Welcome to a new year, there are too many games
Plus Donkey Kong re-returns, Masters of Crime, and console anniversaries of 2025.
Hello there! Welcome back to Press Any Button for the start of our fourth year of newslettering. I know we picked up a few stray subs over the holidays, so for the benefit of anyone new this is a weekly missive where two professional games writers fill you in on what we’ve been playing and thinking about, plus what’s coming up on our calendars and in the major game subscription services. We focus less on what’s happening on the business and PR side and more on the actual games, including our respective penchants for tabletop and retro play.
We’ve moved to a Monday publish this year but our format remains the same. As always, feel free to get in touch with any feedback or subjects you’d like to see more or less of. Let’s get to it!
Okay, that’s about enough announcements for H1
By Tim
With last week’s Microsoft’s Developer Direct filling in some key 2025 release dates, the calendar is really shaping up for the first half of the year. Especially considering a new Nintendo console is probably going to be released in there somewhere. So looking over the next few months, I thought I’d dig out some highlights to look forward to.
February
It’s no exaggeration to say every week next month will be packed with games. For me, the most exciting one is Avowed, Obsidian’s smaller-scale Oblivion-like set in the Pillars of Eternity universe. It’s giving high fantasy Outer Worlds.
Elsewhere from the larger publishers there’s gritty historical RPG Kingdom Come Deliverance II, massive 4x strategy sequel Civilization VII, Capcom’s creature-slaughtering phenomenon Monster Hunter Wilds and the gleeful lunacy of Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii.
On the indie side there’s the Guitar Hero battles of Rift of the NecroDancer, the silly romance sandbox of Date Everything, and the narrative mystery of Lost Records (from the creators of Life is Strange). Millenial Tomb Raider entries Last Revelation, Chronicles and Angel of Darkness are also being remastered in a trilogy package. They’re the least of the series’ main games, but also the most in need of some TLC to make them accessible in 2025, so I’m keen to revisit.
March
My pick here is Split Fiction, Hazelight’s follow-up to It Takes Two, and another innovative two-player split screen adventure. But I’ll also be putting a lot of time aside for Assassin’s Creed Shadows; I generally only play a dozen hours of these games and then don’t go back, but I have high hopes here for ninja reasons. From Sega there’s also management sim Two Point Museum, and from Nintendo a port of Xenoblade Chronicles X.
Otherwise there’s also interesting-looking British action survival Atomfall from the Sniper Elite people, Hobbit sim Tales of the Shire, and a beautiful cozy narrative slow life with tea from a new team that includes the creator of Stanley Parable and the co-creator of Gone Home.
April
A double feature from Xbox Game Studios here with South of Midnight (pictured), a dark fantasy adventure inspired by folklore from America’s deep south, and Clair Obscure: Expedition 33, an old-school-inspired turn-based RPG. Both have killer narrative hooks and great looks, so it should be a good month for Game Pass.
May
The only one on the docket here so far is Doom: The Dark Ages, which introduces medieval armaments including a chainsaw shield that can be used to block, parry or throw Captain America style. I wasn’t the biggest fan of all the acrobatics in Doom Eternal, so it’s nice to see some old-fashioned strafing-and-shooting here.
What to play
If you’re up for some classic RPGs on your phone (or Apple TV), Apple Arcade has been adding some bangers from the Square Enix back catalogue. There’s the original Final Fantasy (pixel remaster version), Final Fantasy IV and The After Years (based on the Nintendo DS) and Trials of Mana (pictured, a full 3D remake of the Japan-only Secrets of Mana sequel Seiken Densetsu 3).
This week brings some new releases to Game Pass Ultimate, including swords and spells action adventure Eternal Strands, defensive roguelite Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap, precision shooter Sniper Elite Resistance and hugely anticipated RPG sequel Citizen Sleeper 2. Already up on the service in case you missed them earlier this month are EA Sports UFC 5, Lonely Mountain: Snow Riders and Starbound. On Game Pass Standard there have been a bunch of additions (including quite a few that have moved down from Ultimate), but the best of the bunch are horror metroidvania Carrion, Capcom's bizarre tower defence Kunitsu-Gami, bird-spotter Flock and crime puzzler The Case of the Golden Idol.
PlayStation Plus subscribers can download two great games, and one game you might be curious about since it's practically free, with Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered, The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
The notable new additions to the PS Plus Extra catalogue include the incredible God of War Ragnarok, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, Atlas Fallen: Reign Of Sand and the original Citizen Sleeper. If you’re paying extra for Deluxe you also get the PS2’s Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings, as well as the PS1’s MediEvil 2.
Donkey Kong Country Returns returns again, in HD
By Alice
I am a sucker for a 2D platformer. Put a little animated guy in peril and make him run to the right on a Nintendo console, and I’m there. I first reviewed Donkey Kong Country Returns on the Wii approximately 1000 years ago, and I really enjoyed it then, and luckily it turns out that I still really enjoy it now. The game is back, with Nintendo remastering it in HD for the Switch and adding modern and original modes to meet current play style expectations for people who want more lighthearted fun and less of a challenge. As always with these games, the story doesn’t make sense (and has horrific implications) if you think about it.
Donkey Kong Country Returns HD really has all the important elements I would want in a video game: couch co-op, adorable creatures, platforming, crotchety birds that will kill you if you get too close, food-based currency and fun levels with interesting themes.
It does somewhat emphasise that Donkey Kong hasn’t starred in a new game since Mario vs Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars, or in his own title since Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze in 2014. It also fits into Nintendo’s current trend of rereleasing games that are over a decade old and charging full price. Those hoping for a bunch of never-seen-before levels will be disappointed; the game looks prettier, and it incorporates the extra levels and controls from the 3DS version, but they haven’t even given Malibu Stacy a new hat here.
But that doesn’t change the fact that Donkey Kong Country Returns HD is the perfect school holiday game for kids and their aging millennial parents, who want to teach them about the classics.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
I am also a sucker for a heist movie. I long to go to another murder mystery dinner party. So, when I had the opportunity to play Masters of Crime: Shadows with my board game buddies, I was thrilled. The Masters of Crime series is a set of role-playing board games where you have to solve puzzles, find clues and make choices to solve a murder, go on a heist, find a missing person, etc. Shadows is the heist one, where you spend the first half of the game assembling a crack team of thieves and casing a museum, and the second half finding out if you made the right choices and actually getting down to the stealing.
The game isn’t just contained to what’s in the box, but there are addresses you need to email, websites to visit, and other clues on the cards that suggest they should be googled (and you should definitely Google them even if you’re already familiar with what you’re searching for, because the clue you’re looking for might not be the one you expect).
It does take a little while to get the hang of it if you haven’t played a game like this before, we all certainly started off more cautious than we perhaps needed to be, which meant the first half of the game took too long. The second half was the most fun, and went by very quickly. My favourite part was looking up the manual to a security system online as one of the members of our group described what they were seeing.
The ending was satisfying, the difficulty level felt about right for a Sunday afternoon, and I’m now really keen to check out the rest of the collection. I’ve already got Rapture in the cupboard and a date set to play it.
All up the experience took around four hours, but it’s something you could really only play once (unless you really screwed up the first time). It’s a great experience, but at an RRP of $50, it’s something you’d want to reset and trade afterwards.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
Ordinarily at the end of each month I’d recap the games that have just celebrated major anniversaries. But because this is a brand new year, and because almost nothing releases in January, (happy 20th birthday to the notable exception Resident Evil 4!), I’m instead looking at which consoles and portables are due to cross a milestone in 2025.
1980, 45 years ago: Nintendo released the first batch of its iconic Game & Watch handhelds, which included Ball, Flagman, Vermin, Fire and Judge. No d-pads yet in this initial series, just either two or four red rubber buttons.
1985, 40 years ago: Sega released the Mark III. This beautiful 8-bit system would eventually be remodelled (and uglified) as the Master System for release outside of Japan. Nintendo’s exclusivity mandate made it very difficult for the Mark III to get going.
1990, 35 years ago: Nintendo released the Super Famicom (which would be remodelled as the Super Nintendo), in Japan, unleashing Yoshi on an unsuspecting world. Sega released the Game Gear handheld, and SNK the Neo Geo AES.
1995, 30 years ago: Nintendo released the Virtual Boy, a semi-portable VR migraine-maker object. It would be discontinued in Japan the very same year, though it made it to 1996 in the United States.
2000, 25 years ago: Sony released the PlayStation 2, which remains the best-selling home console of all time. Bandai released the WonderSwan Color handheld, which notably launched with a new port of the original Final Fantasy.
2005, 20 years ago: Microsoft released the Xbox 360, getting a jump on Nintendo and Sony’s new home consoles. Nintendo released the Game Boy Micro, the final form of the Game Boy Advance.
2010, 15 years ago: No major consoles were released, but we did see both the PlayStation Move and Xbox Kinect. Sony and Microsoft were clearly caught off-guard by the success of the Wii, and it took five years to develop their own body-moving solutions.