To the best of my recollection, February hasn't always been one of the biggest months for game releases, but the industry's habit of delaying games from the holiday season to the start of the next year has turned it into a magnet for big games that needed "extra time for polish." And boy is February 2025 stacked.
The last-minute delay of Assassin's Creed Shadows just added another big game to a month that was already spilling over. Here's what I'm talking about:
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 — February 11
- Civilization 7 — February 11
- Assassin's Creed Shadows — February 14
- Avowed — February 18
- Monster Hunter Wilds — February 27
- Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii — February 27
Assassin's Creed Shadows, Avowed, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 are all in February because of delays. The others might've picked early 2025 in part to avoid those formerly 2024 games, but as happens so often now, that didn't work out.
It sure is a lot of big action RPGs—the kinds of games that can consume hundreds of hours—to release in one month. Civilization 7 bucks the RPG trend, but it's the series most known for eating up hours. It's like a ShamWow but instead of spilled beer it absorbs your time remaining on Earth.
Even worse, these games might all be good. Phil has played Avowed, and says Obsidian shouldn't shy away from comparisons to Skyrim. I've played Civilization 7, and its changes are going to be controversial, but I like that Firaxis isn't playing it safe 30 years in. Fraser had positive things to say about Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, which he called "larger, confident and extremely tactile." Monster Hunter Wilds is one of the PC Gamer team's most anticipated games, and was the star of this year's Gamescom, Mollie said. And as for the Yakuza game, I'm very certain that a few of us at PC Gamer are down for 'Yakuza but it's a pirate adventure.'
The just-delayed Assassin's Creed Shadows is looking decent, too: We haven't been able to play it yet, but Morgan liked what he saw back in June, saying that it's got the best-looking Assassin's Creed combat in a long while, as well as the same attention to stealth play we saw in Assassin's Creed Mirage.
These games do at least all have distinct vibes—Kingdom Come is real medieval grognard stuff, which isn't Avowed's energy at all, for instance—so maybe it won't be too hard for any given person to decide which they'll play. I do wonder if Assassin's Creed Shadows benefits from going up against these other time-sinks, although the delay does get it out of the way of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which is out October 31. That is, unless it's also delayed to February. (Sorry Dragon Age fans: knock on wood, knock on wood.)
