By Nelson Schneider - 10/31/25 at 03:23 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! With harvest season drawing to a close, in our pre-industrial civilizations, November was typically a month to take a moment to give thanks for what blessings the Earth Gods heaped upon us – or, in leaner times, to give thanks that the Earth Gods bothered to give us anything at all, so at no to offend them into making the problem long-term.
The Gaming Gods have not given us a whole lot to be thankful lately, but I suppose we should at least take the time to pick through the overturned-outhouse leavings in the event that they slipped something good in there by mistake.
Thankfully the shovelware is much tamer than last month... But there’s still something in every category of uselessness. In Licensed Swill, there’s a new ‘Spongebob’ game, a new ‘Hello Kitty’ game, and a new ‘Terminator’ game. In the Casual Swill category, there’s “Let’s Sing 2026,” which conveniently abuts to the Annualized Swill category, which further includes “Football Manager 26” and “Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.” Lastly, in Noteworthy Ports, the full remake of of “The House of the Dead 2,” which was a pretty awful game in its own time, made memetic only due to the abysmal voice acting in the English dub, is heading to the Nintendo Switch (not the Switch 2).
New, legitimate multi-platform releases are a lot... less... than they were last month as well, There’s a ‘Bubble Bobble’ sequel called “Sugar Dungeons,” which doesn’t look any different from normal ‘Bubble Bobble’ games. “Project Motor Racing,” which was supposed to come out last month to confuse people into thinking it had something to do with “Project Cars”... didn’t, so it’s coming this month instead. “Samurai Academy: Paws of Fury” appears to be attempting to confuse grandparents into thinking it’s a ‘Kung-Fu Panda’ game for the youngsters, as it looks exactly like the digital equivalent of Dollar Store toys that tip-toe around trademark infringement. Ubisoft (or what’s left of them) is bringing an ‘Anno’ sequel set in the year 117 during the Pax Romana. Lastly, there’s a trio of Halloween-themed horror games that didn’t quite make it to the port-a-potty in time: “Terrifier: The ARTcade Game,” “Dark Atlas: Infernum,” and “The 9th Charnel.” Oops!
In exclusives... well, it’s 100% Nintendo’s domain for November, with an exclusive Idea Factory (*gag*) Visual Novel (*dry heave*) coming to the original Switch in “Mistonia’s Hope: The Lost Delight.” The Switch 2 is faring slightly better, with two Nintendo-published titles coming out in the tale end of the launch window: “Kirby Air Riders” is a sequel to the Gamecube-era alternative Racing game, “Kirby’s Air Ride,” and is coming to the Switch 2 from Namco-Bandai instead of HAL Labs, which is... interesting. Then there’s an actually-new ‘Hyrule Warriors’ game coming to the Switch 2 from Tecmo-Koei, “Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment,” which will allegedly unlock the lore of how the Switch-era Hyrule open-world came to be.
*rasp-EFFING-berry* There’s nothing coming in November that I’m even slightly interested in. If “Age of Imprisonment” wasn’t a musou game from Tecmo-Koei, I might count it as the first game out of the requisite 5 exclusives to make buying a Switch 2 worth it, buuut... I can’t stand musou games. (I didn’t even bite on the ‘Dragon Quest Heroes’ games that are ON STEAM ALREADY!) With the obscene number of games that come out every month, it’s tragic that the ones worth getting excited about are so few and far between.
Backlog Embiggened: +0
