This week’s new games include a new adventure for fiction’s greatest archeologist, a horror game starring a guy in an old-fangled deep sea diver suit, and, oh yeah, one of the most anticipated releases of the year. Here’s whatEndless Mode will be playing this week.
Hollow Knight Silksong
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2, Switch, PC Release Date: September 4
Yeah, they turned the meme into a game. Anything can be a game these days, apparently. Here’s where I admit that the original Hollow Knight was pretty okay. Like, just that. I am a Metroid man from early days, NES silver box vintage, tussling with the hand-written passwords and everything, and so my particular fondness for this type of game runs deep and true. And although Hollow Knight was a fine game, it never struck me as one of the better examples of the form during the great ‘Troid-like flowering of the last decade. And so when its long-gestating sequel took on a life of its own as some kind of meme I assumed it was silly internet yuks more than legit anticipation, the kind of quizzical pseudo-hype that tends to evaporate once it’s time to actually lay some money down. I still half-expect Silksong’s sales to underperform expectations in the way meme movies like Snakes on a Plane and Cocaine Bear did, but the fact that it’s coming in at a $20 price point means it’ll be cheap enough that even the people who only care about it as a meme might actually pay to check it out. We’ll still be checking it out here at Endless Mode, even without an official review, but the Silksong dialogue has become so fully divorced from any actual game with that name that the phenomenon has frankly become a drag to talk about. At this point Silksong is a thing that’s going to happen and be commented on by everybody, even people who don’t care either way whatsoever, and then within a few days almost everybody will have moved on and already started forgetting about the whole damn thing. It’s Kohoutek in game form, but hopefully, for the sake of the true fans, it fares better than that comet. We’ll find out soon.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Order of Giants
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC Release Date: September 4
Last year’s great Indy adventure gets a story expansion this week with The Order of Giants, which is set in the game’s Vatican City section and focuses on the race of bigguns that includes the base game’s Locus—who was portrayed by the late Tony Todd. Based on the trailer, there seems to be a creepy cult of giant-worshippers hanging out down below the Pope’s home, and presumably Indiana Jones will have to punch them all into unconsciousness while “researching” their biz. We loved The Great Circle here at Endless Mode—Indy’s particular brand of Nazi-punching swashbuckling is a perfect fit for the cinematic action Machine Games is known for—and there’s no reason to think this new DLC won’t preserve some of that game’s spark.
Cronos: The New Dawn
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2, PC Release Date: September 5
No lie: my anticipation for Cronos: The New Dawn took a nosedive about 50 seconds into that trailer, when it became obvious that you don’t actually play this creepy spooky horror chiller as a cat. Talk about a bait-and-switch! At least the thing you do play as looks pretty neat in its own right—some kind of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea-style deep sea diver-looking guy, but whose dome helm protects from the messed up environment of this earthly frightfest instead of the bottom of the ocean. Honestly this kind of game isn’t my own personal bag but if our review (from Elijah Gonzalez) is positive enough, I’ll make some time for it.
This Week’s Other New Games
Hirogami September 3 PlayStation 5
Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hell September 3 PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Hell Is Us September 4 PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Jetrunner September 4 PC
Kejora September 4 PC
Moros Protocol September 4 PC
Void Crew September 4 PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots September 5 PlayStation 5, Switch, PC
NBA 2K6 September 5 PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2, Switch, PC