Everything That Happened at Gamescom 2018
This week saw the glorious masses of video gaming descend on the beautiful German cathedral city of Cologne, for the annual Gamescom event — Europe’s largest celebration of lovely games.
Kotaku UK’s news editor Laura Dale has been reporting from the ground, alongside Kotaku Australia editor Alex Walker, and there’s been a hell of a lot of news and hands-on opportunities. We’ve published many dozens of stories while the conference has been ongoing and, now that things are winding down, here’s the highlights from one week in Cologne.
News and reveals
- Saints Row The Third is coming to Switch. (!)
- During Microsoft’s Inside Xbox stream, a limited edition PUBG controller was shown off. It’s quite pretty.
- No more preview programme – PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds 1.0 is launching on Xbox One on 4th September.
- We got a good look at the camp-building elements of Fallout 76, and they look a lot like Fallout 4‘s settlements.
- Devil May Cry 5 got a release date – it’s coming 8th March 2019.
- There’s now a mobile app for Xbox Game Pass subscribers, so you can manage your games away from your console.
- A Plague Tale: Innocence got a new gameplay trailer. Well, I say ‘trailer’, but it was 16 minutes long.
- Deck13 released the first gameplay trailer for The Surge 2. And it looks a lot like The Surge 1 (is that good?)
- Re-Legion is an RTS about creating your own cult, and it looks pretty neat.
- Ubisoft’s Trials Rising has a release date — 12th February — and it’s getting a beta next month.
- We learned that Forza Horizon 4‘s minimum specs on PC are lower than those for Forza Horizon 3. Cool!
- Call of Cthulhu got a new trailer. It looks pretty scary, and has a swish cigarette lighter you use to barely illuminate sinister darkened rooms.
- Ubisoft released a story trailer for the upcoming Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, which looks as epic as ever. Ubi later confirmed that there’ll be no Assassin’s Creed title in 2019.
- Microsoft gave us a little glimpse at Ori and the Will of the Wisps, and we learned it’s getting a special speedrunning mode, Spirit Trials.
- We’re getting a new Settlers game in 2019, a relaunch of the franchise.
- Bandai Namco revealed six new fighters jumping into the fray in Jump Force.
- We got a new trailer for Life is Strange 2, as well as 19 minutes of gameplay from the first episode.
- Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, the new game from FromSoft, has a release date: 22nd March 2019.
Interviews
Hands-on and impressions
- In terms of the biggest upcoming titles, we were blown away by the Cyberpunk 2077 presentation, and just one hour with it wasn’t enough.
- We got hands-on with Devil May Cry V. It’s absolutely fabulous in motion… but that mad lad Nero couldn’t stop ripping off his arms.
- That delayed Switch port of Dark Souls Remastered was playable on the show floor, and we were very impressed.
- In what will surprise nobody, Smash Bros. Ultimate feels like a shinier version of Smash Wii U – which is fine by us.
- We played Kingdom Hearts III and deemed it the closest thing you’ll see to an interactive Pixar movie.
- Playing Stellaris: Console Edition with a controller was much better than we expected.
- We took Super Mario Party for a spin, and (obviously) it was a lot of fun.
- Starlink, Ubisoft’s upcoming toys-to-life space shooter is engaging, whether or not you play with a toy ship on top of your controller.
- Battlefield V just has too much film grain.
- Close To The Sun, a horror adventure game, is basically an indie Bioshock without the combat.
- Supermarket Shriek is a game about a man and a goat who are stuck in a shopping trolley. It’s as bizarre as it sounds.
- We played indie golf game What The Golf and were impressed by the dad joke mastery on show.
- We took Rico for a spin, a slow motion buddy cop co-op shooter.
- Our time with Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes didn’t leave the best impression, unfortunately.
- Man of Medan feels a lot like Until Dawn, but that’s certainly not a bad thing.
- Twin Mirror, the upcoming game from Bandai Namco and Dontnod, intrigued us with its magical brain powers.
- We tried Biomutant, and it put a giant smile on our faces. Why aren’t more people talking about this game?
- The upcoming Scarf is tied-up with moral choices, but left us cold.
Oh, and Laura wished for her own personal HUD or mini-map as she tried to battle through the crazy crowds. In case you’re wondering just how massive and busy Gamescom is, by the way, here are some pictures.