Skip to main content

What Was Worth A Damn About Gamescom 2025?

We’re back again to take a look at the highlights of a gaming showcase. This time, we turn our attention to Gamescom, the gaming trade show in Germany whose “ Opening Night Live ” presentation happens to be hosted by Geoff Keighley . Can’t so much as walk five paces without bumping into a show that that man is hosting. Anyway, same principle as before - just the good-looking and interesting projects, keeping the pessimism and negativity to a minimum. Bubsy 4D Developed by: Fabraz Someone made the call to stick this in the pre-show before the main presentation, and that’s baffling to me because it’s one of the most interesting nostalgia revivals I’ve seen in a while. Immediate takeaway: Fabraz seems to be leaning hard on self-aware and self-deprecating comedy here. An understandable creative choice, given both Bubsy’s wisecracking persona and the series’ charms having been overshadowed for three decades by this game’s infamous predecessor Bubsy 3D. The jokes in the trailer are amusi...
Post a Comment

The Post-E3 Games Showcase Era, Summer 2024 Highlights: Part II


In the ashes of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, amid the bloat and pretense of the games industry, always must there be a presentation... always must there be game trailers... and always must there be those who commentate.

So it is that we find ourselves in the aftermath of this year's collected summer showcases, a cavalcade of announcements and information to parse in its wake. For my part, I set forth to note the games that stood out among the pack.

Today, we go over the high points of the Future Games Show, the Xbox Games Showcase, the PC Gaming Show and, yes, even the Ubisoft Forward. Heaven help us all...

Future Games Show

The High Point: Duck Detective: The Secret Salami

The premise of “riffing on the hardboiled detective story with talking cartoon animals” would be a fine selling point for a game in itself. The choice to also lean into a sticker book aesthetic, complete with characters hobbling around as barely moving objects in a scene? Now that's a fun time in the making.

Honorable Mention: Schim

Apparently, we’re commanding a sentient little shadow, hopping between dark spots and trying to reunite with the shadow’s person. Quite the charming pitch, matched by a striking art style and a splendid use of colour.

Xbox Games Showcase

The High Point: South of Midnight

Compulsion Games came in strong with this one. I adore the stop-motion feel to the animation, the way that the team appears to be using lighting and texture to depict its dark fantasy rendition of the Deep South, and the spectral nature of the heroine’s traversal powers. Plus, there’s a giant talking catfish. Put me down as “sincerely hopeful”.

Honorable Mention: Doom: The Dark Ages

It’s dumb that Doom now has intricate lore and world-building, doubly so given that none of it really makes the broadly drawn characters more interesting and all of it drags down the pace of the really good demon slaying at the series’ core. But the look of this reads as “metal album cover”, I dig the chainsaw shield and the skull-launching gun, and it looks like you get to ride a dragon this time. 

PC Gaming Show

The High Point: Unbeatable

Though the trailer doesn't strictly clarify the moment-to-moment feel of play, I do get the sense the folks behind Unbeatable know what they're aiming for with regards to aesthetic and story. The restrained anime intro, presented with a nice bit of VHS styling, gives way to a more desperate punk-rock feel that befits the apparent focus on resisting an oppressive regime through music-related civil disobedience. I'll be very curious to see how this one lands, especially if what looked like rhythm game segments and some rather absurd action set-pieces weren't just trailer fluff.

Honorable Mentions: All Systems Dance

Fighting an Apple-esque totalitarian regime and its robot hordes with the power of dance? Yeah, okay.

Ubisoft Forward

The High Point: Biomorph

It looks like they’re doing a side-scrolling action-platformer, with an upgrade system and what looked like a settlement customization element. I love the 2D animated style, and I'm intrigued by those transformation abilities.

Honorable Mention: The Rogue Prince of Persia

Some design cues skewing even more towards original flavour Prince of Persia than Lost Crown, an art style with a certain cartoon exaggeration to it - yes, there's promise there.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: MIND PORTAL

Release Date: January 12th, 2018 Developer: Daniil Titner Publisher: Daniil Titner Version Reviewed: PC Copy Purchased There's a saying in certain circles that you can make a good movie out of anything, but to do it sometimes you have to rip out the source material's guts.  The intent of that saying is, I feel, quite clear in its central focus - highlighting how some projects have to work harder than others to hammer competency out of flawed material - but I think the sentiment can also apply to other mediums, like gaming. Take, for example, the first-person platformer, a sub-genre which exists primarily as an extension of the first-person shooter genre being so prevalent for sooooo long.  Make no mistake, I like works like Mirror's Edge (or, say, Jumping Flash ) for at least trying to offer something different from the gun-toting norm, but the execution of such works tends to leave a lot to be desired (no matter how much time, energy and money is thrown at the d...
Post a Comment
Read more

2023 in Gaming: The Five Least Promising Games

New year, new chance to hope against hope for good things before being crushed by the inevitable heartbreak of video games being a mess right now. In all seriousness, despite how easy it is to be cynical about the state of the industry, I still find value in examining the forthcoming slate of titles and offering my perspective on how much - or little - they have to offer. For today I have elected to pinpoint the five games whose marketing leaves much to be desired. Time will tell if I prove correct in my predictions here, but at this moment these are my feelings as to how entirely not enticing these games appear.  The FIFTH LEAST PROMISING: Dead Space Releases January 27th The Basic Premise: It's the future, everyone's miserable and doing contract work like cracking planets for minerals. One such ship, the Ishimura, goes dark and eventually worries people enough to send a rescue crew to try to fix the situation. Enter the Necromorphs, space zombies of maybe supernatural origin...
Post a Comment
Read more