Gamescom Opening Night Live Offers Surprises … And Repetition

Once again, Geoff Keighley has held his annual Gamescom Opening Night Live showcase — a two and a half hour experience featuring games from across the globe. Given that it’s placed in a weird spot between his Summer Game Fest and The Game Awards events, it’s never clear exactly what’s going to be there. Still, this year managed to feature a mix of major titles, indie games, and surprise reveals.

One of the most interesting games from the showcase arrived in the pre-show with Undercoders and Fireshine Games’ Denshattack, where players control a train capable of ollies and kickflips. It feels like Jet Set Radio, except for some reason you also get to fight against giant robots.

I’m not sure anyone was actually looking for a new Bubsy, but Bubsy 4D looks surprisingly good. It couldn’t stop making references to far more popular characters, but the world design and music were good, and it actually seems like it could be a competent platformer.

Is it becoming more and more obvious that 2D side-scrolling beat ’em ups is a genre that relies entirely on nostalgia? Yes. Does that stop something like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: Dragon Pearl of Destruction from looking great?  Absolutely not!  Even the toy commercial spot at the beginning is a nice touch.  The only real downside: it feels like, sometimes, this is the only way to get a game based on fun 1980s and ’90s properties.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 opened up the proper Opening Night Live, and I can’t help but be surprised at how much things have changed for this juggernaut franchise. Call of Duty once had a very strict promotional schedule, with its first blowout reveal always happening sometime in May, just before all the summer showcases. Over this generation, they’ve become more and more unpredictable, until suddenly now their first gameplay reveal is happening in the middle of Gamescom Opening Night Live.

Aside from the marketing schedule, though, what’s even happening in this franchise? In the past, one could tell Call of Duty at a glance, but these increasingly trippy trailers feel more like Scarecrow torturing soldiers with fear gas before Batman shows up. They also appear to be bringing back more and more futuristic technology, which is quite the turnaround given just seven years ago they were marketing “boots on the ground” Call of Duty because future-tech had worked out so poorly. Still, its Black Ops so its bound to outsell nearly everything else this year.

Sekiro: No Defeat was a pretty big surprise, but it feels like the perfect From Software game to turn into an anime. Premiering next year, it comes from Studio Qzil.la, with Kenichi Kutsuna (Madoka Magica) as director and Takuya Sato (Steins;Gate) as screenwriter. It looks amazing already, and will probably be one of the most hyped projects going into next year.

That Capcom is doing a new Onimusha game still doesn’t feel real. It’s like they’ve successfully revived their PlayStation 2 era and people are just completely down with it. I still can’t tell whether this game is going to be great, or even good, but having it around is awesome.

There are really people complaining that we’re getting too many games about samurai and ninja. Those people are wrong. Enjoy Ninja Gaiden 4‘s newest trailer above.

Obsidian Entertainment has been on a ridiculous run lately, between Avowed and Grounded 2. Supposedly, The Outer Worlds 2 is aiming to be their best game of the bunch, with improvements to everything from the combat to the world design. My biggest concern playing Avowed were companions I didn’t care about, so I’m hoping this batch of weirdos is good enough to carry Obsidian’s new space epic. Also, do yourself a favor: avoid the comments for this video.

Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2 has been on an interesting journey over the last several years. Even changing developers entirely! That it re-appeared here wasn’t surprising, but what was surprising it its October release date. Early previews seem to be holding their breath on whether this game can be good or not, but fans of the original are likely going to be annoyed whether this game is trash or amazing. The entire appeal of the original was its RPG aspect, and Bloodlines 2 seems to have stripped all that out in favor of making a more straightforward action game. Perhaps the full game will show more RPG elements to save it?

I was initially skeptical about Ghost of Yotei being present as Gamescom, as I get tired of seeing games in which everything you need to know has been said and they’re just appearing for attention. But announcing that Legends Mode — Ghost of Tsushima‘s multiplayer mode — is making a return was a nice thing to save for a show like this and legitimately hype-inducing.

A lengthy Resident Evil Requiem trailer just months after the reveal is exactly why it’s best to announce a game less than a year away from release. Fans were hungry for more, and just a few months later they got it. Better than that: people have already played it so there’s preview information out as well.  This new trailer focuses on protagonist Grace Ashcroft as a child, but also includes some snippets as an adult, and the game really does feel creepier than ever. Still, I do have to wonder when the STARS finally make their appearance.

Black Myth: Zhong Kui closed out the show as the “one more thing” and that’s about as impressive as you could expect. We didn’t get to see a ton of it, with Game Science admitting they don’t have a ton of footage they could share. Like Wukong, Zhong Kui pulls from classic Chinese myth, but aims to set itself apart from being a challenging single-player action RPG. Expect them to go dark on this project for a while, as even the outline isn’t finished.

In all, this Gamescom event featured a lot of major games and even had a few surprises, but it was dragged down by being far too long. I covered the highlights, but that meant skipping the four Genshin Impact clones and the need to have developers out there for interviews that really should’ve been saved for the aftershow.

There’s a certain level of repetition to all game showcases these days as the popular genres have ossified: soulslikes, roguelikes, Genshin clones, (often cosmic) horror, and the occasional emotional, non-violent indie game to “shake things up”, usually involving kids and animals. Now that people are starting to complain about them, it makes me wonder just how much longer these genres will maintain dominance before they shake things up again.