This year’s trade visitors’ day was noticeably less crowded than the years before. The convention was much stricter with admittance, hence less visitors.
Entering Gamescom 2015:
Ready to play?
Farming Simulator (Landwirtschaftssimulator) is back! Has become a staple over the years.
Microsoft booth:
Mega Bloks spire at the Halo 5 Guardians entrance
Halo 5: Guardians and most other games at Microsoft were playable with the new Elite Controller. The 150$ price tag seems steep but I have to say I really like it. Has a nice heft and exceptional build quality. For shooters like Halo the trigger locks are really a plus. Less travel until the trigger switches act.
You can see the small green switches for the trigger locks on the top of the backside.
The four green dots below are the switches for the paddles. Unfortunately I did not see the paddels anywhere on any of the games.
For Forza 6 there is a special 10 year anniversary D-pad for the elite controller:
These controllers have gorgeous Forza-esque paint jobs. Those are “classic” controllers, not elite ones, though:
Forza 6 now has night races and rain. Played both and both really add to the experience. Car will react to puddles of water on the track. Best: everything now is 60 fps.
Visitors playing Forza 6:
Rise of Tomb Raider at the Microsoft booth. The game will be time exclusive on Xbox One before coming to PS4 one full year later. Usually you will then get the game with all DLC as some GotY or similar edition.
FIFA 16 was also playable at Microsoft. usually entirely overrun on Gamescom I managed to play a match, even winning 2:1.
Gigantic (by motiger) had a presence right in the center of the Microsoft booth. They have a marketing deal. Game will be available on Xbox One and Windows 10. Microsoft have been marketing the game as a showcase during their Windows 10 launch.
Gigantic and Fable will have cross-play and cross-buy between Xbox One and Windows 10.
One of their ‘community coaches’ explaining the ins and outs to the players:
Gigantic also had its own booth in Hall 8:
The logo being too gigantic to fit the frame 😉 They used it as a projection screen. I generally liked the game design a lot and also the design of their booth.
They have a central stage for competitive play:
On the morning of trade visitors’ day there meren’t many visitors. That would change soon…
Both the Xbox One and the Windows 10 version were playable.
I had a nice talk to one of their character designers. Windows 10 and Xbox One version run off pretty much the same engine. Underneath it’s Unreal 3 with custom frameworks.
EA have a huge presence (as usual). On the first day they will only open after lunch since they are running their press conference in the morning.
Star Wars: Battlefront was the big highlight this year. Easily recognizable by the big TIE fighter and ATAT models:
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst
Catalyst is a successor to a game that won over critics more so than consumers. Happy to see a sequel.
Unravel seems promising. Some did comment it has a lot from Sonys’ Little Big Planet’s Sackboy character.
Need for Speed. Another staple series with a new entry. Did not play it. As far as racing games go I am recently having more fun with the slightly more realistic variants, like Forza. Love to tune the car to shave off a few seconds. Maybe also getting old, easier to memorize a race track than an open world city.
This racing setup (PC) looked really nice. I consciously chose to NOT test drive it. I fear I might buy one if I did.
More racing game hardware at Logitech:
Sony booth:
Horizon:Zero Dawn. Unfortunately only video, nothing playable, yet. Looks promising:
Star Wars: Battlefron was playable at the Sony booth. 2-player coop split screen single player in some kind of hoard mode. Liked the game a lot, feels like actually being in one of the movies. Stunning graphics. Controls a bit mushy, though. Hope this will be improved until release.
A visitor testing Sony project morpheus VR experience:
Street Fighter V on PS4:
Chun-Li watching Cammy battle a mere visitor:
Blizzard are sharing hall 7 with Sony and have a huge booth.
More specifically they have a whole set of booths: Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, Star Craft II: Legacy of the Void, World of Warcraft: Legion and Overwatch. Hope I did not forget anything.
I liked playing Overwatch quite a bit:
Blizzard has life-sized (more or less) figures of some of the Overwatch characters:
Hearthstone booth:
Did not play it. i felt I could play enough Hearthstone on my phone while waiting to playtest another game.
Some Murloc vs. play:
Heroes of the Storm:
Learned right after taking this photo that I should not take any more photos, pity:
So I took a few photos of some more life-sized figures:
Hammer time!
Between the two giants Sony and Blizzard Guitar Hero makes a comeback. Guitar Hero and Rock Band were huge for a couple of years and then more or less disappeared from the lime light. Now they are back. The crew warming up before the visitors take over:
PES: Another come back of a great series. They were always considered the ‘realistic’ football (I’m German, I will not call it soccer) game until they were somehow overtaken in this regard by FIFA. With the transition to PS3 and Xbox 360 PES fell behind while FIFA 08 and then especially 09 and 10 made great steps forward.
Fallout 4:
When you go to Gamescom this year you will immediately notice those who played it. They get a blue T-shirt, in exchange for having their hair spray-painted Pipboy yellow.
Dark Souls III is hotly anticipated by many:
I did not play it since I never got into Demons Souls, Dark Souls I/II and Bloodborne. Due to work I cannot muster the required patience. There are so many games, I want to try them all rather than master one. This is just me probably, everybody else please enjoy Dark Souls!
Another thing I did not try was Oculus rift. This was unvoluntarily, I went to the booth too late. Will try to get a slot another day and will go there first thing in the morning.
Nintendo:
By contrast Nintendo have a really small booth this year:
This is basically the entire booth. To the left were a number of Wii-U available. I played Zelda Triforce Heroes which was a lot of fun. You play with 3 players and have to cooperate to solve puzzles.
All in all this years trade visitors day of Gamescom was great. Had many nice conversations and could play most games and systems with little waiting time.