gamescom2018
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'Let's Sing 2019' is the latest game destined for the Wii
Just Dance isn't the only modern game franchise headed to a 12-year-old console. Amid the Gamescom shuffle, THQ Nordic announced that it would be releasing its Europe-focused music title Let's Sing 2019 for the PS4, Switch... and the Wii. This isn't completely shocking when the publisher also made the 2018 game available for Wii, but the system is rapidly running out of time -- the Wii Shop Channel is shutting down in 2019. If this isn't the last Wii version in the franchise, it's pretty close.
‘Seed’ is an ambitious, massively multiplayer city builder
From a distance, Seed looks like any other settlement-building game. Tiny villagers shuffle around a colorful, low-poly map, collecting wood, wheat and other important resources. At any time, you can zoom in, check the stats of individual people and cash in items for houses and other important structures.
'Felix the Reaper' puts a playful spin on the danse macabre
Death is always dancing. That's the inspiration behind Felix the Reaper, a romantic-comedy puzzle game about a love-struck employee at the Ministry of Death. Felix, the marshmallowy Death employee, is on a mission to seduce a worker at the Ministry of Life with his bureaucratic skills and slick dance moves. In the game, this means players navigate Felix through a series of spatial puzzles, ensuring he remains in the shadows and reaches the conclusion of each level -- which ends with someone dying in a gruesome, yet comical, manner.
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.
Finding peace in a hopeless, goat-filled apocalypse
The end of the world has never felt so peaceful. The Stillness of the Wind is a meditative and enrapturing experience about the death of the Earth, as told through the simple, daily habits of a lone grandmother on a ramshackle farm. I played through the first 10 minutes of the game in a tiny booth at the center of the Gamescom business hall on a busy public day, and its deliberate gameplay, prescient message and adorable goats instantly made the outside world fade away.
‘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.
Housemarque knows people are skeptical about 'Stormdivers'
Two days ago, Resogun developer Housemarque released its first proper trailer for Stormdivers. The reaction was mixed. At the time of writing, the official upload on YouTube has 290 thumbs-up and 321 thumbs-down ratings. "I'm going to miss absolutely amazing arcade titles from you guys," one user wrote. "Might as well wait for the inevitable closure announcement," another user remarked underneath.
'Arena of Valor' is a completely different game on Switch
Arena of Valor is arguably the most popular video game in the world, clocking more than 200 million players -- before it debuted in North America in December. Compare that to other online blockbusters like League of Legends (103 million players as of 2016), Overwatch (40 million players as of May) and Fortnite (125 million players as of June), and Arena of Valor's reach is clear.
‘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.
‘The Grand Tour Game’ is a near-perfect mirror of the show
When Amazon announced its Grand Tour video game, I imagined a generic racer with crudely digitized versions of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. The reality, though, is quite different. Amazon Game Studios is developing a title that, in many ways, is a perfect mirror of the Prime-exclusive show. The real-world antics portrayed in the TV series are more than loose inspiration -- they're the template for every race and mission in the game.
It's not always sunny in 'Cyberpunk 2077'
The Gamescom demo for Cyberpunk 2077 is nearly identical to the one shown at E3 two months prior, but it features a few important changes. First, it introduces a new weapon, a katana capable of emitting a magnetic field that deflects bullets, and it highlights the game's character-selection screens. Players will be able to pick their gender, appearance and backstory right from the beginning, filling in details about traumatic events in their past and other personal tidbits.
'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.
NVIDIA says the RTX 2080 GPU is twice as fast as the GTX 1080
It's clear that NVIDIA's newly announced 20-series GPUs are incredibly powerful, but so far, it's been tough to tell how much faster they are than the previous generation. Today during a press briefing at Gamescom, the company gave us a bit more insight: The new RTX 2080 is up to twice as fast as the GTX 1080 when using the new DLSS (Deep Learning Super-Sampling) feature. That relies on the Turing GPU's Tensor Cores for AI-powered rendering. Basically, it's a less GPU intensive way of getting smoother edges on 3D objects.
I never thought I'd see Master Chief drive around Northumberland
Halo's armored hero, Master Chief, has fought the Covenant on a raft of planets throughout the galaxy. One place the super-soldier hasn't visited, though, is a village called Bamburgh on the northeast coast of England. That is, until now. At Gamescom 2018, I was shown a special Halo event that will appear in Forza Horizon 4 later this year. The course, presented as a virtual "training exercise," lets you drive the rugged Warthog through dense forests and sandy beaches. It looked like terrific fun and will, if nothing else, be a nice distraction while fans wait for Halo Infinite.
'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
‘Devil May Cry 5’ hands-on: Fantastically familiar
Ten years after the debut of Devil May Cry 4, Nero is back in the driver's seat and he's never looked better. It's not just the haircut, either -- Devil May Cry 5 runs on the RE Engine built for Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, and Capcom's goal is to build a photorealistic game filled with gooey demons, witty one-liners and flashy combos. The title's first hands-on demo at Gamescom 2018 highlights these exact elements and wraps all of it up in an ichor-crusted, gorgeous package.
'Arena of Valor' officially launches on Nintendo Switch in September
If you weren't able to sign up for Arena of Valor's closed beta on the Nintendo Switch, don't worry -- the popular 5v5 MOBA will be officially available for the platform in September. Like its mobile counterpart, the Switch version of the Tencent-backed game is a free-to-play title. Even better, it will use a global server, so you can play with friends from around the world, even if they live in another continent and even if they download the game from another region's eShop.
How Ronaldo's transfer impacted The Journey in 'FIFA 19'
On July 10th, 2018, less than three months before the release of FIFA 19, Juventus announced that it had signed soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo from Real Madrid for $110 million. The timing made sense -- at 33, the Portuguese forward is entering his twilight years -- but the move still came as a shock to many, including Electronic Arts and the FIFA team in Vancouver, Canada. "We didn't get a heads-up," Sam Rivera, lead gameplay producer on FIFA 19 said. "It wasn't like, 'hey Ronaldo has actually signed a contract and it will go live tomorrow.' No. We heard at the same time everybody else did."
HP’s ear-cooling Mindframe headset will be available in October
HP's Mindframe headset is a rad concept: Use a thermoelectric device in each cup to keep your ears cool during heated gaming sessions. Ahead of this weekend's Gamescom conference, the company revealed that you'll be able to pick up a pair in October for a starting price of $200.
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.
