In summary
- Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete will be released on December 3, allowing progress to be transferred without additional purchases.
- Marvel Rivals will arrive on December 6, offering action with Marvel heroes in a third-person perspective.
- On December 9, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will be released as a first-person action game, facing Nazis.
The parts of the year that we used to consider dead zones for games are now just as likely to be interesting months, with companies releasing blockbuster games just when no one else is.
December, however, marks the final weeks before Christmas, and has now become the home of Geoff Keighley’s The Game Awards (with Hideo Kojima). As such, it still tends to be a fairly quiet month, with most of the big Christmas releases hitting stores in the weeks before.
So this list is shorter than usual, featuring a mobile release of an older live service game plus a remaster of a 25-year-old action game. Still, there are reasons to look forward to everything on this list.
Editor’s Note: All games on this month’s list are traditional “Web2” video games with no known Cryptocurrency or Blockchain elements. But you might still like them!
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 push into the mobile space alongside games like Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes. However, instead of managing an entire town, 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 is instead releasing Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete—and existing players can transfer their data and continue 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—no extra hooks to catch your wallet. And for early adopters, it will cost 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 games lack one crucial component: real heroes. Marvel Rivals seeks to put the “hero” in “hero game.” Following in the vein of games like Overwatch, Apex Legends, and the doomed PlayStation 5 shooter Concord, Rivals lets you choose from a variety of characters, each with unique abilities.
Options range from well-known 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, which is a land shark named Jeff. (Obviously!) Even the fun Squirrel Girl is here.
Marvel Rivals stands out in part for its third-person perspective, allowing you to see your favorite superhero on screen while you play. After the recent implosion of Concord, we have our eyes on Rivals as a game that could revolutionize the hero game genre 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 now asks you to punch, shoot, and punch Nazis as legendary archaeologist Indiana Jones. Machine Games says this is its biggest and longest game to date, with hours of cutscenes.
This is not a shooter, but is intended to be a first-person action game. Of course, there’s some shooting, but if you think about all the ways Indy took out his enemies in the movies, then you can imagine the kind of variety Machine Games promises here. This game will be released on Xbox and PC to start, but Microsoft has announced that the game will also be coming to 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 really became huge, but it was big enough to spawn a spin-off of one of its characters, the resurrected vampire Raziel. After Kain betrays Raziel, an Elder God resurrects him to collect souls for him—and to allow him a chance for revenge.
As Raziel, you could switch between the material and spectral worlds for unique navigation and puzzle-solving gameplay. The games themselves have been left largely untouched for this remaster, flaws included, with only the graphics seeing an upgrade. But more than two decades after the last installment, 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
Squeezing millennials out of their money through nostalgia is all the rage right now, and a great way to do it is to mix your favorite childhood show with your favorite childhood video game genre. When “Power Rangers” was originally on television, side-scrolling beat-em-up games were at their peak. There were arcade games like Final Fight and The Simpsons, and home games like Golden Ax and Splatterhouse.
Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind gives us the best of both worlds. Rita Repulsa has teamed up with a Robo-Rita from the future so they can stop teens with attitude from meeting each other in the first place. This game seems to match the aesthetics of those classic games perfectly, and the Power Rangers are a great team to build a beat-em-up around.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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