What exactly is The Alters? It's a question I've been itching to get answers to ever since Frostpunk and This War Of Mine developers 11 bit Studios first announced their strange new game at notE3 last year. Until now, all we've had to go on is a cryptic CG announcement trailer that showed a gaggle of identical clone-looking men in bright pink medical gowns, all of whom seemingly live inside a giant wheel full of shipping containers. It didn't really tell us anything about what the game actually is, or how it plays, and we've heard precious little about it since.
Happily, I've now seen about an hour of The Alters in action at this year's Gamescom, and first impressions are very promising. This is indeed a game about sort-of clones living in a big wheely shipping container, but these containers are actually modules you'll be building in XCOM/Fallout Shelter-style chunks to advance the capabilities of your big wheel base as you work to escape the broiling heatdeath that's slowly enveloping the planet. You'll also be venturing out onto the planet's surface to gather resources, all while managing your crew of clo- sorry, alternate selves - as you assign their daily work tasks, and then there's the fact that, well, you're all chuffing different versions of the same person and the literal embodiment of what your life might have been like if you'd done X instead of Y, or Y instead of Z. It's a fascinating blend of ideas, and if 11 bit can stick the landing, I reckon it could end up being something really quite special. Here's everything I learned.
]]>In the frozen hellscape of Frostpunk, you eked out your existence in hours and days, clinging to your heat- and life-giving generator at the centre of your fledgling city like there was literally no tomorrow. In 11 bit Studio's forthcoming sequel, Frostpunk 2, the apocalypse is yesterday's news. Now you're dealing with "what happens when you survive the un-survivable," as the game's co-director and design director Jakub Stokalski neatly puts it when I sit down for a hands off presentation at this year's Gamescom. And to do this, Frostpunk 2 is going big, measuring its time not in days, but weeks, months and even years.
"If we want to show the evolution of societies and different utopias/dystopias, we need breathing room," says Stokalski. "And this breathing room really is in the scale, both in the physical sense but also in the sense of time. It's difficult to show meaningful social change in the space of a month, so the time ticks now in weeks and months, and in a long playthrough you'll get up into years, so you can see the consequences of your choices."
]]>Paradox Interactive and new indie team C-Prompt have announced their debut 4X strategy game Millennia, which I got to play for an hour at this year's Gamescom. With development being led by former Irrational Games co-founder Robert Fermier and Age Of Empires II lead designer Ian M Fischer, Millennia will see you attempting that classic quad of Xs across ten distinct historical ages, starting in the Stone Age before eventually ending up in a "post-modern future", designer Ben Friedman tells me.
The twist here, however, is that you've also got what C-Prompt are calling 'Variant Ages', which let you bend the timeline to your will. Some of these variants are more historical in nature, such as an Age Of Monuments where everyone's building Egyptian pyramids, Friedman explains, while others are more fantastical, with the words steampunk, alchemy and space alien invasions all mentioned in the same sentence. I had a good time with it during my demo, but the real delight was seeing my home army of Kyoto go and invade neighbouring settlement Telford, before going on to conquer Rome - as you do. So if historical melting pots are your kind of 4X jam, read on.
]]>Riot Forge have been quietly building up quite the catalogue of League Of Legends side story games over the last couple of years. In November 2021, they launched the double whammy of rhythm runner Hextech Mayhem and turn-based RPG Ruined King, and this year alone we've already had action RPG The Mageseeker and narrative platformer Conv/rgence. As you can probably tell, they're all focused on different genres, different League heroes, and have all come from different developers - and soon they'll be joined by Song Of Nunu, the next game from Rime developers Tequila Works.
I got to play a very small slice of it at Gamescom last month, and yep, if you've been craving another low stakes adventure that's all but guaranteed to wrench at your heartstrings and wibble your tear ducts, Song Of Nunu will almost certainly fill that Rime-shaped hole in your life when it comes to PC on November 1st.
]]>"Usually, when a player is going through a strategy game, they figure out how things work by trial and error," Total War: Pharaoh's game director Todor Nikolov tells me at this year's Gamescom. "And once they do, they feel the urge to start a brand-new campaign because they've already figured out that portion of the gameplay."
Sitting across the table, these words ring frighteningly true for me. Unbeknownst to Nikolov, he has just described the exact experience I had playing the 50-turn campaign preview for Pharaoh a week earlier to an absolute tee. Unlike the far more knowledgeable brain of frequent RPS contributor Nic Reuben, I am a complete babe in arms when it comes to the Total War juggernaut machine, and it took me attempting to play two other games in the series (Three Kingdoms and Troy) and several restarts in Pharaoh itself before I felt just about confident that I (very vaguely) knew what I was doing. At the time, I thought, 'Man alive, how is Total War still so rubbish at teaching players how it works?' But when I speak to Nikolov a week later, he has some very welcome news for me: there's going to be a dedicated tutorial campaign where players can (hopefully) find their feet. Music to my ears.
]]>Confession time: if you've been keeping up to date with Colossal Order's feature highlight video series for Cities: Skylines 2 over the last couple of months, you're probably not going to learn a huge amount from my experience of playing it at Gamescom a couple of weeks ago. I spent most of my hour-long demo session steadily working my way through its extensive tutorial, as I have not, in fact, played Cities: Skylines before now - although I can at least confirm that its tutorial is very newbie-friendly, and that I now feel more prepared to give it a go properly when it comes out in full on October 24th.
But the thing that really impressed me was just the sheer scope of its playable spaces. We've known since the end of July that its maps are roughly 5x bigger than those in the first game, and when I saw Colossal Order's Maps & Themes video, I thought, 'Yes, those sure look enormous!' But actually seeing them in person really put things into perspective for me, especially when I tried zooming the camera out and it just kept going and going and going and…
]]>Lightyear Frontier is not the kind of game that fits neatly into a 30-minute Gamescom demo. There's so much to see and do in this laidback farming mech sim that by the time my demo ends, I barely feel like I've scratched the surface of it (and that's even with the assistance of some handy secret dev cheats to show me some of the structures and features they've got planned later on in the game). Rather, this is a game that's designed to unfurl slowly, bit by bit, over the course of several hours, and before we begin, developer Frame Break's CEO Joakim Hedström tells me they've shortened the game's opening sequence for this particular demo, just so they can get players right into the thick of things as quickly as possible.
But even on this whistlestop tour, there's plenty to dig into and delight in here - not least its gloriously bright and inviting colour palette (take that, Todd). I got to sample its farming, its wonderfully weighty mech exploration, and even indulge in a little bit of, well, powerwashing. Yep, PowerWash Simulator's influence was well and truly felt at this year's Gamescom, and I'm so very here for it.
]]>As someone with a general aversion to online competitive modes in games, I'm always grateful when someone, for once, especially in this age of endlessly bland multiplayer experiments, thinks of the solitary solo player. I'm especially grateful when us single player preferers get a knowing nod of acknowledgement in fighting games, too, which are so naturally geared toward pitting your skills against other human beings that anything involving playing against the AI is often either an afterthought or so threadbare that you can't help but feel like you're missing the point.
But that's still, for my sins, how I like to consume fighting games when I occasionally play them - which isn't often, I'll admit, for exactly the reasons described above - and so when I sat down for my Mortal Kombat 1 demo session at Gamescom this year, I was pleased to see not just a very slick story mode in attendance, but also a new single player challenge mode called Invasions that publishers Warner Bros described as "a giant interactive board game" that "lent into action RPG" territory. Its numerous node-based missions looked substantial based on what I played, and the idea of applying a seasonal service model to it, endlessly rotating in new locations and missions every so often - a whole different Invasion, so to speak - is actually something I'd be very much behind. It, that is, I was a) good at Mortal Kombat, and b) the missions I played during my demo weren't quite so… err… boring.
]]>Having spent around 45 minutes in a three-player Payday 3 sesh at this year's Gamescom, I can confirm it's very… Payday. You slap on some masks, choose your loadout, then get to robbing banks or stealing things from crates. Often, it ends in absolute chaos as you mow through waves of coppers and rush to a getaway van. The number three might not signal a sweeping change to the formula, then, but that's arguably a good thing. It's a better-looking version of its predecessors that doesn't lose sight of the co-op silliness.
]]>I wasn't too hot on Lies Of P when I played its first demo way back when. I felt it was so close, too close, to Bloodborne in everything from the cadence of the Chalamet puppet's jog, to the "duhhnng" noise of pickups, and the gothic sheen of its streets. At the time I thought it was a bit of a duff pretender, honestly.
But a good chunk of time with it at this year's Gamescom has swivelled my head back in its direction. Having clacked through some dingy streets, fired blue gloop from my arm, and fought the literal King Of Puppets, I've come to realise it has the potential to be a magnificent Soulslike in its own right.
]]>Woah! Last week Gamescom 2023 happened, the biggest consumer event for video games in the woooooooorld! The Electronic Wireless Show podcast gives you our definitive take on what was hot and what was not from Geoffcom's Opening Night Live, and points you towards some of the previews and interviews our crack team has from the show floor. This week there's plenty to talk about re. What We've Been Playing as well, because James has been cramming in a bunch of small games. Fun!
]]>Lord Of The Rings: Return To Moria is a survival game that certainly shares something in common with both Valheim and Deep Rock Galactic: you and a few buds sink pits and set out on expeditions to mine ore, batter monsters, and push further into the darkness. Having watched its game director Jon-Paul Dumont steer me through a 30-minute demo, I’ve come away with the impression it’s far more than just a cheap LOTR pretender. The game strikes me as a real competitor, with well thought out story beats and crafting treats to make Moria’s restoration a hearty adventure… or, if you'd prefer, the equivalent of a Powerwash Simulator.
]]>Officially unveiled at this week's Panic Games Showcase, Arco is a triptych of revenge stories set across the deserts, plains and forests of a fantastical, South American-style landscape. It's a part of the world we don't often get to see in games, and its stunning pixel art (and tiny cute little llamas) instantly caught my eye when I got to play an early mission from it at last week's Gamescom. Made by four developers spread across the globe, the official genres listed on its Steam page describe it as a tactical turn-based action adventure RPG where you guide four separate heroes in their fight against the ominous sounding Red Company. But just saying it's turn-based is doing Arco a disservice, I think, as it's also a little bit real-time, a little bit simultaneous turns, and all pretty brilliant, if you ask me. Here are some very early impressions of it.
]]>Where Winds Meet struck me as hugely ambitious action adventure romp set in vast, Ten Kingdom-inspired China. And it was hilariously impossible to summarise in the space of a short, sharp 30-minute appointment. While the elevator pitch started off fairly naturally, there came a point where the elevator rocketed up into the atmosphere and spiralled out of control. I won’t pretend to completely understand what the exact measure of the game is, but I'm both excited to see more and a tad worried it could end up being a disjointed, overstretched mash of things that don't form a cohesive whole.
]]>Before Diablo 4 came out, Blizzard had concerns that their latest ARPG would tank the popularity of their most recent entry in the series, Diablo Immortal, Blizzard's franchise general manager Rod Fergusson tells RPS. Immortal, which launched last year as a free-to-play MMO game, left quite a bad taste in our mouths when it launched on PC, especially when it came to the prohibitively high cost of its various microtransactions. Despite this, though, the game's continued to enjoy great success over on mobile, but even Blizzard weren't sure whether its popularity would last once Diablo 4 arrived.
"One of the things that we were kind of nervous about initially was that when Diablo 4 landed it would sort of cannibalise Immortal, and that everyone was just going to be, 'Oh we're just playing Immortal until Diablo 4 comes out'," Fergusson told me at Gamescom. As it turns out, they needn't have been so apprehensive. "In fact, it was the opposite," he says.
]]>The Opening Night Live trailer for 'comedy slapformer' Thank Goodness You're Here! was a joyous balm in a sea of shoulder shrugs last week. Its bright, cartoon visuals instantly stood out against the grey, ultra-realistic grizzle beards of everything else Geoff had to offer in his Gamescom mega show last Tuesday, and even now I still find myself whistling its jaunty little song around the house. But what exactly is Thank Goodness You're Here!? Well, having played through one of its 15 minute missions now, I can tell you it's a bit like Untitled Goose Game, in that you have a village you can wander about in causing chaos, but it's also much more structured than that, with specific quests and people to help as you guide your tiny travelling salesman through its surreal neighbourhood. Here's what I learned.
]]>"What's better than gazing at the Milky Way?", asks Bethesda. The answer? "Savouring it as well." That's right folks, I may not have laid my hands on big Todd's mega RPG Starfield, but I've actually tasted its universe, in the form of a promotional drink handed out at Gamescom. It’s composed of cinnamon and stardust, with the boundless expanse of space taking on the form of a grey liquid goop. I’ve got to admit, I think it makes for an excellent beverage, and could perhaps have elicited more excitement from me than the game itself will on release.
]]>How do you condense the vast, far-reaching tendrils of Paradox's open world Sims-killer Life By You into 20 minutes? The short answer is you can't, really, but while most of my brief, guided Gamescom demo covered very similar ground to what I saw back in March when it was first announced, there was one little detail that really grabbed my attention - and that's how everyone has eyes like a hawk in this game. They're almost constantly aware of everything that you're doing. So much so, that they can even get a little bit creepy about it, as was made plain in my hands-off demo session.
]]>Granblue Fantasy: Relink has been on my most anticipated games list for two-years, with all of my anticipation based purely off bitty trailers that haven't revealed anything other than its flashy action RPG combat and deeply anime towns. So, I was rather excited when I had a chance to play it for all of ten minutes in one demo, then around 40 minutes at this year's Gamescom.
Blazing fast mental arithmetic puts my total time with the game at around 50 minutes... with a catch. The two demos were identical, though, so all of my time was dedicated to smashing the same large skeleton and large rock man. I got to know them and it's battle system intimately, I suppose, so while I can't speak for the quests, but the fights? Gloriously chaotic.
]]>Vampires might be the themed threat for Diablo 4's second season, but it was arguably its own player base who drew first blood when season one started at the end of July. As you may have heard by now, Diablo's Season Of The Malignant didn't exactly go down all that well, with much of the hissing and fang-bearing directed toward its nerf-heavy balance patch that arrived a couple of days before the season started in earnest - a series of events that Blizzard's franchise general manager Rod Fergusson describes as "a perfect storm of a couple of situations" when I sit down to talk with him at Gamescom.
"Season one was exceptional, because we did something we'd never do again," says Fergusson. "As part of listening to players wanting to carry over their renown, we had to put the patch out a couple of days before the season. The intention is that a season and a patch would go [live] the same day, so at the time we make a balance change and you start a level one character, it feels differently to go through the progression with the new balance."
]]>Developer Galaxy Grove have announced that the minimalist railway game Station To Station is wheeling to release on October 3rd. That’s an already packed month for exciting games, but I’ll forgive this one based on how damned good those voxels look. Plus, a relaxing railway management game might be the perfect antidote for Big Game Burnout in the coming months.
]]>A new demo invites you to glide through fluffy clouds and slide down rolling fields in indie adventure Europa. The game’s deceptively dour setup channels Journey and Fumito Ueda’s work, asking you to explore outsized ruins as the last child left alive, but just like those gems, everything in Europa is wrapped up in a gentle atmosphere.
]]>Around 20-minutes spent with Like A Dragon Gaiden (technically Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name) has helped me fulfil two Yakuza-specific dreams: reunite with Mr. Masochist and fight alongside Mr. Masochist. Having sampled a bit of the colosseum and switched up Kiry- sorry, Joryu's threads, I reckon Gaiden's side hustles are shaping up to be suitably bonkers and remarkably in-depth. Our boy literally has rockets in his shoes, I mean, come on.
]]>Devs GSC Game World are going through an unimaginably difficult time right now on top of leaks and hacker attacks. That has to be taken into account when we think about the development of the game, and it could be why, after 20-minutes spent exploring a bit of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart Of Chornobyl's irradiated world, I'm unsure what to make of it.
Maybe I played a very early build, but while the world itself looks every bit the eerie post apocalyptic survival wasteland you hope, NPC interactions aren't in as great shape. Chats with friendlies are unclear, and in firefights the enemy AI is shonky - to the extent that I think it'll be more useful as a preview to just tell you exactly what happened to me as I played.
]]>I will hold my hands up and say that I didn't get on too well with One More Level's first Ghostrunner game. While its one-hit-kill combat was fast, flashy and infinitely more appealing than some of the other neon lambs being led to the cyberpunk slaughter in the back end of 2020, its precise platforming and marksman-grade enemies made it a hard game to love while you were actually playing it. But having sat down for 45 minutes with Ghostrunner 2 at this year's Gamescom, I'm pleased to report that this is a sequel done right, building on everything you know and (probably) love about the first game, while also ushering in new, optional concessions to help make its still wonderfully gory swordplay much more approachable for old two-left-thumbs-McGee over here. Then there's the motorbike, which… phwoar. Let me tell you about the motorbike.
]]>After formally unveiling Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector during this year's notE3 season, solo developer Jump Over The Age have confirmed that it will also be launching day one on PC Game Pass (and the cloud) when it eventually comes out. Announced during today's Xbox Gamescom showcase, the original game will be "sticking around on the service" after the release of the sequel, too - which is very good news for my still-mid-DLC Game Pass save file. And if you're as pumped about Starward Vector as I am, Jump Over The Age have also given us a sneak peek at one of the locations we'll be visiting during our escape across its Starward Belt system. Come and get the low-down on Citizen Sleeper 2's Hexport in the trailer below.
]]>I saw Creative Assembly's live service heist 'em up Hyenas at last year's Gamescom and came away unimpressed. I thought it was obnoxious and underwhelming, in all the ways you'd expect from a colourful hero shooter whose hook is stealing Sonic merch.
But this year I got to spend a good 30-minutes in a match against other players and have come away… pleasantly surprised. I like the way it eschews the sometimes slow, methodical pace of other extraction shooters in favour of a faster-paced team deathmatch. While it's way too early to make big judgement calls like, "the entire game will be good", it might have more of a chance at launch survival than I thought.
]]>Classic point ‘n clicker series Broken Sword is planning a big comeback starting next year with a remaster of the original adventure game, followed by a new sixth entry sometime after. Snooping tourist George and snooping professional (investigative journalist) Nico will reunite in the all-new Broken Sword: Parzival’s Stone, but first, over two decades after it launched, Broken Sword - Shadow Of The Templars: Reforged revamps the first outing of the nosy duo. As you can see from the reveal trailer, it’s enjoying quite a dramatic makeover.
]]>Space games are basically ready built for the grand reveal. All you need to do is open a shutter and you can reveal unto the player all the wonders of the universe you have built, be that a giant, misty blue planet with a neon green dust ring, or purple nebula sweeping accross the sky like a bruise and crackling with lightning. Starfield's opening (shown off at Gamescom this week, and leaking all over the internet like a collander used for SMG target practice) does not forgo this moment, but it does say "okay but what if the grand reveal was entirely in shades of grey, though"?
]]>Persona 3 Reload gives the classic 2006 RPG the remake treatment, hopefully making it seem as effortlessly stylish as the fantastic Persona 5 Royal. Developer Atlus dropped another gorgeous trailer that gives us a wee peek at its new anime cutscenes, fan favourite cast, and… wait a second. There aren’t any cool menus in this trailer and my day is ruined. But the trailer also confirms that the game is due to launch on February 2nd, 2024, so we can gawk at the level-up screens soon.
]]>Action-horror sequel Alan Wake 2 showed up to last night’s Gamescom festivities with a cryptic trailer (below) that showed the studio’s signature Lynchian mystery, an upside-down New York, and some interesting live-action scenes. But references to Remedy’s past games have been the big conversation driver, especially since the studio is building up a “Remedy Connected Universe.” Creative director Sam Lake has now clarified that time-bending shooter Quantum Break and the Max Payne games aren’t cool enough to join the Remedy-verse, while also breaking down their approach to these shared-world games.
]]>We already knew that roguelite sequel Streets Of Rogue 2 was going open world, but we finally saw the free-flowing chaos in action at last night’s Gamescom blowout. The immersive sim playground, sequel to an RPS favourite from 2019, looks even more over-the-top than the original. You can smash through buildings in a truck. Or smash through buildings on horseback. Or smash through buildings as a giant gorilla. Or... you get the gist. In other words, there should be a metric mega-ton of options when the game hits early access next year, as you'd expect if you played the first Streets Of Rogue.
]]>Revealed last night at Gamescom 2023's Opening Night Live, we now know that Little Nightmares 3 is indeed a thing, coming in 2024. It's being made by Supermassive Games, who specialise in horror games (although not quite the same as the nitty-gritty childhood terrors style of Little Nightmares). Following the trajectory of the previous two games, Little Nightmares the third has two controllable protagonists, so you can play in co-op. It also has a tie-in podcast, to build out some of the Little Nightmares lore, a thing you might not have known existed.
]]>Blizzard tonight announced that Diablo 4's second season, named Season Of Blood, will begin on the 17th of October. Given that the first season is uninteresting, I'm not super fussed about that. What does sound good is quality-of-life changes coming alongside the new season. For starters, your inventory will no longer become clogged with six billion gems. Season Of Blood will also let you pick specific Unique and Uber Unique items to farm bosses for, which is most welcome given how vital Uniques can be for builds. Here, watch the trailer.
]]>Geoffcom 2023 has crested its initial crescendous wave with Gamescom Opening Night Live. The yearly gaming show has delivered its usual tantalising (and sometimes baffling) smorgasbord of videogame announcements, trailers, updates, news, and more. And now we’ve got a much better idea of what games to expect over the course of the next, oh, seven hundred years.
Below we’ve compiled an exhaustive (oh so exhaustive) list of all 36 trailers and announcements shown at this year’s Gamescom Opening Night Live, so if you want a roundup of everything you missed, you’re in the right place. Deep breaths everyone. And away we go.
]]>Over a long beer and some (Ed: very crispy, hotel) cheeseburgers, Katharine and I tuned into this year's Gamescom Opening Night Live having just arrived at our hotel. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's campaign reveal happened to be on, and I predicted it would feature three things: darkness, rain, and goggles. I was right! Even though there was mention of more "open ended" COD missions, the one shown certainly seemed like any vintage, largely linear COD level.
]]>As Geoff Keighley continues to use his gaming shows to parade his menagerie of film star friends, this year's sacrifice was Batman vs Superman director Zack Snyder, who was mainly wheeled out at tonight's Gamescom Opening Night Live show to promote his new pair of sci-fi Netflix films - which, oh, by the way, also have a game attached to them. And thus, a new Snyderverse is born. Not that they showed us said game, mind, or really told us anything about it. It will be set after both Rebel Moon films, though, so you better get watching if you want to know what the hell is going on. Honestly, did we learn nothing from Final Fantasy 15's failed multimedia project mistakes?
]]>Ara: Story Untold was originally announced at last year’s notE3 Xbox Games Showcase, but the game has been missing in action since then. Until now, that is. During tonight’s Gamescom announceathon show, Microsoft released the first in-game trailer for Oxide Games' turn-based grand strategy game, which spans, checks notes, ah yes, the whole of human history. Here it is:
]]>It's rare for a game to have showy tech which is more than skin-deep and actually enables new types of play. Sure, the dynamic mud of driving sim Spintires was impressive to look at, and it also gave us a game where driving two metres through a puddle could become a serious puzzle. So I'm certainly interested in today's announcement of Expeditions: A MudRunner Game, this time sending us off-roading to conduct science. Well, if the mud doesn't blind me, the science surely will.
]]>The misfits-on-a-road-trip genre arguably began bloody ages ago, it's true, but I think it's really been building momentum over the last few years with stuff like Signs Of The Sojourner, Hitchhiker, and even Road 96. Red Thread Games, who made Draugen (a horror game I liked quite a bit), are adding to the list with Dustborn, a single-player action-adventure with a heavy lean towards story, which was revealed at this year's Gamescom Opening Night Live.
You play Pax, a pregnant con-artist on the run transporting an important package across the Northern border of what appears to be an authoritarian, dystopian USA. And you tell me this is in no way related to Road 96? Well, alright. Dustborn is being published by Quantic Dream, so I feel dutybound to make fun of it. No. Must... resist...
]]>Interdimensional aliens have invaded with murderous intent. Humans are an endangered species. Our world is in ruins. That’s the setup in The First Descendant’s newest trailer, and yet, all I want to do is zip around with grappling hooks while wearing the most fashionable cyber-bunny exosuit available. Thankfully the Gamescom trailer has that on display, too. Ta!
]]>First announced three years ago, medieval-ish low fantasy-ish action adventureCrimson Desert made an appearance at Opening Night Live for Gamescom tonight, and boy do you have a horse in it. Also you can explode things with what looks like comical ease. Crimson Desert's older sibling is Black Desert Online, that MMO that has a really pretty character creator, and the big daddy dev Pearl Abyss say that Crimson Desert is still a work in progress but, hooooo, they're showing off that horse, alright.
]]>Cyberpunk 2077 expansion Phantom Liberty releases on September 26th. It continues the story of V and her sidekick, imaginary sweary Keanu Reeves, but it also overhauls skills, perks, car chases, police and more.
You can watch some of the updates in action in a new trailer shown during tonight's Gamecom Geoffstravaganza, but the exciting bit is that several of those overhauls are also coming to the base game in a free 2.0 update,
]]>Across years of updates and new missions, Payday 2 ultimately escalated to such a ridiculous degree that the gang broke into the White House to stole pre-signed Presidential pardons for themselves. It was good ridiculousness. Now Payday 3 is on its way, and the cooperative heisting looks far more down-to-Earth in a new trailer fresh out of Gamescom.
]]>This year is shaping up to have a killer line-up of fighting games between the launches of Mortal Kombat 1 and Street Fighter 6, but unfortunately, Tekken 8 won’t be completing the holy trinity as it just got a new release date: January 26th 2024. Not too far away from 2023’s punch-a-thon, though, and to tide us over, publisher Bandai Namco dropped a brand new trailer at Gamescom’s Opening Night Live. Bears, arcades, and lots of kicking down below.
]]>If you can't wait for Path Of Exile 2, and you've long since lost interest in Diablo 4, then you might want to cast your loot-hungry eyes toward Last Epoch, an upcoming time-travel fantasy ARPG that's been enjoying a successful stint in early access since 2019 and, as tonight's Gamescom Opening Night Live show revealed, is on track for a full release later this year. The Geoffcom mega show also revealed there's a new mage class called the Runemaster heading to the game next month that's capable of casting 40 different spells on a single attack key, but given this is the first time we've written about Last Epoch, I realise that probably won't mean much to a lot of you. So let's back up a bit and introduce Last Epoch properly, because hoo boy, if you love customisable skill trees, this is the ARPG for you, my friend.
]]>Mark your calendars for November 17th, strategy fans, as that's when Warhammer Age Of Sigmar: Realms Of Ruin is heading to PC - the same day as Atlus' Persona 5 Tactica, don't you know? Announced at tonight's Gamescom Opening Night Live show, Frontier Developments also showed off the game's new single-player Conquest mode, a procedurally generated series of challenges that will pit players against increasingly unpredictable combat scenarios, as well as its third playable faction: the wraith-like Nighthaunt. They'll be going up against the Stormcast Eternals alongside the Orruk Kruleboyz in the game's campaign, and I got to see them in action ahead of tonight's showcase. And I can confirm: they're a nasty bunch of spectral rags, this lot, especially when they pile on in large numbers.
]]>Graham said to me earlier today, "you've got a real soft spot for chintzy big swing fantasy", and what can I say? The man is correct. Hence, though I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in open world survival crafting games like yer Valheims and what have you, I cocked my head like a dazzled magpie at the Gamescom release date trailer for Nightingale. It's the chintzy big swing fantasy (okay, Victoriana urban fantasy but it still counts) coming from Aaryn Flynn-founded studio Inflexion Games. And it's coming to an early access release near you on February 22nd next year.
]]>If you've been keeping an eye on Stormgate, the upcoming free-to-play RTS being made by former Starcraft II and Warcraft III devs, then its big bads, the Infernal Host, will probably be familiar in name, if nothing else. But during tonight's Gamescom Opening Night Live show, we got our first proper look at this demonic alien faction, as well as three of the units that will be at our disposal on release. And sure, the worker Imp and its long ears will no doubt appease the Grogu fans out there, but my personal highlight is the creepy flesh monster, the Brute. It looks rightly horrific, with its pair of grinning maws and glistening, pale skin, but at the tap of a key, it will rip itself down the middle in a mess of blood and gore so that two Fiends can burst forth Alien-style to continue the assault. It's kinda gross, but also weirdly rad? In any case, I'm into it.
]]>Cooperative horror FPS series Killing Floor will return for another monster mash (hopefully it'll be a graveyard smash) in Killing Floor 3, developers Tripwire Interactive announced today. Sadly they've said little about the game and shown even less but yup, once again you and your pals will get to fight through hordes of wacky bioengineered monsters. Honestly, science was a mistake. Isaac Downtown and his pal Harry Stottle owe us all an apology.
]]>Bandai Namco brought some news to this year's Gamescom 2023 Geoff Fest show that was very exciting for me, personally. Though it was but a short teaser trailer, we now know that Little Nightmares 3 is coming next year - and it's a co-op game that you can play with your pals. Good for moral support with a creepy horror game, although it's online co-op, so don't expect anyone to literally hold your hand. Also, and this is kind of unexpected, but there's a podcast tie-in.
]]>If you're keenly awaiting next month's launch of Starfield, Bethesda's new open-world sci-fi RPG, you can skip the new trailer. It's one of those live-action affairs with CG up the wazoo, complete with an 'epic' cover of Elton John's Rocket Man that would bring a tear to the eye of Zack Snyder*, and only Zack Snyder. It does not show the game at all, nor does it capture the thrill of escaping our Earthly bonds to find a load of grey rocks just like we have at home. But you can watch the trailer below.
]]>Gamescom 2023 begins today, and the Cologne-based gaming gigashow has a swanky, likely trailer-rich launch event to mark the occasion. Our Gamescom Opening Night Live 2023 liveblog will be up and running for the full two hours, and we – vid bud Liam and myself – will be reporting every scrap of news it feeds us. Care to join?
]]>As with Half-Life 2 RTX, Nvidia have taken to Gamescom to make a heap of DLSS announcements. Chief among these is an upcoming new version, DLSS 3.5, which will add to DLSS 3’s existing toolkit of upscaling and AI frame generation with a new trick named Ray Reconstruction. And it sounds pretty clever, if currently limited in application.
]]>Nvidia are making an early start on their Gamescom announcements, which include the reveal of Half-Life 2 RTX. This incoming mod for the seminal 2004 FPS will, in the style of Portal with RTX, rejig the original game with modern technical goodies like ray tracing, updated environmental details, and Nvidia Reflex support. DLSS will also be on hand to absorb the inevitably mahoosive performance hit from bouncing all those rays around, and that includes DLSS 3, provided you have a compatible graphics card.
It’s being developed by a collective of experienced HL2 modders, Orbifold Studios, without direct input from Valve. No release date yet, as Half-Life 2 RTX – or to use its full name, Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project – is still in the early stages. There is a teaser trailer, though.
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