Before the show floor opened at Gamescom 2019, Game Awards creator Geoff Keighley hosted a preshow livestream dubbed Opening Night Live. The show was packed with announcements and reveals for hotly anticipated games like Death Stranding and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. If you didn’t have a chance to catch the fireworks, we’ve rounded up all of the announcements right here.
Microsoft showed off a new campaign trailer for Gears 5 that features a supercool paraglider you use on ice. We also got a brief glimpse at Horde gameplay, which will give players Ultimate abilities and the option to play as Jack, a hovering robot that can heal teammates. In addition to the Terminator crossover, Gears 5 will have a Halo: Reach character pack featuring Kat and Emile. The Gears 5 standard edition launches September 10 on Xbox One and PC, while the Ultimate Edition lands September 6.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is getting an early alpha on PlayStation 4 that starts this Friday, August 23, and runs through the weekend. The alpha is open to all PS4 owners and will feature the new 2v2 mode Gunfight.
Hideo Kojima showed off a couple of new Death Stranding characters, including Mama, who has an invisible baby it seems. Mama’s baby was apparently born in the other dimension, but they are still attached by the umbilical cord. Mama cannot move from her location. This doesn’t make any sense really, until you consider that this is a Hideo Kojima game.
Kojima also showed off Death Stranding gameplay. After waking up, Norman Reedus’ character, Sam, has a nice bathroom break in the middle of a wide open mountain range (no trees around). Then he goes on a scenic stroll, climbs a mountain with an enormous retractable ladder, and enters a small building to watch a hologram message from Geoff Keighley’s character (yes, he’s in the game, too). After Sam fell off the side of a cliff, his BB (baby in the pod) started crying. Sam rocked it, and then it giggled and laughed for the duration of the trailer.
Death Stranding still seems like a really bizarre game the more we learn about it. We cannot wait for November 8, when Death Stranding launches on PS4.
The helicopter-focused simulation series is getting rebooted nearly 20 years later as a team-based online multiplayer game, featuring both choppers and fighter jets. You can get a sneak peek at the aerial combat early later this year in beta before Comanche enters early access in 2020.
EA debuted gameplay for the recently announced Need for Speed Heat, the latest entry in the long-running racing franchise. The gameplay trailer showed off how the new loop works. By day, you race in a sanctioned series. Cops will still pull you over for speeding and other offenses, but things don’t get really hostile until night falls After dark, you take part in high-stakes street races to earn Rep. The risks are higher though, as corrupt cops will try to steal your wealth.
Need for Speed Heat also has a companion app called Heat Studio, which is available now on iOS and Android. The app lets you customize cars and then send them straight into the game.
The awesome indie horror game Little Nightmares returns with Little Nightmares 2 in 2020 for Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The sequel has two protagonists, with Six being joined by Mono in her adventure. The journey takes place outdoors this time around. It will still be primarily about sneaking and defense, but the pair will have some kitchen utensils at their disposal for offense.
Monster Hunter World: Iceborne arrives September 6 on PS4 and Xbox One. If you absolutely cannot wait for the huge expansion, Capcom showed off gameplay featuring Velkhana, the Elder Dragon who serves as the main antagonist in Iceborne.
Gearbox outlined some of the new endgame content Vault Hunters will find in Borderlands 3. Proving Grounds is a new mode that sees players searching for clues to ancient writings and then squaring off against waves of enemies under tight time constraints. Six Proving Grounds challenges will be available at release. Additionally, the Circle of Slaughter player-versus-player mode from the original Borderlands makes its return in Borderlands 3.
FIFA 20 doesn’t have a traditional story mode like recent iterations, but it does have a cool new mode called Volta that EA showed off at Gamescom. In Volta, you create a character and partake in 3v3, 4v4, and 5v5 matches in 17 indoor and outdoor locations across five continents. These include makeshift arenas overlooking the New York skyline and in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Volta has both a single-player campaign and online leagues. Volta will be available in PS4, Xbox One, and PC versions of the game when FIFA 20 launches September 24.
The latest trailer for Destiny 2 makes it clear that the Vex are out for Guardian blood. In the trailer, the hive of Vex are shown to be assembling in staggering numbers for the Season of Undying, which kicks off October 1. The trailer focuses solely on the Season of Undying, which is separate from Destiny 2: Shadowkeep, the next paid expansion dropping October 1, as well alongside the New Light update.
Gamescom’s Opening Night Live was packed with games. Below are a list of games that were announced or received new trailers.
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.