Animeph

Gamescom in Germany is still the world’s biggest open gaming convention with 370.000 visitors and more than 1.000 exhibitors this year. Giants of the industry are presenting their newst developments in open booths, trailers and often hands-on gameplay. The following are some of the highlights we have seen this year.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a highly anticipated sci-fi FPS shooter by CD-Project RED, that is based on a tabletop RPG. It has been in development for quite some time now and is scheduled for release on April 16th 2020 for PC and consoles. Current gameplay fotage suggest Cyberpunk to be a very athmospheric and graphically advanced story driven open world FPS. We do have high hopes for this game, especially given the developer’s high reputation earned with their previous open world game Witcher 3.

Another much anticipated title we got to test is Final Fantasy 7 Remake by developer Square Enix. This game is a completely new and graphically stunning game based on the cult classic original from 1997. Many fans who grew up with the original have strong opinions about how much adjustments to the core story and combat gameplay are acceptable for this to be a worthy successor. From what little I got to test, I am very happy with with new combat mechanics that combine the old tactical turn based combat with a more modern real-time action-driven one. FF7 Remake is scheduled to release in March 3rd 2020 for PC and consoles.

We also got to see more of Death Stranding, a game by Japanese star developer Hideo Kojima. The main character is voiced and designed after The Walking Dead star actor Norman Reedus. He is tasked to deliver goods in a post-apocalyptical world plagued by invisible ghosts. We hope this mystery-horror game will come with an interesting story line, twists and a lot of cut-scnenes, as would be expected by Kojima’s games.

Japanese Developer Bandai Namco had seven titles to present this year, many of which including hands-on gameplay. These titles are Dragon Ball Z Kakarot (action RPG), Code Vein (a vampire Dark Sould type game in anime graphics), One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 (dynasty warrors type game), Rad, One Punch Man A Hero Nobody Knows, Disney Tsum Tsum Festival and The Dark Pictures Anthology Man of Medan (horror game). This is a big line-up with many titles anime fans will be happy to get once released.

Dying Light 2 by developer Techland is an open world zombie RPG with parkour elements. This year we got to see a gameplay demo and are very impressed with the dynamic physics and stunning graphics this game has to offer. This is probably the best iteration of the zombi-slashing gerne and we are eagerly awaiting the release on spring of 2020 for PC and consoles.

Borderlands 3 by developer Gearbox is the 4th installment of this gerne defining loot-and-shoot FPS classic. Hands-on gameplay at the booth was very promising and we are already eagerly awaiting the release on September 13th 2019 for PC and consoles.

Those were our highlights in terms of new titels for this year. Big thanks to the Gamescom organizers for bringing together developers and gamers on such a large scale!