Summer Game Fest host Geoff Keighley warned fans to dampen their expectations for today’s live event, which begins several days of demonstrations and events. And in fact, the show did not have many important revelations, especially because one of its most important announcements, a remake of The Last of Us for PlayStation 5, was leaked just before the show.
But Summer Game Fest managed to introduce a couple of surprises and new gameplay for next year’s big titles. Also, for some reason, much of this involved outer space.
If you haven’t seen the show, you can see the most important ads below.
A new Alien game will arrive next year
The games of Aliens and Aliens, to put it mildly, vary in quality. And we don’t know much about Aliens: Dark Descent, a recently announced installment of the franchise. (Presumably unrelated to Frictional’s Amnesia: The Dark Descent.) Developer Tindalos Interactive describes it as a team-based action game where you lead a group of colonial Marines against xenomorphs and a new unknown enemy. The game is slated for release on current and next-generation PlayStation and Xbox consoles, as well as PCs, in 2023.
We’ve already seen a trailer for The Callisto Protocol, a survival horror game made by Striking Distance Studios, whose members worked on the original Dead Space. But today’s event gave us a closer look at the gameplay. The project seems to largely channel Dead Space’s survival horror style, with rude monsters, a plasma cutter-like weapon, and horrifying death animations for your character. As previously announced, the game will be released on December 2nd.
A new level of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is months away from its release on October 28th, and Summer Game Fest shed a little more light on what we’ll find there, showing a complete one-level game. The video shows players boarding a ship to neutralize a missile and survive a storm, highlighting the physics of the water and wind in the game.
The classic Flashback platformer will have a sequel
Flashback helped establish the genre of film platforms in 1992, and 30 years after its release, it has a sequel. The sequel is being developed by French studio Microids, and looks set to hit current and next-generation PlayStation and Xbox consoles, Steam and Nintendo Switch in the winter of 2022. That’s all we know! You can check out a teaser above to get a feel for the atmosphere.
The ubiquitous voice actor Troy Baker and Roger Clark of Red Dead Redemption 2 lend their voices to Fort Solis, a recently announced game from independent studio Fallen Leaf. Baker describes Fort Solis as a “tight thriller” and “Dead Space meets Duncan Jones’ Moon,” and is apparently a fast-paced narrative game set in a remote Martian mining location. Its trailer says it will be released on Steam.
The Routine robot horror game has been delayed for a decade, but has returned
The routine first appeared in 2012, promising a terrifying atmosphere of terror in a spaceship populated by dangerous robots. Then it went back year after year as a relatively inexperienced team tried to complete it. It now has a new trailer, which indicates that it will arrive on PC, Xbox Series X and S, Xbox One and Xbox Game Pass on an unknown date.
Frost Giant Studios was founded by former Blizzard developers, including veterans of the real-time strategy series StarCraft and Warcraft, and has just revealed its first title: a sci-fi and demon RTS called Stormgate. Stormgate is supposed to “stay true” to the classic RTS formula. But it aims to be more accessible and use a free game model without including payout mechanics to win or cryptocurrencies. You can see a small trailer above.
Developer Demagog Golf Club’s new title: Wasteland Highwater is an “adventure strategy game set in a world ravaged by extreme climate change,” according to Keighley. At Game Fest we received a colorful but melancholy trailer about characters navigating a flooded city called Alphaville, showing pieces of game exploration and turn-based combat.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns will arrive on October 7th
Firaxis Games’ Marvel’s Midnight Suns was announced last year at Gamescom, and now we have an official release date: October 7th. In case you missed it, it’s a tactical role-playing game set in the “darkest side of the Marvel universe” and you can see some new images above.
The big news of Naughty Dog leaked before the Summer Game Fest: It will release a remake of The Last of Us Part I for PlayStation 5 on September 2 and a PC version is in development. But he also made fun of a new project: a multiplayer-focused game that is supposed to be as big as its titles for a single player and includes a “very unique” story for the game. As Naughty Dog co-chair Neil Druckmann describes above, the project began as a multiplayer mode for The Last of Us Part II. He then expanded into his own game, still unnamed. A conceptual work of art suggests that it will be set in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco and includes “a whole new cast of characters.” For now, that’s all we know, with more news promised next year.