Bits and Bytes: Game announcements and launch dates galore

Bits and Bytes: Game announcements and launch dates galore

You may not want to get your hopes up about Suicide Squad right now

It’s been a busy week or so in the games industry, at least in terms of game announcements and release date updates. Some things are very good! Yay! Some are, uh, not so good.

We’ve been cautious with the upcoming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League game, since it’s already been delayed a couple of times. Add another one to the list: the game will now be moving from May (next month) to February 2024. That’s… a huge delay. Not only has the game faced multiple issues since it was first revealed, but it continues to face an uphill battle as gamers are turned off by the sheer mention of a game as a service.

Blasphemous 2, the sequel to the Castlevania-like that was absolutely brutal but also very very awesome, has a release date. The game was announced a year ago, but now we know when we’ll actually get our hands on it: this Summer. It’ll arrive on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam.

Devolver Digital and PastaGames have announced KarmaZoo, a new multiplayer side-scrolling platformer for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Switch, and Steam. The game’s hook is about cooperation and “doing good” in an ever-changing world that adapts to the number of players involved (up to 10). Local and online with random players sets the tone as doing good deeds in the game earns players Karma points, which can be used to better their capabilities. It’s targeting a Summer 2023 release.

Crime O’Clock, from Just For Games, has just been announced, and it looks like an interesting new pitch at crime solving. The game takes places in a huge map across five different time periods. As players investigate a crime or evidence, they must go back and forward in time to prevent or change the outcome, which ends up altering the map and opening up even more things to do in the process. It’s coming to Switch and PC on June 30ths.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk finally has a release date: August 18 for Switch and PC (and a couple of weeks later for other platforms). The game is a spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio and we’re super excited for how it captures nostalgia in a new way. NEWstalgia. I’m copyrighting that.

Pokemon Go is still massive, and so far no similar game has managed to crack the popularity, not even Harry Potter. However, Capcom would sure like to try. They’re partnering with Niantic to develop Monster Hunter NOW, which will bring the popular monster battling franchise to mobile devices in a new way. Players will run around the real world and defeat some AR dragons, baby! Maybe this will last? Who knows! It’s coming September 2023, so there’s not much of a wait to find out.

The Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection is scheduled to land on Switch and Steam on June 23rd, so Atlus is dropping a new gameplay trailer to let us know how the game is shaping up. The trailer shows content from all three games, including “party customization, mapmaking, battles, exploration and more.”

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the next asymmetric multiplayer game from Gun and Sumo Digital, has a release date: August 18, 2023. *AND* it’s making its way to Game Pass on Day 1, so hopefully you won’t need to lose time trying to figure out which platform your friends are on.

Flashback 2, the sequel to the 1992 classic cinematic platformer, has announced a release date. The game is now finally scheduled to arrive in November 2023 for all platforms (Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, PC/Steam) and take the DNA of the game into three dimensions.

Immortals of Aveum, from EA Originals and developer Ascendant Studios, has been revealed. The game is a fantasy-based first person (magic) shooter that will have players learn three types of spells and chain them together as they work to bring a world off of the brink of destruction. It’s coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC platforms on July 20th.