If you’re headed to San Diego Comic-Con 2019, or at least staying tuned in for all the announcements, prepare yourself for some serious gaming news. The latest update for the show’s panels includes a synopsis of the Marvel Gaming panel — and there are some surprises planned.
There’s always hope that one of the year’s Comic-Con events will yield some cool gaming news alongside all the talk about movies, comics, and film. Typically, fans are left wanting, but San Diego Comic-Con 2019 is going to be flush with gaming content. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order, Marvel’s Iron Man VR, and Marvel’s Avengers will give the panel crew plenty to discuss.
The panel will be hosted by Kinda Funny’s Greg Miller and Marvel Games Vice President and Creative Director Bill Rosemann. Special guests “from titles throughout the Marvel Games family” will also make appearances throughout the panel. The key draw will be the “many unannounced surprises and panel exclusives.”
The majority of those surprises will likely involve the Nintendo Switch exclusive Marvel Ultimate Alliance: The Black Order. MUA is an isometric dungeon brawler featuring a large cast of Marvel comics heroes and villains. While The Black Order will hew closely to the recent Avengers movies, the game is pulling from the entire world of Marvel and isn’t limited to just those characters seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That means players will be able to choose to play as Avengers, X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and more. The game launches during San Diego Comic-Con 2019 so some of its post-launch content could be teased.
Marvel’s Iron Man VR lets gamers who have invested in the PlayStation VR headset step into the suit of one of Marvel’s greatest heroes. The game was revealed during PlayStation’s first State of Play livestream, but there’s a lot of gamers don’t know about it. The most cherished nugget of info is when the game will be released, and SDCC is a perfect avenue for that reveal.
Last but not least is Marvel’s Avengers, the Square-Enix action game being developed by Crystal Dynamics. It’s dangerous to expect a lot more information after the game was revealed a month ago at E3 but there’s a chance we could see uncut gameplay for the first time. Marvel’s Avengers is a game that Crystal Dynamics hopes to unravel for years after its initial launch, and the developers will have to sell gamers on buying into such a game for the long term. SDCC could be the next phase of the pitch.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.