Assassin's Creed Valhalla Box Art

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

Norse-themed Assassin’s Creed Valhalla brings raiding, settlement building, and more advanced RPG elements to the franchise. The game’s story centers around Eivor: a fierce viking raider and member of the Assassins, who alongside his or her clan sails from the harsh Norway in search of richer lands. Arriving on the shores of England, Eivor’s clan establishes a village that will prosper and grow as a consequence of the player’s efforts. From this settlement the Vikings can launch brutal raids against Saxon fortresses throughout the lands.

While Valhalla is a single player game, it does have some online components. For example, it is possible to create and share custom mercenaries – Jomsviking – that can then be recruited by the player’s friends and fight alongside them in their campaign.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Pre-Order Bonuses →
Destiny 2: Beyond Light Box Art

Destiny 2: Beyond Light

Destiny 2: Beyond Light is an upcoming expansion to the Destiny 2 universe. Guardians will brave Jupiter’s frozen moon of Europa and wield a new power of Stasis against the empire of Fallen. Rooted in Darkness, Stasis is based around manipulating time and opens up new subclasses and supers.

Before the release of Beyond Light, Bungie is launching a new Season of Arrivals that will span June 9 through September 21. It involves a Pyramid ship arriving above Jupiter’s moon Io and includes events and rewards to prepare for the upcoming war against the Darkness.

Destiny 2: Beyond Light is available in five editions: Standard, Standard + Season, Deluxe, Collector’s, and Stranger. Each of these comes with a bonus pre-order DLC pictured below.

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XIII Box Art

XIII

XIII is a remake of the 2003 first-person shooter based on an eponymous graphic novel. You play as an elite soldier Thirteen, who wakes up in a deserted beach without any memories but still in possession of his skills. As you set off to uncover your past, you soon learn that you played a role in the murder of the President of the United States of America.

True to its comic book heritage, XIII features a cel-shaded art style, onomatopoeia sound effects, and speech bubbles. The game’s solo campaign includes a total of 34 levels, and there is a PvP multiplayer mode as well.

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Fuser Box Art

Fuser

Fuser is an upcoming rhythm game from Harmonix, the makers of titles like Rock Band and Dance Central. Players step into the shoes of a DJ and make mixes for a virtual audience, scoring points when they add new tracks in time to the beat and play songs requested by the audience.

The game features multiple modes: Campaign Play, Freestyle Play, Multiplayer, and Social Sharing. Over 100 songs across various genres are included in Fuser, and three more are added as a pre-order bonus.

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Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin Box Art

Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin

Developed by the two-man team of Edelweiss, Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin is a cross-genre title that combines side-scrolling combat with a crafting and farming simulation. It follows a young harvest goddess Sakuna, who is banished from the celestial capital, where she lived in lazy luxury, to an untamed island teeming with demonic beasts. There, she finds her calling farming rice and bettering the lives of the mortals in the local mountain village. The game is inspired by Japanese mythology, albeit with some original twists, and features a charming cel-shaded art style.

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Yakuza: Like a Dragon Box Art

Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Yakuza: Like a Dragon is the seventh installment in Sega’s Yakuza franchise set in modern-day Japan. The game introduces a new protagonist, Ichiban Kasuga, who after taking the fall for a crime he didn’t commit, serves his time in prison and gets out expecting to be welcomed as a hero. Instead, he is shot by his patriarch and left to die. Waking up in a dumpster in the port city of Yokohama, Ichi sets out to discover the truth behind the betrayal.

Like a Dragon retains the quirky energy and over-the-top minigames the series is known and loved for. However, it does bring a major change to combat: instead of real-time brawling, it uses a RPG style turn-based system. Ichiban fights alongside up to three recruitable party members, each with their own class and abilities.

The game comes in three different editions with some nifty pre-order bonuses attached. Let’s take a look at these in order.

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Planet Coaster Box Art

Planet Coaster

In Frontier Developments’ title Planet Coaster, players build and manage an amusement park. The game offers over 700 pre-made objects across categories such as coasters, facilities, and scenery, and additional player-created objects can be downloaded from the Frontier Workshop.

Planet Coaster has been out on Steam since 2016 and is just now launching on current and next-gen Xbox and PlayStation consoles. The pre-order bonuses detailed below apply specifically to this upcoming Console Edition of the game.

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Dirt 5 Box Art

Dirt 5

Dirt 5 is the latest off-road racing game from Codemasters. Players can race rally cars, stadium super trucks, and off-road buggies in diverse environments and terrain around the globe. The weather and time of day are dynamic, making for unpredictable and different race conditions each time.

The Career Mode is said to be the biggest yet and follows the player’s rise from obscurity to infamy. The story is divided into five chapters with 9 race types and 130 events scattered around the world. The career is covered by an in-game podcast and features 20 real-world brands that will sponsor the player. This mode can also be played in split-screen with up to four players as a drop-in, drop-out experience.

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The Dark Pictures: Little Hope Box Art

The Dark Pictures: Little Hope

Little Hope is the second standalone installment in Supermassive Games’ horror game anthology The Dark Pictures. It centers around four college students and their professor, who get stranded in an abandoned town of Little Hope following a bus accident. The town is surrounded by an impenetrable fog that is filled with nightmarish apparitions.

The Dark Pictures: Little Hope can be played alone, in Shared Story mode with a friend online, and in Movie Night mode where up to five players can pass the pad to each other controlling each of the game’s characters. Much like its predecessor, Man of Medan, the upcoming game has a Curator’s Cut that enhances replayability, and early access to this mode is offered as a bonus to pre-order customers.

The Dark Pictures: Little Hope Pre-Order Bonuses →
Watch Dogs: Legion Box Art

Watch Dogs Legion

Watch Dogs Legion is an open-world action-adventure game from Ubisoft. Taking place in a dystopian near-future version of London that is swarming with surveillance drones and deportation squads, it involves recruiting ordinary people into the hacktivist group DedSec to take a stand against the authoritarian government and greedy corporations.

An ambitious system called Play as Anyone allows the player to recruit and play as any procedurally generated NPC – be they an old lady or a hulking gangster. Each recruit possesses their own unique backstory and skill set, and can be swapped between according to mission requirements.

Watch Dogs Legion Pre-Order Bonuses →
Ghostrunner Box Art

Ghostrunner

Ghostrunner is a first-person hack and slash game developed by One More Level. It is set in a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk world where the entire humanity shelters in an enormous megastructure called the Dharma Tower. The player assumes the role of a cyberninja equipped with a monomolecular katana and slices their way from the tower’s bottom to the top to confront its tyrannical Keymaster.

The game promises fast-paced combat with mechanics such as one-hit-kill, bullet time, and parkour. According to the developer, Ghostrunner is targeted at hardcore players and will test both their reflexes and problem-solving skills.

Ghostrunner Pre-Order Bonuses →
Monster Truck Championship Box Art

Monster Truck Championship

Like the name suggests, Monster Truck Championship is a monster truck simulator developed by Teyon. The game includes 25 circuits across different cities in the US and game modes such as freestyle, race, destruction, time attack, and a competitive online mode for up to eight players.

The 18 vehicles in the game can be fine-tuned to the player’s liking, and over 50 customization elements can be used to improve performance and style.

Monster Truck Championship Pre-Order Bonuses →
FIFA 21 Box Art

FIFA 21

FIFA 21 is the latest entry in EA Sports’ popular soccer game series. It includes 30 official leagues, 700 teams, and 17,000 players, and offers more ways to play in the streets and the stadium with the new Volta Squads and enhanced Career Mode. Players can also join forces with a friend in the new FUT Co-Op and play Squad Battles and Division Rivals cooperatively.

FIFA 21 will be available on the next-gen consoles with a plethora of improvements thanks to the more powerful hardware: haptic feedback, near-instant load times, dynamic lighting, lifelike animations, and spatial audio.

FIFA 21 is now available on GamerSaloon – Where Gamers Play for Real Money.

FIFA 21 Pre-Order Bonuses →
RIDE 4 Box Art

RIDE 4

RIDE 4 is an upcoming motorcycle racing game from Italian developer Milestone. The game features 176 officially licensed bikes and 31 tracks from around the world reproduced using CAD data and 3D scanning.

The redesigned Career Mode allows the player to choose a region to start in and prove themselves across select tracks in the American, European, or Asian League. There’s also a new Affinity system where manufacturers will call on the player to collaborate as an official tester and reward them with exclusive gear. In addition to single-player, RIDE 4 can also be played online with up to 12 players in a race.

RIDE 4 Pre-Order Bonuses →
Star Wars: Squadrons Box Art

Star Wars: Squadrons

As one might guess from its title, EA’s latest Star Wars game focuses on ship combat. Set after Return of the Jedi, it allows the player to side with either the Empire of the New Republic, strap into iconic X-wings and TIE fighters, and take part in frenetic dogfights, both in single-player campaign and 5v5 multiplayer. Star Wars: Squadrons can be played traditionally or in VR on PC and PS4 with cross-play support.

The starfighters can be customized with components such as weapons, hull, engines, and cosmetic items as the player rises through the ranks. Pre-ordering the game nets some of these items as a free bonus.

Star Wars: Squadrons Pre-Order Bonuses →
The Walking Dead: Onslaught Box Art

The Walking Dead: Onslaught

The Walking Dead: Onslaught is a survival shooter developed by Survios for PSVR and PC VR systems (Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Valve Index). Based on AMC’s hit TV show, the game features an original story that slots in between the show’s seasons eight and nine.

Onslaught is purely a single-player title and involves scavenging for supplies, rebuilding the settlement of Alexandria, upgrading character stats and weapons, and, of course, fending off walkers. The player will have to deal with as many as 30 walkers on the screen and eliminate them using a variety of ranged and melee weapons, with the damage viscerally depicted by the developer’s touted “progressive dismemberment” system.

The Walking Dead: Onslaught Pre-Order Bonuses →
Port Royale 4 Box Art

Port Royale 4

Port Royale 4 is a trading and city-building sim set in 17th-century Caribbean. The player takes control of a small colony and grows it into a bustling city by developing production chains, creating trade routes across the sea, battling fleets of rival nations, and fending off pirates.

In a departure from the previous installments, PR4 features turn-based naval battles. The player may choose to represent England, France, Spain, or the Netherlands, each providing different benefits and gameplay styles. The game includes over 60 cities, 50 different buildings, and 18 historically authentic ship types.

Port Royale 4 Pre-Order Bonuses →
Mafia: Definitive Edition Box Art

Mafia: Definitive Edition

Mafia: Definitive Edition is a ground-up remake of the 2002 title Mafia that went on to spawn a popular trilogy. Taking place in a fictional city of Lost Heaven during the Prohibition era, the game follows Tommy Angelo, a hard-working cabbie who becomes involved with the Salieri crime family.

The game can be purchased as a standalone for $39.99 or as a part of the Mafia: Trilogy bundle for $59.99. The latter also contains Mafia II: Definitive Edition and Mafia III: Definitive Edition, both of which include all previously released story DLC and bonus packs.

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Serious Sam 4 Box Art
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    Sep 24, 2020

Serious Sam 4

Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass is an old-school first-person shooter developed by Croteam and published by Devolver Digital. Timeline-wise it is a prequel to the previous Serious Sam games and involves the Earth Defense Force led by Sam “Serious” Stone blowing Mental’s hordes to bits.

The developers promise an explosive arsenal of weapons, new and returning alien invaders, and thousands of enemies on screen via something called the Legion System. The game can be played solo or in a four-player online co-op.

Serious Sam 4 Pre-Order Bonuses →
WWE 2K Battlegrounds Box Art

WWE 2K Battlegrounds

While there won’t be a mainline WWE 2K installment in 2020, the company is instead releasing WWE 2K Battlegrounds: an arcade-focused wrestling experience with over-the-top action set to the background of outlandish environments.

The game’s modes include Exhibition matches (with online and local multiplayer), a solo Campaign whose story is told through original comic strips, the last-man-standing mode King of the Battleground, and Online tournaments. Over 70 wrestlers are included at launch and more will be available as DLC, one of them as a pre-order bonus.

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