Talking Time curates December games: What are you anticipating? What's worth checking out?

[dosboot]

A thread for examining the new games of December! Share your personal picks, interesting curios, and not quite there possibles...

Did you discover some small game that not everyone knows about?
Share that and let us know what it is about!

Already know a thing or two that interests you?
Make a list of your interests and/or possibles!

Don't know what's so great about an upcoming game you keep hearing about?
Ask here!

Don't follow gaming news that closely and just want to passively see what BigGames™ people care about?
This is the place!

~

Thread concept:
The basic idea is to list new games that you are interested in, as well as games you are potentially curious about or want to give wider attention to. You can briefly describe them or ask other people to help fill you in. The hope is that regular threads like these can act as a collective filter/discovery mechanism to help people decide what is worth checking out.

"New games" means any new title that is being released or ported this month in any capacity (not "backlogs/what you are playing this month"). The angle here is sharing your anticipation and promoting game discovery (as opposed to sharing comments about a first playthrough in progress - that belongs elsewhere).

• If you want a handy list that covers most of the major upcoming games of the month, here's a few text lists of upcoming games:
  • Giant Bomb
  • Game Informer
  • Wikipedia
  
  Feel free to post other lists or list videos that you find useful.
  
  
• Final request: If you are the first person to mention a game please provide (at minimum) a short sentence description. (If it is a very big AAA release though, then don't worry about it.) This is a good convention that makes the thread more useful as a discovery mechanism, and especially helps out anyone who doesn't follow the news as closely as you.

 

[4-So]

With Advance Wars Re-Boot Camp pushed back, Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker (early access on Dec 3) and Halo Infinite (Dec 8) will make December for me. I assume neither of those need an introduction.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Shovel Knightt Pocket Dungeon is a puzzle game spinoff of Shovel Knight, and it’s more Shovel Knight, and buddy, you had me at Shovel Knight

 

[Juno]

ENDWALKER!

 

[Violentvixen]

Halo Infinite for sure. I'm a little worried that performance will be poor on the One since I don't have an X or S or whatever model so glad I get to check it out on Gamepass first!

Spiritfarer was supposed to have some DLC drop this month but haven't heard anything about that for a while.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

Dec is a big fat pass for me.

 

[YangusKhan]

Nothing is specifically on my radar until Feburary. That's... interesting.

 

[Bongo]

I'm likely to bite on Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX, coming to Switch, Windows, iOS, and Android in English on December 9. Originally released in 1997 and 1999 respectively, Tecmo's attempt to ride the Pokemon craze bandwagon was successful enough to get the series an anime, followed by a decade of sequels with diminishing sales and budgets as it receded into cult classic status. I'm pretty sure these two are the best of them.

Monster Rancher is a wild mash-up of genres. Its bones are a rock-solid slow-burning management simulator, affected by the rhythms of weekly training, seasonal tournaments, and the short lifespans of the monsters themselves, whose performance yields more opportunities and higher efficiency for their successors. In order to have more going on than Numbers Go Up, it has a unique, simple, fun RPG combat system, almost a hybrid with some aspects of fighting games, in which your proximity to the opponent determines what move you can use. The core concept and brand identity is the hundreds of different collectible monsters that you manage. Aside from the visual distinctiveness of each, the differences between them change both the tactics available to you in fights and the strategies that will be successful in long-term management.

To force the player to experiment with different approaches, but not deprive them totally of choice, these two games in particular relied on its most famous gimmick of pseudorandomly generating baby monsters from CDs inserted into the PS1. This could only work in the age of physical media, and to me it's very delightfully 90s. Nowadays, running on systems that aren't even guaranteed to accept any kind of physical media, they emulate the historical context of the original games by providing an extensive database of music CDs. I guess you just gotta use your imagination.

The mons themselves are just plain weird. In terms of the mass-marketability of the character designs, we're talking an also-ran among also-rans. Aside from the humanoid Pixie family, hardly any of these things can be called cute, and the ones you'd describe as cool are reserved only for players who've succeeded with the less immediately appealing starter monsters. There are awkward monsters, ugly monsters, geometrically abstract monsters, and a comprehensive set of hybrids of all of the above. I personally think this actually owns, but you can see how its niche status is related to the way the screaming eyeball guy Suezo lacks the charisma of, say, Pikachu.

Anyway. I got three weeks off over the holiday so I'm gonna ranch me some monsters.

 

[gogglebob]

To add to my distinguished colleague's description of Monster Rancher 1 & 2, I will also note that there was a light "dungeon explorer" minigame that unlocked as you went along that would in turn unlock a number of unusual monsters. In fact, a number of the "earnable" monster breeds require some creative problem solving... and maybe the occasional bit of allowing your poor monster to be tagged by some local youths vandalizing the neighborhood. I always appreciated how finding some of the more esoteric monsters required something more complicated than "win fights" or "walk in grass". Also: fanmail!

I completely acknowledge that a lot of my love of Monster Rancher 1 & 2 is wholly tied to it hitting me at exactly the right time in my life for a sim wherein I could spend (virtual) years breeding monsters for peak efficiency and be rewarded for owning a Van Halen CD, but I am never not going to be excited to see the Monster Rancher franchise pop up. The earliest games had an incredibly disproportionate amount of heart for "that other game with monsters where one is named Mew", and this may be the only game this month that has my attention.

 

[WildcatJF]

I wrote a post but my phone ate it when I went to get a link so here read this instead for the game I'm picking up this month: https://www.nintendolife.com/reviews/switch-eshop/clockwork-aquario

 

[Seven]

Only Danganronpa Decadence for me this month; I played the first two games on the Vita years ago and never got around to the third one due to my dying memory card so I'm looking forward to playing through the series again.

 

[lincolnic]

I just learned yesterday that Alwa's Legacy is coming to PSN later this week, probably gonna check that out. The sprites are adorable and I remember a bunch of folks here really liked it, so that's about as much of a push as I need.

 

[Violentvixen]

Spiritfarer was supposed to have some DLC drop this month but haven't heard anything about that for a while.

Coming December 13th!