This Week’s New Games

Here's what we're excited to play this week

This Week’s New Games

This week’s new games includes the latest update to Destiny 2, an unexpected new adventure for Pac-Man, a fighting game based on a massively popular manga and anime series, and, oh yeah, Donkey Kong. Here’s what Endless Mode will be playing this week; how about you?

Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate

Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Release Date: July 15

Almost a decade after release, Destiny 2 remains proudly, defiantly, its own entire thing, pumping out new content year after year and surviving challenges from an entire cutout bin full of would-be rivals. The Edge of Fate is the ninth expansion for the game, and will directly set up the 10th expansion, Renegades, which should be out later this year. This apparently will bring Bungie’s shooter into uncharted narrative territory, as 2024’s expansion put a bow on the epic they’d been crafting since the first game’s original launch all the way back in 2014. I’m pretty sure every single thing I’d remember from Destiny 2 was vaulted long ago—I have not played it since reviewing it at launch in 2017—but our local Destineer, Moises Taveras, tells us The Edge of Fate isn’t just a major addition to the game but perhaps the most anticipated expansion in a good while now. Does that mean tomorrow will be like Christmas morning for Destiny 2 fans? I hope so: we all could use something to get excited about right now. 




Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact

this week's new games

Platforms: PlayStation 5, Switch, PC
Release Date: July 16

You don’t have to be a Hunter x Hunter fan, or even care about anime at all, to be interested in Bushiroad and Arc System Works’ new fighting game. This six-person tag fighter (in Mexico they call it a trios match) was designed by Eighting, the same studio that gave the world Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars (and it’s the same studio that made Battle Garegga, a top contender for the title of “greatest shmup of all time.”) As our resident anime and fighting game expert Elijah Gonzalez notes, “While Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact looks quite rough around the edges, the fact it’s being developed by the Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 studio Eighting means it has some real potential as a high speed, technical fighting game for genre aficionados.” Expect more from Elijah on this one soon.



Donkey Kong Bananza

this week's new games

Platform: Switch 2
Release Date: July 17

Nintendo’s first great villain gets his biggest spotlight in years as the star of the first major Switch 2 game after the console’s launch. I played a small chunk of this back in April, and really enjoyed its commitment to wanton destruction. Ol’ DK smashes his way through so much in this game, including the very ground below him, as he rampages about in a search for the elusive Banandium Gems. Pauline, the damsel he kidnapped all the way back in his original arcade game in 1981, joins him, inexplicably as a young child, giving the game an optional co-op mode. It’s made by the same team at Nintendo who gave us the tremendous Super Mario Galaxy, and some are pitching it as a kind of spiritual successor to that classic, so we’ve got every reason to be excited about it. And hey, guess what: somehow we just wrote a whole 150 words about this game without making the obvious Arrested Development joke. Restraint is a virtue, and all that.


Shadow Labyrinth

Shadow Labyrinth

Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2, Switch, PC
Release Date: July 17

Bandai Namco’s weird, dark reimagining of Pac-Man appears to hit all the notes you expect from a Metroid-style platformer: a stingy but steady drip feed of power-ups, sparse save points, and constant backtracking. Only here when you roll up into a ball you just become, y’know, Pac-Man. All those familiar genre tropes are why I’m looking forward to it, honestly: I am a lifelong sucker for exactly this kind of game, and I’m also old enough to get whatever ‘80s references they pack into this one. (Is Mappy secretly the final boss?) We’ll all find out together how well they pulled this one off when our review runs later this week. 



The Rest of This Week’s New Games

Gorn 2
July 14
Platform: PlayStation VR 2

Edens Zero
July 15
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC

Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream
July 15
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC

Neon Abyss 2 (early access)
July 17
Platform: PC

RoboCop: Rogue City—Unfinished Business
July 17
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC

The Wandering Village
July 17
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC


 
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