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IToday is the opening day of Gamescom, the Cologne trade fair that has become the biggest event on the gaming calendar. I’m not among the 300,000 people flocking to Germany this year, but I did watch the two-hour livestream of the opening night yesterday, so you don’t have to. Here’s all the most interesting news, sorted by topic, because I’m deeply bored of writing simple lists of games and trailers.
News that will bother you Xbox Fanboys are the most
A new trailer has been released for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, the new first-person adventure from Bethesda and MachineGames, in which veteran video game actor Troy Baker seems delighted to be voicing Indiana Jones. It’s out on Xbox and PC on December 9, but it’s also been announced that it’s coming to PlayStation 5 in spring 2025. Earlier this year, Xbox boss Phil Spencer went out of his way to reassure Xbox fans that Indiana Jones No It will be a cross-platform game, so I’m interested to see how it turns out.
Unexpected returns
Borderlands 4 is coming in 2025, teased via a trailer that showed us virtually nothing. Developer Gearbox was presumably hoping to cash in on the hype generated by this month’s movie, but unfortunately, it’s not very good.
Peter Molyneux appeared to show off a new self-funded game called Masters of Albionwhich has remained quiet (perhaps understandably, as several of its more recent games were high-profile disasters, with its latest, Legacy, being a web3/blockchain game that sold £40m worth of NFTs in 2021 before going extremely quiet). It’s a mashup of Molyneux’s greatest hits when it comes to god games: Fable, Black & White and Dungeon Keeper. By day – build your city, craft food, weapons and armour to feed and equip your city’s inhabitants, and generally play god. By night – defend it against fantastical creatures by possessing your warrior subjects and wielding a club.
Ten years after the release of the first game, Monument Valley 3 is coming from Ustwo and Netflix, featuring the usual Escher-style puzzles and a mesmerizing color palette. It will be released on December 10th, and the two previous games will also be re-released via Netflix.
And the long-running Mafia series is getting a new instalment from Brighton-based Hangar 13 called Mafia: The Old Country.
Debut games from nervous developers
King of Meat, a Rick and Morty-style multiplayer game, a cartoonish quiz show colosseum from Glowmade, will let players create daunting challenges for other players to take on, like a cartoonish Takeshi Castle. There was also a new co-op action-adventure game that reminded me a bit of Hi-Fi Rush, called Lynked: Banner of the Spark, from new studio FuzzyBot, in which you kill evil robots and save the nicer ones so you can fuse them with your arm and gain combat powers.
Zombies and/or men with guns
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has been shown off yet again ahead of its October release, showing off a full level of its single-player campaign, a mind-numbingly ridiculous Cold War action diversion. (The character’s analog camera is treated with all the reverence of a gun, right down to the elaborate reloading animations.) Techland is adding a new zombie game to the Dying Light series, The Beast, promising another 20 hours of open-world undead parkour action. You can shoot more zombies in the upcoming eight-player co-op survival game, No More Room in Hell 2. And Arc Raiders, a co-op survival shooter that was previously announced as free-to-play, is now coming in 2025, available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. No Be free to play.
The most anticipated television link
The most obvious tie-in to the Netflix video game was a 100-player squid game. I’m surprised it took this long. It’s a Fall Guys-style selection of sadistic challenges, and it looks like a lot of fun.
Meanwhile, Deadpool director Tim Miller tearfully introduced his company Blur’s new Amazon Prime television series, Secret Level. It’s an anthology similar to Blur’s Love, Death + Robots, described as a love letter to video games. It’s due out in December.
Games I don’t understand it, but it will probably sell millions of copies.
Infinity Nikki, which promises to be “the most welcoming open-world game,” looks totally baffling. It features a pink-haired anime girl and a host of weird, cute singing creatures, like a kawaii Noah’s Ark. I don’t know what to make of it.
And Dune’s upcoming MMO, Dune: Awakening, which features hundreds of players exploring the desert planet of Arrakis competing for abandoned technology and spice sources, got a big reaction in the room.
For horror fans with good taste
A trailer for a new game from the guys at Little Nightmares over at Tarsier looked super promising: it’s an intricate and intimate side-scrolling horror game. called ReanimalMeanwhile, Little Nightmares has been handed over to a new developer, Supermassive, with a long history in the horror genre. A trailer has also been released, which retains the Tim Burton-esque toy style of the first two games.
Games that It looked particularly cool
With its majestic and intimidating creatures, extreme weather, and expensive-looking production, Monster Hunter Wilds looks incredible. I’m a long-time fan of the series and can’t wait for this new game to come out. Stay tuned for an interview with its developers on the site soon.
There was a long lead-up to Civilization VII, the latest attempt to capture the messy entirety of human history on a computer monitor.
Meanwhile, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage It features four guys hanging out in the summer of 1995, playing music in their garage and sharing their hopes for the future, but the future doesn’t turn out as they expected.
Finally, I will be keeping an eye on Herdingplanned for 2025. This game has a Last Guardian vibe about a boy herding huge horned beasts through mountainous locations.
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What to play?
I’ve been looking forward to it Wizards of the tactical gap For years: It’s the third installment of the Defenestration Trilogy, a series of indie games about interesting ways to throw enemies out of windows, from the unfairly funny and talented developer Tom Francis. (Disclosure: I’ve known Tom since he was a video game journalist.) In this subversive, turn-based military tactics game, you play as a group of misfit wizards whose general uselessness as humans is balanced by very useful powers, like being able to see one second into the future or resurrect the dead.
Our reviewer Rick Lane was totally enamored with it, writing that “its combination of cleverly flexible puzzles and deliriously funny writing would be enough to make it fit for active duty on anyone’s gaming device. But what qualifies it for Special Arcane Service is the boldness with which it confronts the murky morality of military-themed games.”
Available in: personal computer
Approximate playing time: 15 hours
What to read
The people behind Two Point Hospital and Two Point Campus have announced Two Points Museum, A fun and cartoony museum management game in the spirit of the old Theme Park titles.
Fulfilling the dreams of retro gaming dads around the world, The collector Ibrahim Al-Nasser Connected 444 consoles to a single TVwhich earned it a very specific Guinness World Record. I dread to think what that HDMI switch will look like.
Video game actors have spoken to the BBC about being asked to Performing sex scenes without warning – another problem caused by the prevalence of non-disclosure agreements in video game acting, which often prevents them from seeing a script until they arrive on set.
The video game industry has finally got its own… Sunday morning rich listwhich lists 30 of the UK’s richest developersYouTubers and other high earners. I enjoyed Garry’s Mod creator Garry Newman’s response on LinkedIn: “Success can be measured in a number of ways: units sold, positive feedback, or staff quality of life. Personally, I measure my success by how much money I make.”
What to click on?
Block of questions
Prompted by the recent release of the brilliantly entertaining Thank God You’re Here!, the reader… Ant ask:
“Comedy as a video game genre is quite poorly representedI spent most of my childhood dreaming of a Red dwarf-Sci-fi themed game, part point-and-click adventure (the true comedy genre, if we have one), part space exploration game. What are your favorite, funniest games of all time? And what classic British comedy would you like to see translated into gaming immortality?
Firstly, a moment of appreciation for the brilliantly disgusting Yorkshire comedy version of TGYH: I watched it on holiday and thought it was brilliant. And after finishing it, I had exactly the same thought. Very There are few games that set out to be funny, and even fewer actually succeed. Many games are clever, but they have rarely made me laugh out loud. Aside from the obvious point-and-click responses, Gloomy Fandango, Monkey Island – I thought South Park: The Stick of Truth It was more fun than the show had been in years. Inept music game Trombone Champion It’s extremely fun, just like absurd sports games. What is golf? and What is the car?? But my all-time favorite remains Octodad: The Greatest Catchwhich brought a unique and playful take on physical comedy to the table that left me breathless with laughter. (Stay tuned for the upcoming film.) Baby steps (for more on this.)
And as for which British comedy would translate well to a video game: tell me. The Mighty Boosh It wouldn’t work very well as a bizarre point-and-click adventure. Ideally, it would have lots of action and rhythm sections for the songs.
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