Hello! Welcome to the latest Geeky Brummie Gaming Roundup!

This week, Gamescom!

Gamescom Announcements

Gamescom is currently underway over in Germany, and that means a bunch of new announcements related to games filling the rest of the year, along with what we can expect in 2023. As always, the show kicked off with the Opening Night Live show, hosted by Geoff Keighley, on Tuesday night. Here are a handful of the big announcements.

A bunch of games got release date announcements. These included Return to Monkey Island, which is out in September and comes with a useless pre-order bonus, Sonic Frontiers, which is out in November and is looking marginally better than some of the lacklustre previews it’s previously received, and Goat Simulator 3, which is also out in November and looks like the exact same joke repeated a million times over. Also, Gotham Knights has seen its release date move forward by four days. Which feels unnecessary, but that’s neat, I guess.

New announcements included the reveal of a Dune survival MMO called Dune: Awakening, which was shown with a CGI trailer featuring the Litany Against Fear narrated over the top. There was also the reveal of New Tales from the Borderlands, which should be good if you liked the first one. And bafflingly, we got a reveal that Killer Klowns from Outer Space is getting a Dead By Daylight style multiplayer spin-off. Yes, the 80s b-movie. No, I don’t know why.

A few previously announced games got a further look. Telltale’s game adaptation of The Expanse got a behind the scenes look with some gameplay, with a vague release date sometime next year. Rick & Morty creator Justin Roiland’s shooter High on Life showed off gameplay, with the general consensus being that a game where every weapon talks incessantly might be a little bit obnoxious. And Lies of P got a significant showcase and has proven to be a highlight of the show for many, myself included – imagine if Bloodborne and Dishonored had a baby and then raised it exclusively on the story of Pinocchio and you’re pretty much there. It looks amazing.

It would be a Geoff Keighley fronted show without some utterly baffling announcements, and there were plenty. A big announcement from PlayStation turned out to be…a customisable DualSense controller for PS5. Okay. Hideo Kojima popped up (of course) to promote his latest project, his…podcast? That feels like a Hard Drive headline but it was real. And finally, the Pokémon Mini. No, not a mini console where you can play Pokémon games, I mean an electric Mini Aceman concept car with Pikachu on it and a games system built in. If I’m honest, I still don’t know what that is.

Finally, the show ended with the return of Dead Island 2, which got a teaser trailer in 2014 and then promptly disappeared as the project got shopped around to different developers. It’s back now, featuring another CGI trailer where a man wanders around a zombie-infested LA. It’s out in February, apparently.

The full show can be found here if you want to see the other announcements.

New Releases

The first new release this week is Pac-Man World: Re-Pac (PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox), a remaster of 1999’s Pac-Man World. It’s a classic 3D platformer where the dot-munching yellow guy runs around Ghost Island trying to get his family back by collecting fruit and butt-bouncing.

A bunch of smaller indie releases from this week. Slaycation Paradise (PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox) is a tower defence/twin-stick shooter hybrid set in an interstellar apocalypse resort. I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (PC, PlayStation, Switch) is an RPG with deckbuilding elements where you play as a teenager growing up in an offworld colony.

If you like Formula 1 but prefer the technical and tactical aspects over the actual driving, F1 Manager 2022 (PC, PlayStation, Xbox) has you covered. You get to manage a team, yell instructions about pitting (through options, but feel free to do it for real while playing if you wish) and fire Pierre Gasly* without a second thought. Good for those who are into this sort of thing.

*I don’t actually know who he is, I got his name from a YouTube video

Soul Hackers 2 (PC, PlayStation, Xbox) is the latest spin-off from Atlus’ massive Megami Tensei series, the fifth game in the Devil Summoner subseries. You play as two supernatural beings looking to prevent a cataclysmic event. It’s exactly what you’d expect from an Atlus JRPG – anime visuals, turn-based combat, demons galore.

Saints Row (PC, PlayStation, Xbox) is the newest game in the Saints Row series, and as the non-indicative name suggests, it’s a full reboot of the franchise after things got a little too wacky by the end of Saints Row 4. However, reviews are intensely mixed on this one, with the writing being a major frustration for some people. Do your research first, I guess!

Game of the Week

Game of the Week this week is Midnight Fight Express (PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One), an action-packed brawler mostly made by one man, with the assistance of stuntman Eric Jacobus to create the fluid action.

You play as a mysterious character named Babyface who must battle their way through a dark, gritty cityscape for reasons. What this means is you go around punching a lot of people, occasionally chucking bits of scenery around and generally looking cool and stylish in the process. It’s an interactive 80s action movie, basically.

Midnight Fight Express looks rad, from its smooth animation to the sheer variety of moves available to the player, and I can see this gaining a pretty decent audience.

And that’s all for now! See you again next week with more from the world of gaming!