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Gamescom cancels its in-person event due to COVID-19
Gamescom announced today that it won’t host its annual in-person event in Cologne, Germany this year. The Gamescom team is planning a digital version of the conference, so gamers and exhibitors still have something to look forward to. Gamescom previously said existing digital formats, like its Opening Night Live stream, scheduled for August 24th, will be “significantly expanded.”
Sega is becoming its weird and wonderful self again
Sega is in an unexpectedly good place right now. The company was never on top of the industry; it's been beaten by Nintendo, by Sony, by the decline of the arcade. It spent years nursing the wounds from its fall from grace in the '90s, and through the '00s and early '10s could seemingly do little right.
‘Streets of Rage 4’ is shaping up to be a worthy sequel
Streets of Rage 4's announcement landed with a bit of a thud. The original trilogy of Genesis games is beloved, and for many remains the benchmark for the genre. It's now been 15 years since Streets of Rage 3, and a teaser trailer for a new game showing a cast of hand-drawn characters against some decidedly modern music looked more like a Saturday morning cartoon than a faithful new chapter. While many were excited for the return, a vocal group voiced their concerns.
'Blacksad' is a promising detective game based on a cult comic
Blacksad is a long-running graphic novel series that covers some heavy topics through a noir detective window. Set in the 1950s, it follows hardboiled detective John Blacksad, with each book focusing on a new case. It's one of my favorite series, but there's always been one problem: There's not enough of it. The first book was released in 2000, book five came in 2014 and book six is due to be published "soon" after years of delays. My excitement when a Blacksad video game telling an all-new story was announced, then, was palpable. After playing 45 minutes of Blacksad: Under The Skin today, I'm still excited.
‘Need for Speed Heat’ isn’t anything like ‘Payback’
The long-running Need for Speed franchise is stuck in a rut. The 2015 reboot, simply titled Need for Speed, was criticized for its cringeworthy live-action cutscenes. Its successor two years ago, Need for Speed Payback, had an irritating upgrade system built around collectible Speed Cards. The last game to broach the 80 mark on Metacritic, Need for Speed Most Wanted, was developed by Criterion and released in 2012. The pressure is therefore rising around Ghost Games, the series' current steward, and its next entry, Need for Speed Heat.
The next 'Mario & Sonic Olympics' game has a retro 2D mode
Over the past 12 years, Nintendo and Sega have faithfully published their mashup, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, to correspond with the iconic sporting event. The 2020 Olympics in Tokyo will be a homecoming of sorts for the two mascots, who were both created in Japan. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Tokyo Games 2020 will also see them returning to their roots in 10 "Classic Events" that use 2D sprites and environments.
FIFA 20's Volta mode is good enough to be its own game
There's a lot to Volta, FIFA 20's new street soccer mode. Rather than a one-off sideshow to the main game, it's actually multiple offline and online game styles and a full story campaign, rolled into a cohesive and enjoyable package. Off the bat, there are three main game styles, which will be familiar to anyone that's kicked a ball around with friends. You can play with rush keepers (a term for having no defined goalkeeper) in teams of three or four. This style has tiny goals and barely any rules apart from quick free kicks for blatant fouls. Then there's street with keepers, which uses larger futsal goals and dedicated keepers, but is similarly light on rules. The last style is futsal, which plays as you'd expect if you've ever watched it: Five-a-side with keepers, kick-ons and corners, on-the-fly substitutions, accumulated fouls leading to penalties and an actual referee who will dish out yellow and red cards. All of the modes ditch the stamina, fatigue and injury systems of the regular game.
Watch the Gamescom Opening Night Live event in 17 minutes
The Gamescom news has been coming thick and fast, so we've put together a supercut of the Opening Night Live event to show you everything you need to know.
Watch the Google Stadia event in 10 minutes
Google's Stadia Connect livestream for Gamescom can give you a bigger idea of what to expect from its upcoming video game streaming platform -- and you can watch all the most important tidbits right here. Stadia's Ray Bautista started off with a reminder to pre-order the Stadia Founder's Edition, which will serve as your entry to the service as one of its first players. As a nice perk, it will also come with the full Destiny 2 experience.
'Final Fantasy VIII' Remastered is coming out on September 3rd
Were you disappointed to hear that Square Enix merely remastered Final Fantasy VIII instead of remaking it like it did its predecessor? We hope you can take solace in the fact that you don't have to wait years for its release. The developer has revealed that FFVIII Remastered will be available on September 3rd for the PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Steam.
Two Halo characters are joining ‘Gears 5’
Thirteen years into their shared history, you would think Halo and Gears of War would have already crossed over before today. After all, following Microsoft's purchase of the Gears franchise in 2014, the two properties are the company's biggest and most important exclusives. So it's a bit strange to see it's not Master Chief, Halo's main hero, joining the fight against the Gear's Locust villains. Instead, it's two characters from 2010's Halo: Reach.
NVIDIA’s RTX speed claims fall short without game support
At its big RTX event at Gamescom, NVIDIA made some bold claims about its new Turing RTX cards. First and foremost was that the GeForce RTX 2080 offered performance "six times faster" than current 1000-series Pascal-based GTX cards. That's in large part because of new ray-tracing tech that helps the GPUs calculate complex game lighting much more quickly. "This is a new computing model, so there's a new way to think about performance," said CEO Jensen Huang.
‘Man of Medan’ could usher in a golden age of horror games
2015's PS4 exclusive Until Dawn is one of the most memorable titles of this generation. It took the bare bones choose-your-own-adventure storytelling of games like The Walking Dead and massively expanded the interactivity, immersion and production values to create a fantastically tropey horror game. Like all horror, it was best experienced in a group, and I've played it several times with various people, taking it in turns to wield the controller, debating every decision. Now, developer Supermassive has moved away from Sony to build a multi-platform successor to Until Dawn called The Dark Pictures Anthology.
‘Sekiro’ continues the work that ‘Bloodborne’ started
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice doesn't represent a seachange from the formula that Dark Souls creator Hidetaka Miyazaki has been refining over the past decade, but it does take that blueprint in a welcome new direction. At Gamescom, I spent an hour or so wayfinding, tackling ever-more-threatening foes and dying, repeatedly. So far, so Souls. But the switch from a European Gothic aesthetic to Sengoku-era Japan is more than a palette swap.
'Sable' is gorgeous, but will live or die on its story
It's been clear that Sable is going to be a very pretty game ever since a few work-in-progress GIFs bounced around Twitter and Tumblr a year or so ago. What hasn't been entirely clear to me is what the game behind those GIFs was going to be. It turns out that it's as ambitious as it is gorgeous.
'Life is Strange 2' deals with brotherhood in the face of death
Life is Strange 2 begins with a bleak bang. Developer Dontnod shared the game's first 20 minutes this week on YouTube, introducing series fans to the Diaz family before diving straight into a chaotic, violent scene that sets the stage for the rest of the five-episode season. This article contains spoilers for the first 20 minutes of Life is Strange 2
Samsung's latest curved gaming monitors are fast and cheap
So you want a curved Samsung gaming monitor, but you don't want to splash out for an over-the-top model like the HDR-ready CHG90. Are you out of luck? Not for much longer -- Samsung has unveiled the CJG5 series, which delivers some of the core features you might crave without the nice-to-have extras. It still includes a curved panel (to provide a more natural focus for your eyes, Samsung claims) and a speedy 144Hz refresh rate, but in a standard 16:9 aspect ratio, 2,560 x 1,440 VA display (no quantum dots here) at 32- and 27-inch sizes.
Microsoft, where's my 2TB Xbox One X?
Today at Gamescom Microsoft trotted out a bevy of new Xbox hardware/software bundles, as promised. There were eight (!) in total, with the One X getting the lion's share of them. Both the One S and One X bundles share a common theme: 1 terabyte of internal storage. First-party games optimized for the One X, meaning they feature 4K resolution and HDR video, are big, and several reach 100GB. That'a over 10 percent of available internal storage per. It doesn't take having too many of those before you have to start playing virtual Tetris with game downloads.
Amazon turned its ‘The Grand Tour’ TV series into a racing game
If you've enjoyed The Grand Tour on Amazon, here's some synergy you probably didn't see coming: The ecommerce giant's in-house studio is making the show into a video game. Before you ask, yes, hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May lend their voices to the title. But don't expect a one-and-done racing title. The game will be released piecemeal on a weekly basis during Season 3, with each episode featuring cars, locations and content from the show.
