SpellForce 3

Blockbusters
Space Hulk: Deathwing

Sony PlayStation 4
Doom VFR

Microsoft X Box One
Player Unknown Battlegrounds

PC
Spell Force 3

Nintendo Switch
Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Straight Out Of Japan
Tokyo Xanadu Ex+

To round us off for the year, it's December, generally the slowest month of the year as gamers chow down on all the big savings. I've already made a thread for Xenoblade Chronicles 2, so let's talk about some of these other games.

The biggest release of the month is PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds. It's been the multiplayer game of the year and that game is all over YouTube and Twitch. Fortunately my PC is basically a toaster at this point, so I haven't had a chance to test it out, but from what I gather the X Box One X is struggling to play the game? Considering how janky the game already is, it isn't surprising, but the third person shoot em up is ridiculous fun and it's cool that we can recognise it as a 2017 release.

I've never heard of the SpellForce series before, but I'm intrigued about the third etry. It's basically an RPG/RTS very similar to games like Ogre Battle with big gorgeous landscapes. It looks good, but I'm not sure if I would make this my entry into the isometric RPG genre.

Tokyo Xanadu Ex+ is a PS4/PC is a port of the Vita game with a few added features. The series has been around longer than most JRPGs on the market and has gone through various changes over the year. The latest appears to be aping Persona by basing it around a modern Japanese high school. Unfortunately like Xenoblade Chronicles, the game is at odds with it's JRPG cliches. I can live with a lot of the cookie cutter designs, but whenever they try and attract the 'waifu' crowd that's typically a sign I've just outgrown these games. This is one of those games I'll keep tabs on and hopefully pick up for dirt cheap on a digital sale.

There's also a Warhammer 40K FPS game which and I've never played anything Warhammer related. The closest I got was starring at a bunch of the design books at a mates place back in the day. I always appreciated the craftsmanship, but like PC RPGs it seemed like too much of a time sink.

Finally Romancing SaGa 2, one of the best 16-bit era JRPGs has made it's way to home consoles in the west. What's interesting about this is between this and Secret of Mana, Square-Enix have been on a re-release kick of late. I wonder if we'll see more of their 16 bit games that didn't make their way out west? Lord knows, there's a few games we've been deprived of for sometime and unfortunately the rom translations haven't been enough to tide us over.

A Hat in Time may be the only thing for me.