During Gamescom’s opening night we got to see some really great games gearing up for launch. Here’s a take on some of my favourites.

This list is in no particular order, probably mostly just as I discovered them.

Borderlands 4

I’ve not had much interest in Borderlands since the second iteration of the series but I have to give it to them, the trailer for this looks impressive.

Don’t labour under any delusion that the announcement for this is coincidentally so close to the movie’s release.

Batman: Arkham Shadow

The Arkham series of games has always been a big hit and I have thoroughly enjoyed them. This one is built for VR, and though I never played the previous Arkham VR title, I can’t help but feel you’d suffer from some serious motion sickness in this.

Civilization 7

To me the latest Civ games haven’t really lived up to the 4th iteration in the series, which to this day has been on of my favourites. That being said, Civilization 7 looks like it has some promising features, interesting tweaks to some of the annoying mechanics from, and a likeable art style. I am cautiously optimistic and I’m sure I’ll still lose a couple of hundred hours to this one.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

I know the Call of Duty franchise is quite popular for it’s multiplayer but that’s never really drawn me in. The single player story has always been fun and is usually executed well with the occasional miss (Looking at you, Modern Warfare 3). I have hopes that the story in this one will be just as interesting.

Goat Simulator Remastered

I…I don’t know what to say about this. The trailer alone is incredible, I know there is a lot of love for Goat Simulator, I don’t know what more to say.

Dying Light: The Beast

Dying Light has always been a popular, well executed, game. It’s got one of the best approaches to coop as well, allowing people to play through the game in a coop fashion while still competing with each other on various aspect.
Anything new to add to the series can only be a good thing.

Space Marine 2

It’s Space Marine 2! What more needs to be said? Being a big fan of the 40k universe, I am very excited for this.
Does that mean I’ll pre-order? No. But I’m still excited!

Predecessor 1.0

I’m ashamed to say that Predecessor’s early access has flown entirely under my radar. The 3rd person action MOBA-style gameplay looks promising with a good mix of strategy, teamwork, and action.

Path of Exile 2

We finally have an early access date for Path of Exile 2 - 15 November 2024. If you’re a fan of ARPGs but have yet to play Path of Exile, the latest season is pretty great definitely worth checking out, if only to build some hype for the coming sequel.

Dune Awakening

This is another title for which I’m cautiously optimistic. The gameplay looks as though it’s right out of the survival crafting textbook, though with the added benefit of the Arrakis backdrop. From what I’ve seen the gameplay doesn’t bring much new to the table that we haven’t already seen in other survival crafting games, outside of world specific things like converting blood to drinkable water.

What makes me more cautious is my pedantry around lore accuracy and whether they’ll stick to it. The trailer shows a player walking around in a t-shirt with no still suit, no mask, simply sticking to the shadows to stay alive in the heat of the planet. I’ve always been a bit of a Dune buff and even staying in the shadows would keep you alive for a matter of hours, maybe, as the ambient temperature would still be too high to survive in. But I won’t digress too much, let’s see how it pans out.

Reanimal

From the same developers that brought us Little Nightmares 1 and 2 comes a new IP in Reanimal. The atmosphere in this looks amazing and I will look forward to playing through it.

Little Nightmares 3

Speak of the devil. I thoroughly enjoyed the original Little Nightmares and though I had my qualms with the sequel (the controls to be specific), I will definitely look forward to the 3rd iteration.

Monument Valley 3

Monument Valley has always had a unique play style with the levels moving around the player as they work their way through puzzles. It was popular enough that it even featured on House of Cards. Here we are with a 3rd iteration and this one is exclusive to Netflix games.

Secret Level

Not so much a game but rather a TV anthology based on some of the games we’ve played over the past few years. This looks really promising, in a similar vein to Love, Death & Robots. I will have this on my watchlist.

Age of Mythology: Retold

We’ve been waiting for this for a while now, Age of Mythology is, in essence, Age of Empires with Mythology. You unleash the power of the pantheons to great effect and fun. My one caution here is that they’re touting various pre-order benefits and “planned expansions” which is just DLC that should have been part of the game, masquerading as something else.

Delta Force

Ah Delta Force, a big part of my childhood that used to be very popular at LAN parties before the likes of Counter Strike. I originally had hopes for this to take up the realistic shooter crown that Ubisoft has simply discarded with the latest Ghost Recon games, but it seems they’ve diverted and taken a different road.

Kingdom Come Deliverance II

Kingdom Come Deliverance, the original, was a brilliant game that favoured realism and difficulty over hand-holding and gimmicks. When you finally defeated a tough enemy you felt like you’d earned it. I look forward to the second iteration as I’m sure they’ll do good things.

Herdling

This looks like it could be a lot of fun. You play as a shepherd of sorts, herding this group of strange creatures around while exploring a world (that looks to be really interesting). Depending on the mechanics they implement this could be great fun and I’ll keep an eager eye on it.

Arena Breakout: Infinite

I downloaded this recently but haven’t gotten around to play it yet. It’s an extraction shooter with some more accessible features and what appears to be excellent gameplay. Think Tarkov without all the cheating, scamming, and credit card theft. Literally, the one time I was too lazy to create a virtual card to purchase a game was Tarkov, from the official site, and the next day I had to cancel the card due to fraudulent activity on it.

Another benefit to Arena Breakout is that it’s coming to Steam.

Masters of Albion

I left this one to last as I am very dubious around it. Peter Molyneux used to be legendary in the games industry working on some of the most incredible games of my childhood at Bullfrog and at Lionhead studios. I’m talking about games like Syndicate, Populous, Magic Carpet, Theme Park, Dungeon Keeper, Black & White, Fable, the list goes on.

After this, he went quiet for a bit and the last noteworthy thing from him was Godus and Godus Wars, two games that he amped up and blatantly lied to fans about before ultimately abandoning development of it entirely.

Now, supposedly he’s spoken to ex- Bullfrog and Lionhead folks and they’re working together on Masters of Albion.
The trailer shows a very rough version of the game, which would be fine if the gameplay loop didn’t seem as though it would get tedious incredibly quickly.

I’m not saying it’s going to be terrible, there is a non-zero chance that Molyneux pulls…something out of his hat and delivers an instant classic akin to Black & White, but recent history does not bode well.

All the rest

I haven’t shown everything that was announced here, and there could still be much more to come. Follow along over at the official Gamescom Website.

But remember we do not pre-order.