Top Releases:

• Dynasty Warriors Origins (PC/PS5/Series X|S) – Releases Jan. 17^th
• Donkey Kong Country Returns HD (Switch) – Releases Jan. 16^th
• Tales of Graces f Remastered (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Jan. 17^th
• Blade Chimera (PC/Switch) – Releases Jan. 16^th

Dynasty Warriors Origins (PC/PS5/Series X|S) – Releases Jan. 17^th

Developed by: Omega Force
Published by: Koei Tecmo

Welcome, everyone, to this week’s New Game Releases! We’ve got two big games vying for your attention, first up is Dynasty Warriors Origins, the latest entry in the long running series from Koei Tecmo. After the poor reception to Dynasty Warriors 9 and its open-world concept, the team has gone back to the series tried & true, single level format. However, it appears that you will not be able to play as multiple characters, with Origins only having one, single protagonist.

The other big game this week is from Nintendo, Donkey Kong Country Returns HD. Originally released for the Wii back in 2010, and then on the 3DS in 2013, this new version of the game comes with stunning, HD graphics that will really make you say…wow; probably. This appears to be the only new thing about the game, though it does contain all of the updates made for the 3DS version (easy mode, new levels).

Donkey Kong Country Returns HD (Switch) – Releases Jan. 16^th

Developed by: Forever Entertainment/Retro Studios
Published by: Nintendo

Rounding things out, we’ve got our second massive RPG of 2025, Tales of Graces f Remastered, so I hope you’ve already finished Ys Memoire. Like DKC Returns HD, this game also started its life on the Wii, back in 2009. That version never came to North America, though we would get a PS3 version in 2012, which is what this remaster is based on. This is the twelfth entry in the long running Tales series and received positive reviews at release.

Finally, the long awaited Blade Chimera is finally coming out after a few delays. Set in a cyberpunk inspired Osaka, players will face hordes of demons as they traverse a unique, fascinating metroidvania style map. Blade Chimera is from the same studio that made Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, which is very exciting if you were one of the few people to play that hidden gem back in 2021.

Tales of Graces f Remastered (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Jan. 17^th

Developed by: Namco Tales Studio
Published by: Bandai Namco

Blade Chimera (PC/Switch) – Releases Jan. 16^th

Developed by: Team Ladybug/WSS playground
Published by: PAYISM/WSS playground

Everything else:

• Heinz Honor and Revenge (PC) – Releases Jan. 14^th
• Heroes of Hammerwatch II (PC) – Releases Jan. 14^th
• DreadOut: Remastered Collection (PS5/Switch) – Releases Jan. 16^th
• Morkull Ragast’s Rage (PC/PS5) – Releases Jan. 16^th
• RANDOMAX (PC) – Releases Jan. 16^th
• Things Too Ugly (PC/PS5/Switch) – Releases Jan. 16^th

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

Welcome, friends, to Notable Releases! These games were all brand new, this week, 10, 20, and 30 years ago; exciting! Not only are we going to discuss video games but we’re also going to check out the biggest movies and albums to also release around the same time as these games. As a pop culture junkie, I can’t get enough of this section, it’s always my favorite part to write every week. Sit back, relax, and wax nostalgic with me…

Games:

Starting things off, our 2015 notable title is the RPG Citizens of Earth from developer Eden Industries. This was the companies second game, following their critically acclaimed 2012 debut Waveform. Citizens was a big departure from their debut, leaning heavily into broad comedy and satire. The tone & style of the game was compared favorably to Earthbound, while the gameplay was a mix of Earthbound and Pokémon.

In developing Citizen, the game’s director, Ryan Vandendyck, wanted to make the game’s start regular people. By setting the game in modern times, it helped the characters feel even more ordinary/regular because they were just your average citizen. In picking the protagonist, Vandendyck wanted to make sure that the character was someone cocky, brash, and of a higher status than the average citizen; thus the fictional “Vice President of Earth” was chosen.

Like an actual person in power, the VP of Earth doesn’t do anything on his own. He delegates tasks to others to do for him, then takes the credit for being such a good manager. Why, exactly, is the VP of Earth recruiting average citizens to join him? Well, you see, the world is going cuckoo, and it will take average, everyday, ordinary people to beat up hippies, swarms of killer bees, pharmacists, and angry toasters.

Reception to Citizens of Earth was mixed, leaning closer to positive. Critics felt the game had some charm and was a nice homage to old-school, SNES style RPGs, but didn’t think the game was paced very well, with a slow story and an almost endless amount of enemies to plow through. It did well enough, however, to warrant a sequel, 2019’s Citizens of Space. Today you can get both games, bundled together (with a more complete, TRUE ending), on Steam and modern gaming platforms.

Moving on to 2005, we’ve got another RPG, this one a little bit more serious, Suikoden IV from Konami. Set more than 150 years before the events of the first Suikoden game, part IV tells the story of a young boy, an unnamed hero, who lives on the island of Razrill, as he deals with events surrounding the Rune of Punishment. All the while, the Kooluk Empire continues to expand its territory and influence across several nearby island nations. What’s a hero to do!

Reception to Suikoden IV was lukewarm, at best, with the game failing to match the sales of previous entries in its home country of Japan, while North American sales were nearly non-existent. Critics were just as unenthused as players, giving the game only faint praise for its story. It did not, however, curry any favor with its short, 15 hour completion time (barring any side quests), it’s tedious ship sailing sections, and for its silent protagonist, which was an RPG trope that was starting to fall out of style by 2005.

Despite its poor sales, Konami marched forward with two follow-up titles. The first was another 2005 release, Suikoden Tactics, which got slightly better reviews but sold just as poorly, and 2006’s Suikoden V which also scored just slightly higher than part IV but sold an abysmally low number of copies. The series has, since then, gone dormant, with only a spiritual sequel (2024’s Eiyuden Chronicle) and the upcoming Suikoden I & II HD Remaster.

Our last notable game this week is Mega Man X2, released for the Super Nintendo in 1995. The sequel to the smash hit Mega Man X, which was released one year prior, X2 continued right where its predecessor left off, having the same stellar gameplay and beautiful graphics. Picking up six months after the first game, “Maverick Hunter” X finds himself being pursued by so called “X-Hunters”, who try and lure X to his death by scattering around the body parts of his former comrade, Zero.

There really isn’t much different between X and X2; there are eight stages with evil Maverick bosses, there are hidden items/upgrades to collect, you wall jump, dash, and charge up your weapon, it’s a Mega Man game. This was a bit of a sticking point for reviewers, but they couldn’t really fault the game for sticking to its already proven formula that was, of course, really fun to play.

Like Mega Man X, X2 is considered one of the greatest SNES games of all-time. It had the herculean task of following up one of the greatest video games of all-time, across all platforms, and it did so admirably. While its bosses and stages may not be as memorable as those in the first X game, it slots neatly into the entire series, with highly enjoyable gameplay.

Movies:

Heading into the world of notable films, 2015 gave us the adorable family film Paddington. Originally released in Europe in late 2014, the film’s North American release would arrive in January to outstanding reviews, though not a very outstanding box office performance, opening in third behind American Sniper and the poorly reviewed Kevin Hart comedy, The Wedding Ringer.

However, Paddington would have the last laugh over Kevin Hart, grossing $75 million in the U.S. (compared to The Wedding Ringer’s $64 million take) and over $318 million worldwide ($79 million worldwide for Wedding Ringer). The film’s success would lead to two sequels, 2017’s Paddington 2 and the upcoming third entry, Paddington in Peru.

From 2005 we’ve got another family film, one that was received far less positively by critics than Paddington, but made much more (in the U.S.) than Paddington, the Ice Cube comedy Are We There Yet?. The movie is your standard fare, boiler plate film; a kid-hating adult becomes responsible for two kids (the thing he hates) and must spend a long time with them in a confined space (in this case, a luxury SUV on a road trip). At first, the kid-hating adult hates the kids, obviously, and they hate him, BUT, circumstances eventually bring them together and the kid-hating adult has his heart warmed by the misbehaving, but ultimately sweet-natured, kids.

Are We There Yet? is a terrible film but, ultimately, crowd pleasing. The film only succeeds due to Ice Cube’s charisma and his chemistry with the two young actors, but the jokes are really corny and the plot it laughably unrealistic. As we’ve seen many times in Hollywood, critic scores can’t stop a bad movie from getting a sequel, 2007’s Are We Done Yet?, a remake of the 1950’s film Mr. Blandings Build His Dream House (which was also remade in the 1980’s as the Tom Hanks, Shelly Long film The Money Pit). A TV series adaptation, also called Are We There Yet?, had a three season run on TBS where it, too, received terrible reviews.

From 1995, we’ve got director John Singleton’s third film, the racially charged college drama Higher Learning. Set during the, I assume, 1994/1995 academic school year, Higher Learning follows the paths of three incoming freshmen; Kristen, a white woman of privilege who grew up in Orange County, California; Remy, a white man from Boise, Idaho who struggles to fit in and find an identity among his liberal classmates; and Malik, a black man (and also the film’s de facto main character), who is only at the school because of an athletic scholarship but is struggling to keep his grades up.

Over the course of the film, each character goes through some kind of personal growth and/or change, with Kristen becoming more socially conscious of the world and kinda/sorta becoming a lesbian, while Malik also becomes more socially conscious but in a way that asserts his blackness, becoming more cognizant of the way that ethnic minorities are forced to play a societal game where the rules are made to allow them to succeed only so much, in order to keep them oppressed by even the most low class White Americans. The most disturbing transformation in the film is by Remy, whose constant rejection by his peers, his inability to learn, adapt, & read social cues, and likely conservative upbringing, leads him to fall in with a group of violent, Neo-Nazi Skinheads.

Higher Learning is a fabulous movie, though it fails to reach the heights of Singleton’s debut, Boyz n the Hood. Critics found the film to be better made than his second film, Poetic Justice, but it was largely ignored by the mainstream press, relying on word of mouth from Black critics and audiences to push the movie. Higher Learning would eventually gross $38 million in the U.S. (there was no international release) and gain over $20 million more in revenue from VHS rentals. Like last week’s 2005 film, Coach Carter, Higher Learning was ignored by more prestigious (White) awards shows, instead only receiving nominations at the NAACP Image Awards, both in the Supporting Actor Category, for Ice Cube and Laurence Fishburne (which he won).

A striking, powerful film, Higher Learning should be on your watchlist if you haven’t already seen it. Its messaging is a bit on the nose (okay, very on the nose) but it’s a great look into how we got to where we are as a society today, good & bad, and will hopefully make you feel something about your own life and the prejudices you face and/or inflict on others.

Albums

In notable albums, 2015 saw the release of Fall Out Boy’s sixth studio album, American Beauty/American Psycho. Propelled by the massive single “Centuries”, the album debuted at number one on the Billboard Top 200 and spent an astounding 24 weeks in the top 20, was still in the Top 200 a year later, was the 15th best selling album of 2015, and the 178th best selling album of the decade; holy shit.

I gotta be honest here, folks. I do not like this album, nor their previous “comeback” effort Save Rock and Roll. The songs are far too polished and “produced”, if that makes sense? Like, it’s clear they were just trying to write radio friendly, guitar and synthesizer music and it worked like gangbusters. For my tastes, in their later era, I find their 2023 album, So Much (For) Stardust, to be their best and most well rounded.

Going back to 2005, we’ve got the debut studio album from Ray LaMontagne, Trouble. While not a major commercial success, only peaking at number 164 on the Billboard Top 200, many of the songs from this album would appear in several television shows, films, and commercials throughout the late 2000’s, including Rescue Me, Alias, The Town, She’s All That, Grey’s Anatomy, Torchwood, and Traveler’s Insurance. This shit puts me to sleep, my god, how boring. This might be your thing, and that’s cool, you do you. I’m gonna be over here listening to the song “Fake Out” from Fall Out Boy’s 2023 album So Much (For) Stardust.

Wrapping things up, from 1995, we’ve got the debut album from indie/art-rock band Blonde Redhead called, well, Blonde Redhead. Wikipedia says this was released in 1994, but AlbumOfTheYear.org says January of 1995, so I’m going with that; fuck you, I’m tired, I’ve been listening to So Much (For) Stardust on repeat for the last week and crying because it’s so beautiful.

Anyway, out of this week’s three notable albums, it is the only one that I could actually sit all the way through. Now, its noise-rock, Avant Garde style might be off-putting to some, but at least it isn’t over produced pop-rock or boring as shit folk music from a bearded fuck. Now, Blonde Redhead would put out another album later in 1995 called La Mia Vita Violenta, which is a lot less “artsy” and a bit more radio friendly. Did they sell out? I mean, how many of you have heard of Blonde Redhead before? I think my band almost got to play with them one time but the venue though our name, I Like Girls, was too sexist. Pfft, whatever; “Heartbreak Feels So Good” (the second track on Fall Out Boy’s So Much (For) Stardust, which is infinitely better than all three notable albums.

Citizens of Earth (PC/PS4/PS Vita/Wii U/3DS) – Released Jan. 21^st, 2015

Suikoden IV (PS2) – Released Jan. 11^th, 2005

Mega Man X2 (SNES) – Released Jan. 1995

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Fuck, I fucking love this fucking song.