Parts of the year that we used to consider dead zones for games—January and February, the doldrums of summer—are now just as likely to be hotspots, with companies releasing blockbuster games right when no one else is.
December, though, marks the last few weeks before Christmas, and has now become the home of Geoff Keighley’s The Game Awards (ft. Hideo Kojima). As such, it still tends to be a pretty quiet month, with most of the big holiday releases hitting store shelves in the weeks prior.
As such, this list is shorter than usual, and features a mobile release of a previous live-service game plus a remaster of a 25-year-old action game. Even so, there’s reason to look forward to everything on this list.
Editor’s note: All of the games on this month’s list are traditional “Web2” video games with no known crypto or blockchain elements. But you might like ’em anyway.
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete
Release Date: December 3
Platforms: Android, iOS
Released in 2017, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp was part of Nintendo’s relatively short-lived push into the mobile space alongside games like Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes. Instead of managing a whole dang town, though, you’re just managing a small camp.
Seven years later, Nintendo is retiring the game as a live-service product. Instead of trying to erase any record of it from the internet like so many publishers do, Nintendo instead is releasing Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete—and existing players can transfer over their data and continue with the same progress.
If you’ve been curious but put off by the idea of a Nintendo game with in-app purchases, then you can dive in with a one-time $20 purchase—with no additional hooks to snatch your wallet. And for early adopters, it’ll be just $10 until the end of January 2025.
Marvel Rivals
Release Date: December 6
Platforms: PC (Steam, Epic Games Store), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S
Too many hero shooters lack a crucial component: actual heroes. Marvel Rivals looks to put the “hero” in “hero shooter.” In the vein of games like Overwatch, Apex Legends, and the doomed PlayStation 5 shooter Concord, Rivals lets you pick from a variety of characters, each with unique abilities.
The options range from household names like Spider-Man, Captain America, Venom, and various X-Men mutants to lesser-known characters like Luna Snow—who first appeared in a 2018 game called Marvel Future Fight. There’s also Jeff the Land Shark, who is a land shark named Jeff. (Obviously.) Even the hilarious Squirrel Girl is here.
Marvel Rivals stands out in part for its third-person perspective, letting you see your favorite super-guy or gal on the screen while you play. After the recent implosion of Concord, our eyes are on Rivals as a game that could put the hero shooter genre on ice—or give it a second wind.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Release Date: December 9
Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X/S
After taking aim at Nazis in Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein: The New Colossus, FPS developer Machine Games is now asking you to punch, shoot, and whip Nazis in the shoes of the legendary archaeologist Indiana Jones. Machine Games says this is its biggest and longest game to date, featuring hours of cut-scenes.
This isn’t a shooter, but is instead meant to be a first-person action game. There’s some shooting, of course, but if you think about all the ways Indy dispatched his enemies in the movies, then you can imagine the kind of variety Machine Games is promising here. This game is releasing on Xbox and PC to start with, but Microsoft has announced that the game will also hit PlayStation 5 at a later date.
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1&2 Remastered
Release Date: December 10
Platforms: Switch, PC (Steam, Epic Games Store), PS5/PS4, Xbox One + Series X/S
Legacy of Kain is an old favorite from the early days of PlayStation; well-received by critics and fans alike, the series never got really huge, but it was big enough to spin-off one of its characters, the resurrected vampire Raziel. After Kain betrays Raziel, an Elder God resurrects Raziel to collect souls for him—and to allow him a chance at revenge.
As Raziel, you could shift between the material and spectral worlds for unique navigation and puzzle-solving gameplay. The games themselves have been left largely intact for this remaster, warts and all, with only the graphics seeing an update. But more than two decades after the last entry, this is sure to be a welcome release for old-school fans.
Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind
Release Date: December 10
Platforms: Switch, PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox One + Series X/S
Milking millennials of their money through nostalgia is all the rage right now, and one great way to do that is to mash up their favorite childhood show with their favorite childhood video game genre. When the “Power Rangers” were originally on television, side-scrolling beat-em-up games were all the rage. There were arcade games like the Final Fight and The Simpsons, and home games like Golden Axe and Splatterhouse.
Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind gives us the best of both worlds. Rita Repulsa has allied with Robo-Rita from the future so that they can prevent the teenagers with attitude from ever meeting in the first place. This game looks to match the aesthetic of those classic games perfectly, and the Power Rangers is a great team to build a brawler around.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
