Summer Game Fest Round-Up

Since E3 is toast, Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest has stepped up to become the summer go-to place for big game reveals. Starting back in 2020 in Keighley’s spare bedroom, Summer Game Fest is now an ample replacement for the dead convention. This time around, they even had both a digital and a live fan audience.

Keighley has made a name for himself over the years as a game journalist. But, over the past several years, his “The Game Awards” near the end of each year has become a staple of the game industry. Summer Game Fest is basically that, but without any of the awards. As per normal, they jumped right into reveals.

First out of the gate was Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. This appears to be a reboot of the franchise from Ubisoft. The original Prince of Persia was a 2D platformer. This one takes a more 2.5D approach, but offers a familiar aesthetic. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is coming early next year, January 18, 2024.

Next up was some awesome reveals from the Mortal Kombat 1 trailer. Ed Boon, co-creator of the series, came out and talked about the Kameo assists in the game. They give additional movesets to your fight, including combos. Some of the Kameos are repeats from playable fighters, but not all of them.

The story takes place after Mortal Kombat 11, but is an entire reboot of the story itself. And they finally got Jean Claude Van Dam to play and voice Johnny Cage. We will find out more info throughout the summer.

So much news in such a small space of time

Throughout the event, we were given a deluge of smaller, but still important, news about various games. Path of Exile 2 got its first look after around two years of silence. More information will be available for it on July 28th.

Street Fighter 6 is getting a crossover event with Exoprimal. This means you’ll have robot versions of characters like Ryu and Guile fighting dinosaurs. Radical.

Behaviour

We already had news about Nicolas Cage coming to Dead By Daylight. So, they brought Nic out on stage to talk a little about it. He, as always, is a delight. His character is coming July 25th. But, players can test it out on the test build of the game on July 5th.

We saw the likes of Witchfire (due out in September), Crossfire Sierra Squad (out in August), and Remnant 2 (coming July 25th). The awesome PC and mobile game Honkai Star Rail is dropping on the PlayStation 5 sometime during Q4 2023.

We got a look at Lies of P, a Pinnochio inspired story, that comes out on September 19th. If you like high fantasy, WarHaven, Throne and Liberty, and King Arthur: Legends Rise will get you your fix in various ways. If you like medieval without as much fantasy, Yes, Your Grace: Snowfall will satisfy that craving this winter.

Deep breaths, because there’s so much more

We weren’t kidding when it came to an absolute avalanche of new games announced or shown off. Party Animals is an even cuter Gang Beasts coming on September 20th. Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, coming this year, has you hunt and fight ghosts in the wilds of North America. Or maybe you’re an old Yakuza fan, which means you’d enjoy Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name this November.

Source Technology / Recreate Games

Under the Waves sets you underwater, utilizing submarines and solving problems this August. Wayfinder is an action RPG that is coming to Early Access this summer. Build a space rig in Space Trash Scavenger sometime in the near future.

You can duplicate yourself to battle enemies in Lysfanga, later this year, in Diablo-esque combat. Stellaris Nexus, a spin-off from the main series, offers a full multiplayer turn-based 4X experience in under an hour.

A surprise jolt of nostalgia hit with Sonic Superstars. You get to play as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, or Amy is a classic-feeling 2D Sonic game. This time, you can do it with up to four players and the graphics are beautiful. This one is coming this fall.

Licenses and nostalgia filled the event

A surprise jolt of nostalgia hit with Sonic Superstars. You get to play as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, or Amy is a classic-feeling 2D Sonic game. This time, you can do it with up to four players and the graphics are beautiful. This one is coming this fall.

SEGA

Akira Toriyama’s other other manga hit, Sandland, is finally getting some love. Made in Unreal Engine 5, it’ll come to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and Steam PC sometime in the future.

The new Baldur’s Gate showed off a new character, Lord Enver Gortash, who is voiced by Jason Issacs. The game comes out on August 31st. Speaking of fantasy, Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria, a crafting and mining game about the Dwarves, was a welcome surprise coming soon.

You might prefer space over fantasy. Star Trek: Infinite has you covered. It showed a federation fleet headed toward Borg space. We don’t know much more about it, but a full reveal will come on June 16th.

Even though we just got the first major look at Spider-Man 2, they couldn’t help show off a couple extra details about the game at Summer Game Fest. We got our first look at Venom, offering extra info that it isn’t Eddie Brock in this game. They also gave us an official date of release: October 20th, 2023.

Big hitters come in swinging

We got an extended look at Alan Wake 2. This game will have two separate main characters, Alan Wake and an FBI agent named Saga. Alan’s entire ordeal is trying to escape the nightmare realm. Saga’s story takes a more modern Resident Evil vibe. She finds a horror story written by Alan and is now investigating the situation. Gameplay will switch between both characters at the player’s will to tell multiple stories that cross paths. Alan Wake 2 comes out on October 17th, 2023.

Epic Games / Remedy Entertainment

Toxic Commando was shown, from the mind of legendary horror mainstay, John Carpenter. It’s got a similar feel to Left 4 Dead or World War Z, but with vehicles mixed into the gameplay a lot. Zombies swarm and make for a lot of targets to shoot. We don’t have an exact date yet, but Toxic Commando is slated for 2024.

If you like Pokémon, Palworld gives you all the fun of Pocket Monsters, but with guns. You even capture and battle your “Pals” like a Pokémon game. The world and design resembles Pokémon Legends Arceus. Early Access is coming next January.

Geoff Keighley joked that they had cozy games and Mortal Kombat in the same presentation after Faefarm was shown off. Coming from Phoenix Labs, we’ll see this fantastic cozy game coming to Switch and PC on September 8th.

Immortals of Aveum gave a short trailer and explanation for a character in the game named Jak. Immortals is, as Keighley put it, “kinda like DOOM  with magic”. It’s hitting shelves on July 20th.

Updates and events peppered the presentation

Sometimes, the game is already out. Similar to the Street Fighter 6 event above, plenty of other updates got mentions and videos during Summer Game Fest.

For instance, Modern Warfare 2 Warzone showed off some of the new skins and content coming for Season 4, which hits on June 14th. Marvel Snap is getting its biggest update ever next week, which includes a Conquest mode for those of us that are just unlucky in the game.

Fortnite is getting an Unreal Editor functionality to make your own Fortnite content. Then, they also showed off the trailer for the next season of Fortnite, Wilds. The map is now a jungle with dinosaurs and wild beasts. They revealed Optimus Prime is going to be playable this season and that you can ride raptors. Maybe I’ll give this game another try.

The Witcher Netflix series featured a trailer of the upcoming season. Then, Twisted Metal (the show on Peacock) got a full scene shown off with Will Arnett. If it’s adjacent to games, it’s still fair game for the Summer Game Fest.

Finally, a Fantasy

Final Fantasy Evercrisis is set in the world of Final Fantasy 7 and focuses on Sephiroth. This mobile game’s character designs are meant to evoke the look of the original PlayStation classic. Pre-registration is now open for the beta on iOS and Android.

Square Enix

Then we got our first look at the sequel to Final Fantasy 7: Remake. It’s called Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth. It’ll be on two discs due to it being so big and it’s coming early 2024. Yes, it’s beautiful and we need to play it.

That was a mouthful. If you play games on PC, it might be time to look into some upgrades. Luckily, the Computex 2023 event just happened, with plenty of ways to amp up your computer’s power. If you’re sad that there isn’t any new Nintendo 3DS games anymore at events like this, you can still make use of your 3DS in other ways.