New Game Releases 05/21/24 – 05/27/24 (2024)

We’re reaching the end of May, can you believe it? Only a few weeks before we start learning about the Fall slate, so it’s one last hurrah for the game companies to get their name in the press and hyped up before we find out when Call of Duty is coming out, or whatever. Are you ready to “hurrah”? Let’s get to it!

Top Releases:

Our top release of the week is the action/adventure title Senua’s Sage: Hellblade II; a rare Xbox console exclusive, wow! I mean, it’ll probably be on PS5 in, like, 6 months, though, right? Anyway, Senua’s Saga is, of course, the sequel to 2017’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. The swapping of the titles is slightly confusing which, of course, is the Xbox way (Did you get the Xbox One, Xbox One S, Xbox One X, Xbox Series S, or Xbox Series X). There’s been a great deal of talk about how this game lets you experience life through the eyes of someone who is a victim of psychosis, learning to live and function with that trauma. I just hope we get a realistic depiction of a panic attack.

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II (PC/Series X|S) – Releases May 21^st

Developed by: Ninja Theory
Published by: Xbox Game Studios

Speaking of realistic depiction of a panic attack, you can see me have one when I play XDefiant because, well, I’m terrible at online shooters. Still, I’ve learned to live with this trauma and I will, bravely, press on. This long in development, oft-delayed game is finally, FINALLY, coming out. Surely, this will be the greatest online shooter of all time, and I’m not just saying that because I know one of the animators, Jason Copeland, who is an all around good guy and has toiled in this brutal industry for nearly twenty years. He’s well deserving of all the praise you can muster, and I hope he’s available in ten years to talk about this, so keep an eye on my YouTube page in 2034.

XDefiant (PC/PS5/Series X|S) – Releases May 21^st

Developed by: Ubisoft San Francisco
Published by: Ubisoft

If big budget games aren’t your thing, or these two don’t do anything for you, why not take a look at the new indie title Paper Trail. In this adventure game, players must fold and unfold their world, like a piece of paper, in order to solve puzzles and advance the story. It looks marvelous.

Paper Trail (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases May 21^st

Developed by: Newfangled Games
Published by: Newfangled Games

Finally, we’ve got a couple of titles that aren’t quite new…but are new, ya know? First up is Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, a remake of the GameCube title that is, arguably, the best game in the series. We’ve also got another remake, this one is a little more noticeable, Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. This classic RPG from 1981 put the genre on the map, acting as inspiration on countless other video games. Now you can play it in breathtaking HD, getting lost (or immersed) in unforgiving dungeons.

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (Switch) – Releases May 23^rd

Developed by: Intelligent Systems
Published by: Nintendo

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases May 23^rd

Developed by: Digital Eclipse
Published by: Digital Eclipse

Everything else:

The rest of this week’s titles aren’t doing much for me, though Duck Detective might be cute. The most high profile additions are the Godzilla DLC for Dave the Diver, which adds the titular monster, as well as some of his foes, to the popular 2023 indie title. We’ve also got a next gen port of Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 coming out, if that does anything for you.

• The Fate of Baldr (PC) – Releases May 22^nd
• Friendship Island (PC) – Releases May 22^nd
• Dave the Diver: Godzilla DLC (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch) – Releases May 15^th
• Duck Detective: The Secret Salami (PC) – Releases May 23^rd
• Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 (PS5/Series X|S) – Releases May 24^th

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

Welcome to Notable Releases, this is the section of the column where we go back in time and check out some of the biggest, most noteworthy video games released in 2014, 2004, and 1994, as well as some of the most notable movies and albums to release in the same time period. We’ve got some interesting stuff to check out, so let’s get to it!

First up, we have 2014’s Watch Dogs, and open world action/adventure game from Ubisoft. In this game, players take on the role of a hacker named Aiden Pearce, who is on a quest for revenge after the murder of his niece. Players spend their time exploring a fictionalized version of the U.S. city of Chicago, hacking into traffic lights, security systems, and bank accounts, in order to complete various missions.

Initially, Watch Dogs was set to arrive in the 2013 holiday season but was delayed to the first half of 2014 in order to give the team more time to crunch, I mean polish, the game. While the extra time allowed the team to incorporate game play ideas initially cut, like hacking someone’s headset, it didn’t seem to help with the game’s graphics.

It isn’t a secret that game companies like to show off really flashy, well crafted trailers to announce and hype their games, and then release a product that looks far less slick than promised. Ubisoft is one of the worst offenders here, often putting out trailers that turn out to look nothing like the game at launch, see Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Ghost Recon, The Division, etc., etc. It’s part of the business and, thankfully, we’ve seen this toned down a bit in recent years.

However, despite the kind of bait & switch on the graphics, Watch Dogs was a huge financial success for Ubisoft and, surprisingly, Sony, with the game driving consumers to finally upgrade to next gen hardware, seeing PS4 sales skyrocket by a staggering 94%. By the end of 2014, Watch Dogs had sold over 10 million copies, making it one of the biggest franchise debuts of all time.

Critics were mostly positive towards Watch Dogs, giving praise to the game play, controls, and depth of content. Some critics didn’t really connect with the revenge story, felling it was clichéd, there were others that criticized the simplistic nature of the hacking minigames, and other felt as if the fake Chicago was lacking in personality and charm. This was reflected in the end of the year awards shows, with Watch Dogs failing to be nominated for most of them, only receiving nods at the Golden Joystick Awards, which is voted on by fans.

Playing Watch Dogs today is very easy, the game’s PS4 and Xbox One versions can be played on PS5 and Series X|S, while the PC version is still easily available digitally. Surprisingly, Ubisoft did not port the game to the Switch, so if you need to play this on a Nintendo console you’re going to have to find a Wii U copy, and a Wii U.

Moving on to 2004, we’ve got the stealth action game Thief: Deadly Shadows. This is the third game in the series, preceded by Thief: The Dark Project, and Thief II: Metal Age, and sees protagonist Garrett exploring The City (no name, just “The City”), stealing and killing to his heart’s content.

Unlike the previous Thief titles, which were linear and stage based, Deadly Shadows was a semi-open world game, with players able to play freely, for a time, before taking on their next mission. The development team, led by industry luminary Warren Spector, were proud of this accomplishment despite, you know, other people also having done open world games. *Shrug*.

Deadly Shadows initially began life as Thief III, but with the demise of original developer Looking Glass Studios, the publisher Eidos bought the rights to the game and tasked Spector’s Ion Storm studio with the creation of the game. They ended up removing “III” from the title, fearing they would alienate new players. Ion Storm used a heavily modified version Unreal Engine 2, similar to the one they used for Deus Ex: Invisible War, but improved things like lighting and sound.

When Deadly Shadows released, simultaneously on PC and Xbox, it received a mostly positive reception from critics who praised the stealth mechanics, open world, stellar graphics, and superb sound. Players, however, had no desire to explore “The City” and the game was, well, kind of a flop. This had a two fold effect, first was the closure of Ion Storm in February of 2005, and the second was that the franchise was put on ice. The next game in the series wouldn’t come until 10 years later, 2014’s Thief, and was pretty much despised by critics, causing the franchise to go back on the shelf.

Heading to 1994, our next game is kind of a cheat, so please bear with me. We’re going to be talking about the 1993 video game Clay Fighter, but not the original release, instead we’re going to discuss the special version, released only for the SNES and only available at Blockbuster Video, Clay Fighter: Tournament Edition.

Originally released on the SNES in November of 1993, Clay Fighter was a spoof on the fighting game genre, with outlandish characters all made out of, you guessed it, clay. This was the perfect fighting game for the kind of kids who found the gore in Mortal Kombat too scary, and the pace of Street Fighter too fast. The cartoon-esque vibe of the characters was also appealing to kids, with characters like Blob, Bonker, Helga, Ickybod Clay, Taffy, and, the main guy himself, Bad Mr. Frosty.

The original game was a mild success and gained average reviews, strong enough to warrant eventual sequels and ports to other consoles, but before all that, it had to spoof Street Fighter by putting out an unnecessary new version that contained some new content, but not much else. The main goal of the game was to have it be part of a video game tournament sponsored by video rental store Blockbuster in 1994, which also featured the games NBA Jam, Sonic 3, TMNT Tournament Fighters, Virtua Racing.

I have vague memories of this tournament, called The Blockbuster Video World Game Championship, where they had a kiosk set up in my local Blockbuster, letting kids play games in an effort to move on to the next round. Each week, you could come by and enter either the Genesis tournament (Sonic, NBA Jam, Virtua Racing) or the SNES tournament (Clay Fighter, TMNT, NBA Jam). I remember picking the Genesis tournament because I was more familiar with that week’s game, Sonic 3, and doing pretty bad. I have no memory of going back, I think we might have tried, but no one was working the kiosk and we just kind of gave up.

With Tournament Edition being an exclusive Blockbuster game, one that you could only rent, the game is a little more rare than its 1993 counterpart, but not so rare that you can’t find it online for a decent price (about $8 bucks at the time of writing). I wish I had more to say about Clay Fighter, I enjoyed the game a lot when I was a kid, particularly the N64 title. I’d draw pictures of the characters in cool poses, put them together in big mash up’s, and I’d even create some of my own (I remember making a pizza chef who shot dough out of his hands and trapped you in it). Thinking back on it, now, I see my daughter doing this same kind of thing, meaning we’re very similar or it’s just one of those things that all kids do.

Moving on to notable films, 2014 gave us the X-Men film Days of Future Past, a film that united the characters from X-Men: First Class with the characters from the original X-Men film series. Seeing all of these actors reprise their X-Men roles was a huge treat for fans, especially after the abysmal X-Men: The Last Stand. The movie was kind of a love letter to fans of everything X-Men, from the comics to the animated series to the original film trilogy, and put a nice cap on things, allowing the series to move forward with the new cast, unhindered by previous entries.

2004 saw the release of Wolfgang Peterson’s Troy, a movie so bland and boring that it’s astonishing to me that it was, at the time, the 60th highest grossing film OF ALL TIME (it has since dropped to 242). I might be a little unfair, I sat through the entire thing the other night, but it left me feeling nothing. It’s cold, dull, and devoid of emotion.

1994’s notable film is another epic film set in the past, about good vs. evil, the rights of the worker vs. the master, and about a man just trying to get back inside the house after his saber toothed tiger locks him outside the door. It’s The Flintstones. Folks, this movie f*cking SUUUUUCKS. I saw this when it came out in 1994 and, from what I can tell, blocked most of it from my memory because of how awful it was. It’s, as the kids say, cringe. Terrible acting, terrible story, terrible pacing, and way, WAY too many jokes about rocks. The only redeeming thing about the film are the practical effects created by the Jim Henson Company, everything else about this film is Dino sh*t. Dino was The Flintstone’s dog. I’m saying the movie is dog sh*t.

In notable albums, 2014 saw the release of Sam Smith’s debut studio album In the Lonely Hour. While initially receiving a lukewarm response from critics, the album went on to be a big hit with listeners, due in large part to the song “Stay With Me”, which hit the U.S. airwaves like an atom bomb in April of 2014. The song was everywhere that Summer and prompted a critics to reevaluate the album. At the Grammy’s, Smith would be nominated for six awards, winning four, Best New Artist, Best Pop Vocal Album, Song of the Year, and Record of the Year (he would lose Album of the Year to Beck (Morning Phase), and Best Pop Solo Performance to Pharrell Williams (“Happy”)).

2004’s notable album is Slipknot’s heavy metal classic Vol. 3 (The Subliminal Verses). After gaining popularity with their first two albums, Slipknot and Iowa, the band had leaned into stronger, more mature songwriting with Vol. 3, putting out an all-time banger. While the album had a staggering six singles released, two in particular really took the world by storm, “Before I Forget” and “Duality”. The music video for “Duality” received high praise, with the band enlisting the help of their fans to destroy another fan’s house that was going to renovated. It’s pure chaos, in the best way possible.

Our final album is one of the best of the 1990’s, and maybe of all time, Ill Communication by the Beastie Boys. This is the album with, of course, perhaps their best known song and one of the greatest music videos of all time, “Sabotage”, and helped propel the hip-hop trio into international stardom.

After their smash hit debut album, Licensed to Ill, the Beastie Boys next two albums, Pauls’ Boutique and Check Your Head, didn’t quite live up to the initial sales of their debut (despite being critically acclaimed). With Ill Communication, the group was once again thrust into the heights of popular music, solidifying their status as one of hip-hop’s greatest acts. Aside from “Sabotage”, the album also featured other fan favorites, “Sure Shot”, “Root Down”, and “Get It Together”, which featured A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip.

The album would appear on many “Best of…” lists at the end of 1994, and is consistently regarded by modern critics as one of the best albums of 1994, as well as the entire decade. At the 37th annual Grammy Awards, “Sabotage” received a nod for Best Hard Rock Performance, losing to “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden. I gotta say, folks, 1994 has been MY year in regards to music. I was 13, everything that was coming out spoke to me in monumental ways. It’s been very exciting looking back on this year, I hope you’re enjoying it as well.

Watch Dogs (PC/PS3/PS4/Xbox 360/Xbox One) – Released May 27^th, 2014: Wiki Link

Thief: Deadly Shadows (PC/Xbox) – Released May 25^th, 2004: Wiki Link

ClayFighter: Tournament Edition (SNES) – Released May 15^th, 1994: Wiki Link

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