Summer truly began today: Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest returned for its 2025 edition. The video game showcase has only grown in the past few years, filling a void left behind by E3’s demise. It is now the summer’s must watch gaming event as it’s always packed with new announcements. This year’s show tried to live up to those lofty expectations, but it wasn’t quite as action-packed as Sony’s excellent State of Play earlier this week.
Sure, we got new trailers for upcoming games like Mafia: The Old Country and Death Stranding 2: On The Beach. We even got a big shocker in the form of Resident Evil Requiem. Much of the show was dedicated to smaller games, though. We saw tons of Unreal Engine-powered action games from small studies, top-down roguelikes, and multiplayer shooters with a unique twist. While there were some neat highlights and surprises, it was definitely on the weaker side as far as Keighley’s showcases go. Even so, there was a lot to see. Check out our full list of announcements from the show.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach comes out later this month, so of course we got a Hideo Kojima appearance. It wouldn’t be a Geoff Keighley show without that. Kojima did an on-stage interview where he talked about the design ethos of the sequel and shared a new clip. The cutscene shared more information about two new characters played by Alissa Jung and Luca Marinelli, who were first revealed at South by Southwest. Marinelli’s character is another porter named Neil who has some mysterious secret involving a mark on his hand. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach launches on June 26 and there will be another event showcasing gameplay on Sunday.
Sonic Crossworlds got a brand new trailer revealing a September 25 release date. The bigger news, though, is that it’s getting a bunch of cameo characters including Hatsune Miku, Persona 5‘s Joker, and Ichiban Kasuga. It will also get some sort of Minecraft crossover featuring our good pal Steve.
Bandai Namco’s Code Vein is getting a sequel. Code Vein 2 got a cinematic debut trailer that talked up its time travel-focused story alongside some dramatic music. We got a glimpse at gameplay too, and it was filled with the exact kind of anime Dark Souls action that made the first game a cult hit. It will launch in 2026.
It’s a surprise it’s taken this long, but Game of Thrones is getting a big video game. Game of Thrones: War for Westeros got a cinematic trailer that showed Jon Snow battling the White Walker. We didn’t learn too much about it, but it seems to be more of a big budget affair than any Game of Thrones game to date.
Indie game enthusiasts have waited a long time for this news: Mina the Hollower is launching on October 31. Yacht Club Games’ new retro title is its follow up to Shovel Knight, introducing a brand-new character and created in a style that mimics classic Game Boy games. A demo for it is available now on Steam.
Deadpool is the latest superhero to get the VR treatment. Twisted Pixel announced that its first game under Meta’s ownership is Marvel’s Deadpool VR, a bloody first-person action game filled with swords and quips. A trailer showed several clips of the Merc with a Mouth shooting down his foes and plowing through them with a car. Digital Trends went hands on with the project prior to its announcement today, and we walked away surprised by how quick and smooth its action is. Marvel’s Deadpool VR will launch later this year for Meta Quest 3 and 3S.
Add one more game on the release date calendar for the back half of 2025, because Dying Light: The Beast launches on August 22. We got a new trailer to celebrate the news, which showed off plenty of rooftop parkour, grotesque monsters, and gore.
Tribute Games is creating the first Scott Pilgrim game in a decade. Scott Pilgrim Ex is a new beat em up made in collaboration the comic’s creators. Bryan Lee O’Malley is writing the story and Anamanaguchi are working on the soundtrack. It’s a four-player online game that’s scheduled to launch in 2026.
It wouldn’t be a Summer Game Fest without a big surprise: Splitgate 2 is out right now. 1047 celebrated the launch of its new portal shooter with a brand-new trailer hyping up its action. You can play it today for free.
Back at The Game Awards, Ryu Ga Gotoku stole the show with a mysterious trailer for its next game: Project Century. At the time, it seemed like it would be a while until we saw it again, but it showed up at Summer Game Fest with another enticing trailer. This one showed off much more of its down and dirty brawling, as well as its neo-noir setting. There was lots of jazz. It also has a new name: Stranger than Heaven.
After a strange teaser earlier in the show, Capcom closed the show with an official trailer for Resident Evil Requiem. The trailer introduced a character named Grace who is sent to investigate a case that seemingly intersects with her mother’s murder. Things go south fast from there, as the trailer moves into a destroyed version of Racoon City. Keighley says that it’s a big shift for the franchise, trading survival horror for cinematic action. Surprisingly, it’s not far off either. It launches on February 27 and will be playable at Gamescom this year.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.