New Releases: November 3rd-9th, 2022

This week, God of War: Ragnarok, Sonic Frontiers, and a whole lot of horses lead the way for this week’s procession of new releases. If father-son violence or open-world running isn’t your thing, Sakura MMO 3 (pictured) arrives on Switch, which is neither massive nor multiplayer, but it sure looks cute.

PlayStation 4
Bratz: Flaunt your Fashion (physical & digital, $39.99)
Cobra Kai 2: Dojos Rising (physical & digital, $49.99)
Commandos 2 & 3 HD Remaster Double Pack (digital, $39.99)
Football Manager 2023 (digital, $49.99)
Ghost Song (digital, $TBA)
God of War: Ragnarok (physical & digital, $59.99)
Sonic Frontiers (digital, $59.99)
Super Woden GP (digital, $11.99)
WRC Generations (physical & digital, $39.99)
Yum Yum Cookstar (digital, $TBA)

PlayStation 5
Baldo: The Guardian Owls : Three Fairies Edition (physical & digital, $34.99)
Ben 10: Power Trip (physical & digital, $29.99)
Cobra Kai 2: Dojos Rising (digital, $49.99)
Construction Simulator (physical, $49.99)
God of War: Ragnarok (physical & digital, $69.99)
Horse Club Adventures 2: Hazelwood Stories (physical & digital, $29.99)
My Little Pony: A Maretime Bay Adventure (physical & digital, $19.99)
Paw Patrol Mighty Pups: Save Adventure Bay (physical & digital, $29.99)
PAW Patrol the Movie: Adventure City Calls (physical & digital, $29.99)
Sonic Frontiers (physical & digital, $59.99)
The Chant (physical & digital, $39.99)
WRC Generations (physical & digital, $39.99)

Switch
7 Days of Rose (digital, $4.99)
Aeterna Noctis (digital, $29.99)
ARK: Dinosaur Discovery (digital, $9.99)
Bratz: Flaunt your Fashion (physical & digital, $39.99)
Cobra Kai 2: Dojos Rising  (digital, $44.99, $49.79)
Dead Age: Zombie Adventure & Shooting Game (digital, $4.99)
Death end re;Quest (physical, $39.99)
Demon Throttle (physical, $29.99)
Delivery Driver – The Simulation (digital, $17.99)
Dragon Prana (digital, $13.49)
ENOH (digital, $7.99)
ET Varginha (digital, $9.99)
Ghost Song (digital, $19.99)
Golazo! 2: Soccer Cup 2022 (digital, $12.78)
Golazo! 2: Soccer Cup 2022 – Qatar International Stars (DLC, $0.99)
Grand Hike (digital, $4.99)
Harvestella (physical & digital, $59.99)
How to Say Goodbye (digital, $12.99)
It Takes Two (physical & digital, $39.99)
MADiSON (physical, $39.99)
Master Spy (digital, $9.99)
Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo (digital, $14.99)
Megadimension Neptunia VII (physical, $39.99)
Mission Commando (digital, $3.99)
My Life: Riding Stables 3 (digital, $19.99)
Oddworld: Soulstorm (digital, $49.99)
Orcen Axe (digital, $3.60)
Pilgrims (digital, $4.99)
Pirated Code: Admin Edition (digital, $10.99)
Run Box Run (digital, $4.99)
Sakura MMO 3 (digital, $9.99)
Sifu (digital, $39.99)
Sonic Frontiers (digital, $59.99)
Space Tail: Every Journey Leads Home (digital, $19.99)
Super Woden GP (digital, $11.99)
The Samurai Collection (digital, $9.99)
They Always Run (physical & digital, $29.99)
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (digital, $17.99)

Evercade
Blaze Evercade Alwa Cathedral Dual Cartridge (physical, $19.99)
Blaze Evercade C64 Cartridge 1 (physical, $19.99)

Xbox One
Bratz: Flaunt your Fashion (physical & digital, $39.99)
Cobra Kai 2: Dojos Rising (physical & digital, $49.99)
Commandos 2 & 3 HD Remaster Double Pack (digital, $39.99)
CounterAttack (digital, $14.99)
Football Manager 2023 (digital, $49.99)
Ghost Song (digital, $TBA)
Silver Nornir (digital, $14.99)
Sonic Frontiers (physical & digital, $59.99)
Super Woden GP (digital, $11.99)
Sword and Fairy: Together Forever (digital, $35.99)
Tanuki Sunset (digital, $12.74)
The Chant (physical & digital, $39.99)
WRC Generations (physical & digital, $39.99)
Yuppie Psycho: Executive Edition (digital, $16.49)

PC
A Walk With Yiayia ($TBA)
Beneath Oresa ($TBA)
Blocks Tracks Trains ($TBA)
DarkKnot ($TBA)
From Space ($TBA)
Ghost Song ($TBA)
Horse Tales: Emerald Valley Ranch ($TBA)
Malice ($TBA)
RoboCo ($TBA)
Sonic Frontiers ($59.99)
Space Tail: Every Journey Leads Home ($19.99)
The Chant ($39.99)
The Entropy Centre ($TBA)
WRC Generations ($TBA)

Rob’s Pick: Undoubtedly, God of War: Ragnarok will find an audience eager to prolong Kratos and Atreus’ violent life journey. To a lesser extent, others might mine enjoyment from Sonic Frontiers’ shift to an open world. I wish I could be one of those folks, but lately, aspirating blockbusters have left me indifferent. Too many of these big-budget titles are safe, predictable follow-ups that don’t convey innovation. Technical prowess is cool, but just like with other mediums, style alone isn’t enough to draw me in.

As such, this week’s pick of Blocks Tracks Trains might seem like it is coming from left field. After all, some might not consider it a true game. Instead, it’s a diorama creation set that lets you craft mountainous environments from voxels, before tunneling or carving out sections of the terrain. After doing that, you get to lay down rails, creating your own model railroad. Sure, it probably won’t have the refinement of a multi-million-dollar, focus-tested product, but the 1,000 hours that developer Splenbit reported poured into it shouldn’t be overlooked.

Ryan’s pick: I am going to come right out and say I missed the previous God of War game on PS4. It has been in my backlog for quite some time. I am going to partially offload some blame gacha games, but now that I have come to terms that I’m just going to save my primogems for patch 3.3, I’ve cleared some time for myself and think that this new edition to the series is a good spot to jump back in. I’ve always loved the sense of scale with the enemies in these games, so I eagerly am waiting to see what some of those encounters are like. Plus, I played the original God of War games in Japanese, so I will forever pronounce Kratos’ name in katakana like they did in the Japanese dubbed version.

It’s no longer Halloween, however the Steam game Malice caught my eye this week for having some pretty terrifying Japanese horror visuals. The subtleties of this type of horror is what makes it even scary in my opinion, with brownish dried blood, stained shoji screens, and half-played shogi games. It’s all there. Curiously, this game needs to be played coop, which in my opinion may make it slightly less frightening and more prone to levity. Whenever I’m solving puzzles I end up being quite verbal about them, so I may need to pick the right partner who can stomach the horror and my self-deprecating japes.

Matt S’ pick (editor, DigitallyDownloaded): The less I say about God of War the better.

Harvestella, however, looks like it could be a delightful thing. We’ve had an abundance of life/farming sim games that have been clearly inspired by Harvest Moon and Rune Factory in recent months. This one has the Square Enix production values and, hopefully, refinement that will make it yet another game that I absolutely love from that publisher (that’d be about five in the past four weeks – big purple patch for the house of chocobo this year).

There is a big question about whether I’ll have the time for it – or any other game – for the rest of the year, though. Football Manager’s annual iteration is landing and that does mean productivity destroying at its finest. Every year I love taking a team from the lowest levels of competition and slowly working them up to the EPL, following the highs and lows of failed trades, successful training regimens and the inevitable overspending that I indulge in (as a football manager I would be the finance team’s worst enemy). I’m assuming that nothing will be different about this year’s release. Football Manager might look like dry spreadsheets and data, but underneath that is the most perfect example of emergent storytelling we have in videogames.