Welcome to The Daily RoundUp where we’re less concerned with being daily and more concerned with the news of the day. Today is August 20th and…

Yesterday saw Geoff Keighley’s take the stage for Gamescom Opening Night Live, bombarding us with reveals, new trailers and release dates. Lets take a look at the most tangible pieces of news and put some exciting new games on your radar.

First, the pre-show:

Putting aside the ethics of having a pre-show that does the same thing as the main show, I found some of the best reveals of the night to be in this 30 minute segment.

Long Gone

A 3D pixel narrative adventure game decades into living in a post zombie-apocalypse world. It draws you in with an incredible art style and unique camera angle before it presents you with intriguing lore and immersive mechanics. It was a standout for me and you can Wishlist it on Steam.

Routine

On the slightly more intense end of the horror spectrum we have Routine – likely my favourite reveal of the whole night. This is an 80s styled retro-futuristic sci-fi horror game and the first title from Lunar Software. It sees you exploring an abandoned lunar base and reminds me a lot of Alien: Isolation. Incredibly immersive presentation and a visual uniqueness that is hard to describe without seeing it for yourself, Routine looks set to be a really cool experience – especially if having to take photos to see in the dark is any indication – it is set to release before the end of the year and you can also Wishlist it on Steam.

PVKK

The pre-show also saw the announcement of PVKK which is short for an incredibly long German word: Planetenverteidigungskanonenkommandant. You are the steward of some gigantic planetary defence cannon that you are tasked to maintain and use against incoming threats. It seems to have light puzzle solving aspects and a narrative that hints towards the slightly messed up. I have a good feeling about this one so while it has no set release date I would recommend a Wishlist.

Valor Mortis

The final game I feel deserves highlighting from the pre-show was Valor Mortis – the alternative history Napoleonic 1st person souls-like from the Ghostrunner devs. This is one you have to see to believe but it certainly seems to carry the 1st person action skills that they natured with Ghostrunner. You can currently request access to a playtest over on Steam.

The pre-show also saw: a new Bubsy game; a retro He-Man beat-em-up called Dragon Pearl of Destruction; a new trailer and character for Absolum; another action game inspired by Chinese mythology called Swords of Legends; a cinematic trailer for a truck driving game called Road Kings and a Pac-Man crossover for Sonic CrossWorlds.

An interview was also featured for Keeper, the new Double Fine game, which I wish was longer as that the sort of thing you can get more use out of in a pre-show.

As for the main show, I was a touch disappointed this year. Once again it was overcrowded with cinematic trailers, no real extended looks at gameplay, and a large percentage of re-treading ground to present a glimpse of new information. And, when considering Keighley’s comments on Gamescom taking over the spirit of E3, this place the show as a perfect example of what exactly was lost with the collapse of E3.

That’s a bigger topic than this article however and there were still good announcements. I’m going to go more chronological for this section due to the sheer volume.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7

After Black Ops 6 turned out to be a nice change of pace, taking a longer development cycle and featuring some highlight campaign missions, people were understandably a bit disheartened at the return to a yearly release and the immediate follow up of another Black Ops. The Call of Duty team are taking this in stride, showing off a cinematic look at the campaign and reveal that it can be played in up to 4-player co-op for the first time. They are making some bold claims regarding the innovative nature of this entry and spoke highly of some sort of challenging PvE endgame.

Closer looks at Multiplayer and Zombies will be at Call of Duty Next on September 30th.

Dead Ops Arcade is also returning which I won’t like had me feeling a type of way.

Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight

Following on from Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, Traveller’s Tales are returning to another of their more successful lines of lego games with Legacy of the Dark Knight. It aims to cover the entire story from Batman’s origin all the way to his status as a legend and will be referencing every film on the way, including tv shows and comics with Tom Hardy’s Bane now voiced by Matt Berry. It looks like it plays similar to the Arkham series with its combat and stealth mechanics but we shall have to see for ourselves when it launches next year.

Monster Hunter Wilds and Final Fantasy XIV crossover

Omega will be making its way over to Monster Hunter Wilds and Arkveld will be making the return trip to Final Fantasy. Both games will also see various cosmetics.

While this is a cool crossover and a fun follow up to their previous relations during Monster Hunter World, I want to point out that this comes at a really bad time for Monster Hunter. The recent Steam reviews sit at Mostly Negative and have managed to drag the overall reviews done into Mixed and it is all to do with performance. While people do have issues with the design of Wilds, it is the diabolical PC performance issues that have become a big issue for Monster Hunter. Issues that seem to persist as, while there is evidence that Capcom is attempting to remedy them, the impression that Capcom has effectively taken the money and ran has already been established, seemingly choosing to push out new updates anyway and let players suffer.

This is likely emphasised by Capcom’s current hot streak and wide spread success making the decisions seem purposeful.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Nothing crazy here but following the games incredible success its story DLC – The Order of Giants – was given a September 4th release date and confirmed to be heading to the Switch 2. I’m a bit confused about whether that is the same date or the Switch 2 launch will come later but I guess we’ll see in two weeks.

John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando

This saw a gameplay reveal at the show last night and while, on the surface, it doesn’t present as much more than a sort of zombie horde shooter, it is developed by the team that brought us Space Marine 2 – so I hold out hold that this could have some serious solid gameplay.

Death by Scrolling

A vertical scrolling roguelike where you are forever being chased by the bottom of the screen… and death himself. You know the gist, slash your way through anyone that stands in your way to get stronger all while trying to avoid your immanent demise. Now there also the additional layer of never stop moving. Looks promising.

Zero Parades

Caution ahead. Zero Parades is a new CRPG from the studio behind Disco Elysium which naturally is a very exciting prospect and has the art work to back it up. However, a lot of the people who worked on Disco Elysium are no longer at the studio. It doesn’t mean Zero Parades won’t match up to Disco Elysium but it would be wise to temper your expectations.

La Divina Commedia

A new Dark Fantasy ARPG from the developers of Enotria: The Last Song, Jyamma Games have swapped out the Italian culture palate to tackle Dante’s Divine Comedy. I was mostly just curious by the designs but a closer look at their website makes the game sound quite interesting. Mechanics like ‘Sin Alignment’ where conforming to one of the seven deadly sins seems to impact abilities and story particularly is something I’d like to see play out. It also mentions craftable weapons and gears as well as procedural extraction dungeons. It’s sounding very replayable and not what I expected upon first glance. No release date for this one yet but I think it will be worth keeping an eye on.

Project Spectrum

While Delta Force doesn’t interest me too much, Project Spectrum is a bit more my speed. Seems to be a PvEvP extraction shooter with big horror elements especially in the hallucinations department. Not too concrete on what it is just yet but the game looked interesting and seems to have a mode where you play as the monster which is always fun and never horribly balanced.

Ghost of Yotei

A small new story trailer after the big direct a few weeks ago but the important thing is that they confirmed that Legends will be making a return from Ghost of Tsushima post launch as a free update – Legends being the co-op class based raid like mode. I never played Legends but it seemed really cool and I’m excited to see how they expand on it from the first game.

Resident Evil: Requiem

Realistically we didn’t see enough for me to put here but it’s my website so who’s going to stop me.

They gave us a new story trailer that dived into the backstory of the game and showed a teeny tiny snippet at what appears to be a prologue chapter of sorts. With this trailer, the start of the game is becoming a lot clearer and I’m jealous of anyone that gets to play the Gamescom demo.

Black Myth: Zhong Kui

Game Science hit a home run with Black Myth: Wukong that opened the floodgates for this current wave we’re seeing of games utilising Chinese mythology and folklore – a solid action game that looked gorgeous and retold a classic story. It seems they have chosen the direction they want to go in and it seems to be to continue adapting these incredible myths, moving their focus from Son Wukong to Zhong Kui – a vanquisher of ghosts who wanders between heaven and hell. But that’s about all I know outside of ‘he was in Smite’ so we’ll have to wait to learn more when we get something more substantial than a cinematic trailer.

There were some further updates that I will rattle off here:

• Lord of the Fallen 2 announced
• A Sekiro anime title No Defeat is coming 2026
• Dawn of War 4 announced
• New Onimusha: Way of the Sword trailer – continues to look sick af
• Daemon x Machina set for September 5th
• New Deadpool VR trailer showed off Mojo – shame VR isn’t more accessible
• World of Tanks is getting a 2.0
• I’ve reach the point in my notes where I start complaining about games only being around for 20 seconds
• Gamescom cares highlighed some games about the importance of democracy and how easily it can be corrupted – The Darkest Files / Compensation not Guaranteed / Glasshouse
• Unbeatable looks to be a rhythm game with a really nice visual style set for November
• Fortnite is getting a Squid Games collab solidifying Squid Games as a part of the problem it was trying to speak out against
• New Ninja Gaiden 4 trailer – refer to Onimusha
• Cinder City – An MMO shooter from NC Soft that I’m not currently convinced is real
• Time Takers – also from NC Soft an equally unsure
• Cronos: The New Dawn can be pre-order for 48 hours early access but please don’t do that
• Outer Worlds 2 Companion trailer
• Fate Trigger looks like some sort of anime shooter idk
• Moonlighter 2 hits Early Access October 23rd – I played the demo and do recommend
• Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2 finally gets an October 21st release date
• Enshrouded is getting a big update titled Wake of the Water
• Age of Empires 4 is coming to PS5 alongside a new expansion
• Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is getting a second story update with Legacy of the Forge September 9th
• Cult of the Lamb ‘Major Paid Expansion’ Woolhaven early 2026
• World of Warcraft: Midnight opening cinematic was shown
• World of Tanks: Heat announced – your guess is as good as mine

And that is more or less everything. Anything I didn’t mention was either just a vague cinematic that I haven’t had the time to check out or one of various anime gatcha games so sorry to the gatcha game fans.

That closes out Gamescom Opening Night Live (thank god, its taken me longer to write this than I care to admit) but the event is far from over as Gamescom itself will take the rest of the week and I will endeavour to keep you updated on all the fancy demos people are playing.