy Tuttle

Top Releases:

Happy and welcome to New Game Releases! Now, there’s something else going on today but I just can’t quite put my finger on it. What was it again? What was it? Eh, probably doesn’t matter.

You know what does matter though? Video games! Yes, folks, we’ve got a whole slew of great games to check out, and possibly dull your senses to the madness unfolding all around us. The top game of the week is from Nintendo, and it’s a big one, Mario & Luigi: Brothership. This is the sixth game in the Mario & Luigi series, which started with 2003’s Superstar Saga, and the first for the Switch. In this game, Mario & Luigi sail the wild seas on a half ship/half island, fighting bad guys and (probably) saving the world.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership (Switch) – Releases Nov. 7th

Developed by: Acquire
Published by: Nintendo

Fans of social deduction games like Among Us are in for a treat this week when Death Note: Killer Within drops. Up to ten players will split up into two groups and try to figure out their identities and either eliminate L or seize the Death Note. Publisher Bandai Namco is really trying to tell this as a cut throat game of cat & mouse, where only the smartest players will survive. How will I do? Well, let’s just say I’m a BIG Rick & Morty fan.

Death Note: Killer Within (PC/PS4/PS5) – Releases Nov. 5th

Developed by: Grounding Inc.
Published by: Bandai Namco

After what seems like an eternity, the long delayed Metal Slug Tactics is finally coming out! While fans of the Metal Slug series may now it as a Contra-esque run & gun title, Metal Slug Tactics takes a far different approach, being more comparable to Fire Emblem (hence the word “Tactics” in the title). Developer Leikir Studios say they took a lot of inspiration from the recent tactical game Into the Breach, one of the best games to come out in the last ten years, so I’ve got high hopes for this one.

Metal Slug Tactics (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Nov. 5th

Developed by: Leikir Studio
Published by: Dotemu

While I still yearn for the days of simpler theme park simulators like Roller Coaster Tycoon, I completely see the appeal and fun of the Planet Coaster series. Having spent some time with the first game on my PS4, it’s fun enough and is, surprisingly, easy to use. However things like building paths and adding decorations to rides is a pain in the ass; thankfully, Planet Coaster 2 is supposed to fix these issues. Pathways can now be manually drawn (so I hope you have a steady hand) and decorations can now be added directly to roller coasters. Fun!

Planet Coaster 2 (PC/PS5/Series X|S) – Releases Nov. 6th

Developed by: Frontier Developments
Published by: Frontier Developments

OMG, so many games, let’s just rapid fire these. River City Saga: Three Kingdoms Next is a stupid name for a game. Just call it “2”, why “Next”? Dumb. Goat Simulator: Remastered tries to justify its existence this week. Like fascism, this series just won’t go away no matter how hard we try. WE GOTTA HAVE THE LULZ! Finally, Slitterhead is a brand new survival horror game from the creators of Silent Hill and Siren. The team was also responsible for the Gravity Rush series and Slitterhead will, apparently, feature a very similar game play style.

River City Saga: Three Kingdoms Next (PC/PS4/Switch) – Releases Nov. 6th

Developed by: Arc System Works
Published by: Arc System Works

Goat Simulator: Remastered (PC/PS5/Series X|S) – Releases Nov. 7th

Developed by: Coffee Stain North/Fishlabs
Published by: Coffee Stain Publishing

Slitterhead (PC/PS4/PS5/Series X|S) – Releases Nov. 8th

Developed by: Bokeh Game Studio
Published by: Bokeh Game Studio

Ports and Re-releases:

TMNT fans are in for a treat as the previously Switch exclusive title Splintered Fate is set to hit PC this week, and it is already confirmed to work on the Steam Deck; nice. Still no word on when it will come to other consoles, nor when the previously announced DLC will release.

RPG fans are also in for a treat when the game Phantom Brave: The Hermuda Triangle hits the PS5 this week. The game was previously only available on Switch and PC in NIS Classics Volume 1, which was bundled with Soul Nomad & the World Eaters. No word on when/if Soul Nomad will come to PC.

Finally, the Atari 50 collection is putting out a new version that now has over 140 games, including those from the Lynx and Jaguar, as well as brand new interviews and retrospective video segments telling the long, fascinating history of Atari.

Everything else:

Notable Releases from 10, 20, and 30 years ago:

Time to switch focus to your Notable Releases. Just like today, all of the biggest games of the year were showing up on your favorite consoles of yesteryear. Let’s find out what they were!

With the recent release of The Veilguard, Dragon Age has been in the news quite a bit. There has been a ton of excitement and buzz around the game and that can likely be attributed to the fact that the last game in the series, Inquisition, came out ten years ago (there’s some other “buzz” around The Veilguard but I don’t need to give bad actors the time of day).

While the previous entry in the series, Dragon Age II, was a commercial success, selling over 2 million copies, it failed to live up to fan expectations. DA II was a far more streamlined and simple game compared to its predecessor, Dragon Age: Origins, which ruffled a few player’s feathers. While some critics and players welcomed the change, developer BioWare wanted to make sure that Inquisition helped bring a bit of Origins’ complexity back into the series while maintaining DA II’s more mainstream approach, incorporating elements from both games (similar to their approach on Mass Effect 3).

Development on Inquisition was troubled from the start. EA, BioWare’s parent company, forced the studio to use the Frostbit engine built by another EA studio, DICE (known for the FPS series Battlefield). This meant that BioWare’s team had to learn a whole new toolset that wasn’t even built for the type of game they wanted to make. To make things worse, while BioWare were making Inquisition on one version of Frostbit, DICE would make changes to the engine and not tell anyone at BioWare, causing things to break, work to be re-done, and slow down the development process.

Meanwhile, BioWare was fully committed to releasing the game on PC and the two new consoles hitting the market, Xbox One and PlayStation 4, however, parent company EA wasn’t so keen on the idea. Deathly afraid that the mobile market was going to destroy the console business, they forced BioWare to make Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game because those were clearly going to be the last consoles people ever purchased; some real big Rick & Morty fans over there at EA, high IQ individuals.

Due to the mandate to make the game run on lower powered systems, BioWare’s head developers demanded parity between all consoles. Big scale items had to be cut, including destructible environments and a war simulation mini-game in which players would have to maintain armies that surrounded the Inquisition’s strongholds. These features were even touted in early trailers, with the BioWare team needing to come out and give statements about their removal which they attributed to “not being fully fleshed out”.

The problems with the Frostbite engine would only continue through development, with some at BioWare calling it one of the worst engines they had ever worked with. DICE’s continual tweaking of the engine and failure to report them to BioWare were becoming more frequent, to the point that BioWare had to tell EA that Inquisition would need to be delayed. This was unacceptable to EA who were demanding that Inquisition be a hit for the publisher after a string of less than well received games.

EA would step in and force a better working relationship between the studios, making the last few months of development run smoother. However, the mandate to ship in Q4 of 2014 was still there, meaning BioWare needed to go into major crunch mode, working near round the clock hours on the game in order to meet the deadline. With the disappointing reception to DA II, BioWare needed to prove to players (and their bosses) that the franchise was worth continuing.

Finally, on November 18th, 2014. Dragon Age: Inquisition hit store shelves and was well received by both critics and players; thank goodness for the crunch, right? Right? Anyway, critics were happy to see that Inquisition brought the series back to something that more closely resembled DA: Origins, but some critics felt that the tactical camera felt a bit unnecessary and didn’t feel as useful as it did in Origins. Combat in general was seen as an improvement but would often get repetitive and stale.

The game’s story, quests, and side missions received some praise, particularly for the way it told the story of each companion, however it would occasionally veer into generic fantasy, leaving some critics longing for the more complex stories in Origins. Despite its misgivings, Inquisition was still able to clean up at the end of year awards season, being named Game of the Year by multiple outlets, including IGN, Ars Technica, Game Informer, Polygon, EGM, The Game Awards, the D.I.C.E. Awards, the SXSW Game Awards, and the NAVGTR awards.

Three major DLC expansions would come out, extending (and completing) the story from Inquisition (to some minor controversy). The base game and all of its DLC would be collected in a “Game of the Year” edition, releasing almost a year later in October of 2015. For ten years, Dragon Age: Inquisition stood as the final entry in the series, finally getting a follow-up (The Veilguard) in 2024. You can still play Inquisition today, it’s not difficult, the game is easily available on Steam, PSN, and the Xbox Marketplace digitally, while physical copies are no doubt lining the shelves of every Game Stop and local retro video game store today (I got the GOTY version of ten bucks a couple years ago).

Dragon Age is a big franchise, but it’s nearly as big as 2004’s notable release, Halo 2. Initially, Halo was not intended to have a sequel, let alone become one of the biggest and most profitable franchises in video games. However, the success of Halo: Combat Evolved demanded that a sequel be made, with developer Bungie using cut ideas and story points from CE and spinning them off into their own game.

Alongside the single player story mode, Halo 2 expanded on the success of its multiplayer, with players now able to take the fight online with the still fairly new Xbox Live service. In fact, Halo 2’s online multiplayer was so popular that it was the most played game for almost two years, dethroned by Gears of War in 2006.

While the multiplayer modes were a smash with players and critics, the single player campaign came under scrutiny for its short length and abrupt, cliffhanger ending. Bungie, on their end, admitted that they just got too carried away with Halo 2 in the early months of development, biting off way more than they could chew or, as one developer put it, tried to shove ten pounds of shit into a five pound bag.

The shortcomings of the single player campaign didn’t matter though, Halo 2 was a colossal hit when it launched on November 9th, 2004. At release, the game grossed $125 million dollars in the first 24 hours of release, a staggering amount of money that beat out (as far as I can tell) every film’s opening weekend in 2004. For some, like website The Ringer, Halo 2 ushered in a new era of marketing for video games.

Before this, video games were mostly advertised on television and in magazines, with an in your face commercial that tried to appeal to a certain demographic of teenage boy. With Halo 2, Microsoft took the marketing to another level, treating it like a film release and a worldwide cultural event meant to include the most mainstream of mainstream audiences, adult men. It worked, with Halo 2 becoming the best selling Xbox game of all time (the original Xbox, mind you), with over 500 million matches played online, with a staggering 710 million hours logged in online matches by June of 2006.

At the end of year award shows, Halo 2 would receive multiple nominations and wins, including “Console Game of the Year”, “Console First-Person Action Game of the Year”, “Outstanding Achievement in Online Gameplay” and “Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design” at the Interactive Achievement Awards (now the D.I.C.E. Awards) and “Best First Person Action” and “Designer of the Year” (for Jason Jones) at the Spike VGA’s (which morphed into The Game Awards). Halo 2, often brought up as one of the greatest video games of all time, is still easily playable today, although not in its original version. The game is available as part of The Master Chief Collection, remastered in HD, and can be played on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.

When I said this was the prime season for the biggest games of the year for each of our notable releases, I guess I fudged that a little bit because, well, our 1994 notable release isn’t nearly as big as Dragon Age and Halo, it’s Capcom’s Demon’s Crest. While the game certainly has fans and was pretty well liked by critics, it didn’t light up the sales charts in any meaningful way.

You might not know it, but Demon’s Crest is the third entry in the Gargoyle’s Quest series that began its life on the Game Boy in 1990. Players control a character named Firebrand, one of the enemy characters from another Capcom game, Ghosts ‘n Goblins. The game revolves around six magical stones, or crests, allowing anyone who controls all of them to gain ultimate power. Determined to gain this power for himself, Firebrand set off on a journey to defeat a rival demon named Phalanx who has stolen the crests from Firebrand.

The game is a standard 16-bit platformer with some minor RPG elements, as well as some “Metroidvania” elements, requiring players to visit previously completed stages where they must use newly gained powers to access areas that were previously unreachable.

Demon’s Crest was well received by critics, particularly from Game Pro magazine who called it one of the best Super Nintendo games of the 1994 holiday season. EGM praised the game’s graphics and complex gameplay, while Next Generation magazine took the contrarian stance, saying the game was too short and contained several secret items that didn’t appear to do anything, other than allowing the player some bragging rights.

Over the years, Demon’s Crest has gained a solid reputation in the gaming community as a kind of hidden gem. Outlets like Complex and IGN would put the game on their list of greatest Super Nintendo games of all time, and it did fairly well when it was released on the Wii U’s Virtual Console in 2014, and was a welcome addition to the Nintendo Switch Online SNES library. Check it out!

Jumping over to notable films, 2014 saw the release of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, his first directorial effort after completing his Dark Knight Trilogy. An ambitious, heady film, Interstellar tells the story of an astronaut in search of a new home planet for the people living on Earth. What ends up happening, however, is that this astronaut travels several years into the future, in just a matter of hours, causing him to miss out seeing his children grow into adults. It’s a powerful, moving film that hits even harder after becoming a father.

From 2004, we’ve got the Brad Bird film The Incredibles, the sixth movie released by Pixar. The Incredibles was notable for being both the first film at the studio written and directed by one person (Brad Bird), and was also their first film to feature an entirely human cast. Bird got the idea for the film, which tells the story of a super-powered family, in 1993 as he contemplated how his dream of success in the film industry might only come at the loss of spending time with his family.

Bird would put the idea on the back burner while he worked on The Iron Giant for Warner Bros. which, unfortunately, flopped (despite being one of the greatest animated films of all time, thank you very much). Distraught, Bird was approached by his friend John Lasseter at Pixar, and asked Bird if he had any ideas. He presented his story of the super-powered family and, well, it was a smash success.

With four Oscar Nominations, it was the most nominated film of the year, and won two, “Best Animated Feature” and “Best Sound Editing”. Multiple outlets would call The Incredibles one of the best movies of 2004, making Brad Bird into one of the most sought after directors in Hollywood (for a time), where he would go on to direct Ratatouille, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Tomorrowland, and Incredibles 2.

It can’t be November without some kind of holiday film, and 1994’s big Christmas movie was the Tim Allen mega hit The Santa Clause. Helmed by veteran TV director John Pasquin (who would later direct Allen in Jungle 2 Jungle and Joe Somebody), The Santa Clause tells the story of Scott Calvin, a divorced father who takes on the mantle of Santa Claus after jolly old Saint Nick falls of the roof of Calvin’s home and, well, dies.

The movie then becomes a tale about Scott learning how to be a better father to his son, Charlie, while learning how to be one of the biggest and most beloved figure to children all over the world. It’s schmaltzy, it’s cheesy, it’s hokey, and it’s one of my favorite Christmas movies of all time. This movie always reminds me of my dad, a big Tim Allen fan, and how he too struggled with being a good father to my brothers and sister after my parents got divorced. It’s a bittersweet pill, but I can’t help but smile every time I watch it. Thanks dad, for taking all of us, including me, a punk ass 13 year old, to see this in the theatres. I’ll never forget it.

In the world of music, 2014 saw the release of Sonic Highways from Foo Fighters. This was a concept album in which front man Dave Grohl would travel to eight cities around the U.S., writing and recording a song in each city with the band after conducting interviews with local musicians. The whole process was documented for a the show Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways which aired on HBO, also in 2014. The album had five singles, with the first being lead off track “Something From Nothing”, which featured Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen.

2004’s notable album is Encore by rapper Eminem, his fifth studio release. While Eminem’s dark humor was present on previous albums, Encore was almost entirely a comedy album, with themes and lyrics surrounding his criticism of George W. Bush, Michael Jackson, rappers Benzino and Ja Rules, as well as, bizarrely, Christopher Reeve.

Encore was intended to be Eminem’s final album, with the rapper going through a serious drug problem, and was supposed to have a more somber, reflective tone. However, several songs were leaked before release, prompting Eminem to record new tracks to replace the leaked ones at a break neck pace. The quality of the songs suffered and, due to his heavy drug use, turned out to be more bizarre and silly than intended.

Critics didn’t care for the album in comparison to Eminem’s previous efforts, but still praised the rapper for his bold and controversial lyrics. Encore received three Grammy nominations but failed to take home any trophies. I won’t say I’m the world’s biggest Eminem fan, but I know his songs. Every track on Encore was a total mystery to me, I have ever, in my life, heard any of these. What was I doing in 2004? In any case, this was NOT Eminem’s last album, he would return in 2009 with Relapse, putting out several more albums in the years that followed, which were all commercial and critical success.

Our final notable album is one of my personal favorite, Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York. Recorded in November of 1993 for the television series of the same name, MTV Unplugged showed the band stripped down and raw, with new guitarist Pat Smear (formerly of The Germs, later with Foo Fighters), as well as cellist Lori Goldston, and Meat Puppets band members Chris & Curt Kirkwood.

Recorded in one take, the album features 14 tracks, 8 originals and 6 covers, but only contained one of their big hits, “Come as You Are”. Instead of playing their biggest tracks, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Heart Shaped Box”, Nirvana instead played their lesser known songs. Tracks like “About a Girl”, “Polly”, “Something in the Way”, and “Pennyroyal Tea”, among others. Perhaps the most well known song on the album is their cover of David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World”, a hauntingly beautiful performance from Cobain.

The album, of course, came out several months after Cobain’s death. In a grim reminder of this, for the band’s live performance, Cobain had the stage set up to look like a funeral, with stargazer lilies, black candles, and a crystal chandelier. I remember when this album came out in 1994, it was the number one, most important thing I wanted for Christmas that year. Nirvana was “my band”, and Cobain’s death came at a really rough time in my life, emotionally, personally, bridging that gap between childhood and adulthood. I listened to this album so much, over the next several months, being mopey and sad, singing along to every lyric. It’s a great album, folks, it’s just so sad that Kurt couldn’t hang on. A lot of people get depressed around the holiday’s. If you’re ever feeling blue, just remember that somebody out there cares about you.

Dragon Age: Inquisition (PC/PS3/PS4/Xbox 360/Xbox One) – Released Nov. 18th, 2014: Wiki Link

Notable Film Release: Interstellar – Starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, John Lithgow, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, Wes Bentley, Bill Irwin, and Topher Grace
Click here to watch the trailer
Notable Album Release: Foo Fighters – Sonic Highways
Click here to listen to the album

Halo 2 (Xbox) – Released Nov. 9th, 2004: Wiki Link

Notable Film Release: The Incredibles – Starring Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell, Spencer Fox, Jason Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, and Elizabeth Peña
Click here to watch the trailer
Notable Album Release: Eminem – Encore
Click here to listen to the album

Demon’s Crest (SNES) – Released Nov. 1994: Wiki Link

Notable Film Release: The Santa Clause – Starring Tim Allen, Eric Lloyd, Wendy Crewson, Judge Reinhold, and David Krumholtz
Click here to watch the trailer
Notable Album Release: Nirvana – MTV Unplugged in New York
Click here to listen to album

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