Welcome back to This Week In Games Australia, our weekly piece on what you can expect to playing in Aus over the next week.
So, what’s coming out in the next seven days? A lot. A lot of games are coming out this week, too many in fact. How did this happen? Well, it’s simple. Every single game that shuffled out of God of War: Ragnarok‘s way last week has decided to launch this week. They avoided God of War‘s launch week because they didn’t want to be overshadowed by the one of the biggest releases of the year. And fair enough: if you’ve worked very hard on a game for many years, it’s only fair to want to give it the best chance of getting into players’ hands when it does finally launch.
It’s just that sometimes that means a hugely anticipated game arrives and then, the week after, it is followed by a tsunami of smaller titles. That’s the situation we have on our hands this week.
Let’s get into it.
November 15
Farming Simulator 22: Platinum Edition (PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO)
If you bought Farming Simulator 22 earlier this year, don’t worry, this is just the end-of-year edition with all the game’s DLC. For those who haven’t played the world’s most earnest (yet buggy) simulation of rural life on the land, I would encourage you to at least give it a go. It might SEEM boring at first blush, but wait until the physics engine goes haywire and thank me later.
Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark (NS, PS4)
Oh, Fell Seal. Will you ever get out the door? This is your third or fourth appearance in a TWIG article, now. Please get it together.
Let’s Sing 2023 (PS5, XSX, NS, PS4, XBO)
Throw it back to the heady days of Singstar with the modern equivalent, Let’s Sing. This new edition features songs by Billie Eilish, Charlie Puth, Avril Lavigne, BTS, Queen, and Australian musical cryptid Gotye. If you don’t have a USB mic on hand, there’s a bundle on each platform that comes with a pair of mics.
McPixel (PC)
McPixel 3 is an adventure game about saving the day, in which a guy named McPixel must avert a series of disasters through entirely unconventional means. Another week, another Devolver Digital banger.
Oddworld: Soulstorm (NS)
Another retail release! One for the collectors who want a physical copy.
Pentiment (XSX, PC, XBO)
Obsidian’s latest RPG is a little bit different to what the studio famous for games like Fallout: New Vegas and The Outer Worlds has produced before. Pentiment is an exploration of 15th Century through the lens of a dialogue-driven role-playing game. This is so niche and such a small and obvious passion project that I can scarcely believe Xbox let them make it. If this is the kind of game that Game Pass will open the door to, I’m all for it. Let big studios make smaller, more personal games, while they work on the big ones. Obsidian produced Pentiment while it worked on Grounded. Loving everything I’m seeing here.
SIFU (NS)
Another retail release for those who prefer a physical copy.
Smurfs Kart: Turbo Edition (NS)
It’s a kart racer full of Smurfs characters. I don’t know what else to tell you.
Somerville (XSX, PC, XBO)
A game about a small family struggling to stay together in the wake of a catastrophic alien attack. The less you know the better. Just play it. Out on Game Pass this week.
November 16
Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0
You didn’t think that, just because Modern Warfare II is out the door, you’d seen the last of Call of Duty for the year, did you? Warzone 2.0 is dropping this week, shaking up the popular free-to-play version of CoD with brand new modes and redesigned features like Gunsmith 2.0. You can even play in third-person now if you want, a series first.
Floodland (PC)
A city builder set on a flooded, post-apocalyptic version of Earth. Land is at a premium, which means you need to manage your space while balancing an influx of new settlers. An interesting take on the genre. I’m keen to check it out.
Lapin (PC, XBO)
Lapin is a Korean game about a little bunny trying to find a new home. It’s a (for want of a better term) Celeste-like, which means you’ll be bouncing through levels very quickly, relying on reflex and memory to get you through as efficiently as possible. It’s a great, hand-drawn art style and I really like the sparkly little soundtrack it has as well. One to keep an eye on if you love this kind of game.
November 17
Arkanoid: Eternal Battle (PS5, NS)
The classic brickbreaker is back, now with a Tetris 99 style battle royale mode. Honestly, I like this trend of turning classic games into frantic, last-person-standing multiplayer sweatfests. More like this, please.
Goat Simulator 3 (PS5, XSX, PC, PS4, XBO)
You’re not dreaming: there was no Goat Simulator 2. GS3 is here to take you and your friends on a multiplayer-centric, goat-shaped tour of a world gone mad. If you’ve played the original, you know what to expect here: broken physics, flagrant references to other games, and a slavish devotion to being deeply, uncomfortably weird. Press circle to Bleat.
Horse Tales: Emerald Valley Ranch (NS, PS4)
I am including this in this week’s list because Ruby played it once at a media day several weeks ago and has brought it up three times a day since. One for the horse people in your life.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales (PC)
PlayStation continues porting its best and brightest games to PC. Miles Morales becomes the second Spider-Man game to arrive on PC from the PlayStation in the last six months. I personally think that Miles Morales is the better of the two Spidey games that Insomniac has produced so far. For whatever reason, the combat didn’t click with me when I first played the original. By the time I got to Miles, however, something had changed and it finally connected for me. I like that this is a smaller-stakes story and I like that, because it is essentially standalone DLC, its scope is greatly reduced as well. The result is a Spider-Man game that feels much pacier and more dynamic than the original, with a story of a sundered friendship that has real weight. Worth playing, if you’ve never had the pleasure.
November 18
The Dark Pictures: The Devil In Me (PS5, XSX, PC, NS, PS4, XBO)
Supermassive continues its anthology horror series this month with The Devil In Me. This is The Dark Pictures’ fourth year on the hop and Supermassive’s second major release of 2022 after The Quarry. Once again, my recommendation is that you invite some friends over on a Friday or Saturday night and pass the controller around. That is, im my humble opinion, the best way to enjoy Supermassive’s excellent, filmic, survival horror games.
Darq (NS)
Another retail launch, for the collectors. A lot of these retail launches are only for the Switch, just a weird quirk I’m noticing.
Pokemon: Scarlet and Violet (NS)
It’s that time of year again when we gather round the latest mainline Pokemon entry and see what Nintendo has in store for us this time. What’s that? It’s all already on the internet? The whole game leaked online weeks in advance of it going on sale? Oh boy. If you haven’t seen it all online by the time it arrives on Friday, you can pick up Scarlet and Violet for yourself.
World of Warcraft: Dragonflight (PC)
To be clear, Dragonflight isn’t out on Friday, but its retail Collector’s Edition set is. You’ll be able to pick that up and store it with your other unopened Collector’s Eds until the full expac unlocks in late November.
Dragonflight brings the grandfather of the modern MMORPG back with its first major expansion since The Troubles broke out at Blizzard. Some would argue that WOW‘s Troubles have been going on a lot longer. Fans felt the wheels had properly come off the wagon afterBattle for Azeroth turned Sylvanas into a war criminal (a narrative bend I actually really liked because it felt like Blizzard might finally be willing to commit to something solid in the WOW canon. But no, they retconned it in the Shadowlands expansion that followed BFA.) Dragonflight makes a lot of changes to the now-familiar formula, but after losing a huge number of players to Final Fantasy XIV during the pandemic and the scandals that emerged out of it, can WOW hope to lure any of them back? We’ll find out later this month.
November 18
Torii (PC)
A surrealist adventure puzzle game that takes several cues from Journey, with a strange artistic bent of its own. Hard to describe, but check out the trailer. I think it might impress.
And that’s it for this week! A lot to be getting on with for sure! See anything that catches your eye? Let us know in the comments below!
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