New Releases: October 24th-30th, 2019

With Atelier Ryza, Super Monkey Ball, Disgaea 4, and The Outer Worlds all releasing this week, bank accounts are expected to make a beating. Beyond these heavy hitters, there are also a number of smaller gems from a compilation of Aladdin and The Lion King to the startlingly addictive Door Kickers: Action Squad. Oh, there’s also a Call of Duty game, if that’s your thing.

Header image: Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout, PS4, Switch, PC

These titles are mentioned by a contributor.

PlayStation 4
Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout (physical and digital, $59.99)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (physical and digital, $59.99)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Digital Operator Edition ($79.99)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Digital Operator Enhanced Edition ($99.99)
Cat Quest II (digital, $14.99)
Close to the Sun (physical and digital, $29.99)
Dark Devotion (digital, $19.99)
Disney Classic Games: Aladdin and The Lion King (physical and digital, $29.99)
Dusk Diver (physical and digital, $39.99)
Harvest Moon: Mad Dash (physical and digital, $29.99)
MediEvil (digital, $29.99)
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD (physical and digital, $39.99)
The Outer Worlds (physical and digital, $59.99)

Switch
Anthill (digital, $9.99)
Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout (physical and digital, $59.99)
Cat Quest II (digital, $14.99)
Close to the Sun (physical and digital, $29.99)
Creepy Brawlers (digital, $4.99)
Dark Devotion (digital, $19.99)
Dark Veer (digital, $4.49)
Deep Space Rush (digital, $4.99)
Disgaea 4 Complete+ (physical $49.99, digital, $39.99)
Disney Classic Games: Aladdin and The Lion King (physical and digital, $29.99)
Door Kickers: Action Squad (digital, $14.99)
Dusk Diver (physical and digital, $39.99)
Earthfall (digital, $19.99)
Fear of Traffic (digital, $5.50)
Ghost Blade HD (digital, $11.99)
Harvest Moon: Mad Dash (physical and digital, $29.99)
Haunted: Halloween ’86 (digital, $9.99)
Home Sheep Home: Farmageddon Party Edition  (digital, $9.99)
Horror Pinball Bundle (digital, $8.99)
Into the Dead 2 (digital, $34.99)
Jet Kave Adventure (digital, $14.99)
Let’s Sing Country (physical and digital, $44.99)
Lethis – Path of Progress (digital, $19.99)
Mountain Rescue Simulator (digital, $TBA)
〇× LOGIC PUZZLE 1000 ! (digital, $14.00)
Party Treats (digital, $1.99)
Pixel Gladiator (digital, $3.49)
Pizza Bar Tycoon (digital, $4.99)
Resident Evil 5 (digital, $29.99)
Resident Evil 6 (digital, $29.99)
Soul Searching (digital, $7.99)
Spaceland (digital, $13.49)
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD (physical and digital, $39.99)
Tennis Go (digital, $8.99)
The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa (digital, $14.99)
The Legend of Dark Witch (digital, $5.59)
THOTH (digital, $TBA)
Ultra Off-Road 2019: Alaska (digital, $18.99)
Vampyr (physical and digital, $44.99)
Vortex Attack EX (digital, $7.89)
Winter Sports Games (digital, $24.99)
Xeno Crisis (digital, $19.99)

Wii U
Mountain Peak Battle Mess (digital, $0.84)

Xbox One
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (physical and digital, $59.99)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Digital Operator Edition ($79.99)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Digital Operator Enhanced Edition ($99.99)
Cat Quest II (digital, $14.99)
Close to the Sun (physical and digital, $29.99)
Disney Classic Games: Aladdin and The Lion King (physical and digital, $29.99)
Pixel Gladiator (digital, $3.49)
Police Chase (digital, $29.99)
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD (physical and digital, $39.99)
The Outer Worlds (physical and digital, $59.99)

PC
Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout ($53.99)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (digital, $59.99)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Digital Operator Edition ($79.99)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Digital Operator Enhanced Edition ($99.99)
Dungeons Again ($2.54)
Dusk Diver ($34.99)
Hentai Asmodeus ($1.19)
Secret Neighbor ($17.99)
School Owner ($TBA)
The Outer Worlds ($59.99)
Xeno Crisis ($19.99)

Robert’s Pick: Pitting Atelier Ryza against Disgaea 4 might be the second cruelest trick the industry has every made- right behind the establishment of the near-ubiquitous ‘season pass’. The Atelier series has consistently presented worlds I love to live in, as I take a protagonist or two on a gratifying journey toward self-actualization. Not only is the expedition really damn rewarding, but the setting where social harmony and goodwill are the norm, are thoroughly enjoyable places to spend hours. With Ryza, the themes of camaraderie and finding your calling return, albeit with visuals that are nothing short of sumptuous. And I’m not just talking about brown-haired, brown-eyed lead, Ms. Stout, but she is pretty cute. (I think Matt would have liked her with twin-tails)/

But I can’t overlook the appearance of NIS America’s perennial time-sink. 2003’s Disgaea: Hour of Darkness was the title that inducted me into the SRPG cult, rescuing my purposeless soul from a succession of unexceptional shooters and low-brow racers (Ok, I still enjoy the latter). This salvation is probably why I still favor the original cast, although Valvatorez’s rebellion depicted in this week’s release of Disgaea 4 Complete+ comes dangerously close.

Matt’s Pick (Editor, DigitallyDownloaded): I mean, clearly the top game this week is My Time With Dee Dee: Volume 1. Those very fine peeps at developer, DigitallyDownloaded.net, have never let me down ^_^.

But seriously, this week’s not so exciting for me. Call of Duty can take its inherent jingoism and shove it, and while The Outer Worlds looks great, the confusion that so many are having between it and The Outer Wilds led me to make a joke about playing The Otter Worlds instead and… I really just want that game now.

Disgaea 4 is really great, though as it is the Disgaea that I’ve ended up playing the most in the series my enthusiasm of that one is a little dampened by its lack of newness. All of this leaves me with Atelier Ryza, and I’m going to have to be very careful about how I pick my words here: As with all Atelier games, I love Ryza. It’s sweet, good natured comfort food. I’ll be recommending it in a heartbeat and my review score will be very high, as it always for the series.

However, Ryza is also the closest I’ve come to disliking an Atelier game. The action combat system was a mistake, with the effort to pander to a “broad” audience resulting in something shallow and far too demanding of the player. For a series that has always aimed to be thoughtful and laid-back, it comes across as a thematic flaw completely at odds with what the game is otherwise trying to achieve. Meanwhile, Ryza herself is… not for me. Atelier has always been about the pretty skirt types, and while I (and, no doubt, Gust) know that the tomboyish Ryza, with her certain… design elements, will effectively appeal to that “broad” audience, it too is a deviation from what I’ve come to love about Atelier.

With that being said, if Atelier Ryza replicates the success it had in Japan, then power to the developers. I’m certainly not going to hold it against Gust for doing something different to build a new fanbase for my favourite JRPG series.

Ryan’s Pick: The Outer Worlds definitely appears to be a very satisfying First-person Sci-Fi RPG, so I’m going to opt for that over any of the JRPGs this week. The Atelier & Disgaea series both will forever have special meaning to me, but there are some elements with The Outer Worlds that I just cannot pass up this week. First of all, Obsidian Entertainment has worked many successful RPGs – two of these being the extremely popular and famous IPs – Fallout (Fallout: New Vegas) and Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR II). I feel like they leveraged their experiences working with both games and created their own IP with some of the really fun parts of both aforementioned  games.

Being able to slow down time and perform multiple first person headshots always makes me feel like I’m in some sort of John Wu movie, so that would be the second reason why I’m choosing this game. Aside from bullet-time, the shooting mechanics in the game seem to reward you for accuracy, which is also a plus for me. The variety of weapons and ways you can engage enemies also seems to be pretty diverse, so I can’t wait to test the limits of what I can do in the game. You can also pretty much end the life of any of the characters in the game, which immediately brings back haunting memories of causing quite the stir in Megaton when I decided to open fire on the first NPC that talked to me. I guess I don’t play games like most people. So, this week I’ll be testing out “what if’s” and I really think this one is worth a try, so definitely give it a spin.