Happy 2025, gamer!

Meck here, and after a week (and a day) of break, Previously On Gamer Matters newsletter is back. It’s going to be another whole year of new games and the crew are back on assignments.

January means a lot of hardware news from CES (why is PlayStation announcing movies and shows around this time? I have no idea). It’s why this issue didn’t go up yesterday, so many news were just breaking out of Las Vegas! Plus, one major story just dropped today so it all works out.

New Games Of January 2025

But there are new game releases this month. Here’s what’s on the crew’s radar (and probably yours too):

• January 10 — Freedom Wars Remastered: The PlayStation Vita exclusive gets ported to consoles, by a different publisher

• January 14 — Hyper Light Breaker (Early Access): Heart Machines’ successor to Hyper Light Drifter is in now in 3D and has co-op play

• January 16 — Assetto Corsa Evo (Early Access): This new entry to the sim racer promises better physics, dynamic weather and time and the wildest feature of them all: an open world map, a first for a sim-focused racer

• January 17 — Dynasty Warriors Origins: It’s coming out this soon?!?! Omega Force’s 1v1000 hack-and-slash gets some big production budget this time to accompany this Three Kingdoms spectacle

• January 23 — Tokyo Xtreme Racer (2025) (Early Access): The underrated cult-hit racing game that went dormant for a console generation is back, and now more people will discover car races are cool when they are “spirit battles” where each racer has a life gauge like it’s a fighting game

• January 28 — Eternal Strands: This action-RPG is has a bit of Shadow Of The Colossus but it’s the physics-based combat system that really sounds intriguing, aside from the devs comprised of industry veterans

• January 31— Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector: The follow-up to the fantastic, immersive slice-of-life RPG. Think Disco Elysium but the skill checks are based on dice rolls plus stat numbers, in a somber sci-fi setting. Can the sequel pass the original’s high bar?

The NEWS From Last Week

Here’s what we have for this week:

• The Gamer Malaya and Gamer Matters Game Of The Year Awards 2024 has concluded. Here’s the full list of winners. You probably know what our GOTY is already.

• Danial has his list of personal picks, the games he enjoyed in 2024.

• And this one’s mine.

• Our friends at Kakuchopurei has a made an appreciation post for the Southeast Asian games released in 2024, which includes comments from outlets and peers in the local game industry scene.

• And this is the important news that just dropped. People Make Games just released a new video. A stark reminder of how terrible the work conditions can be in the games industry. But the example here isn’t far from home. We need to do better and not allow any of this to happen.

And you’re all caught up! As mentioned, CES is kicking off so there’s plenty of news coming to the site. And there will be at least one preview of an upcoming game…

Oh and help us improve the newsletter by filling this form. Your feedback will help up us grow and improve, together.

Play games and have fun,

—Meck and the Gamer Matters Team