The Best of Gamescom 2016

Posted on August 23, 2016

Another year, another Gamescom, and yet another string of fascinating and exciting games that get announced, unveiled or demonstrated. 2016 was no exception in this regard and I don’t see a better way of highlighting our favourite Gamescom reveals than to create a feature dedicated to exactly that. Our “Best of Gamescom” for 2016.

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For Honor |  Article

Doesn’t For Honor just look better and better every time you see it? I’m seriously impressed with the direction this game is taking and the combat just looks so fun. Gamescom continued the string of amazing footage and details for this game with their ‘factions’ trailer. Will you be a Samurai, Viking or Knight?


Yooka-Laylee 
 |  Article

Who could ever imagine that a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie could be developed and actually manage to evoke the precise childhood nostalgia we had all been craving for so many years? I for one was certainly beginning to lose faith but Yooka-Laylee is seriously managing to strike that cord in all the right ways and the new Gamescom gameplay trailer is certainly no exception.


Resident Evil 7: biohazard  
|  Article

The reveals for this game have been slow but they are unequivocally on-point. The ‘Beginning Hour’ playable demo may be one of my favourite marketing creations for a game, ever; and Gamescom continued to deliver the goods. For the first time, Resident Evil 7 has revealed actual in-game footage being called ‘Lantern’ and the strong horror vibes are most certainly still present.


Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord  
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Fighting Resident Evil for the accolade of having the longest name at Gamescom was Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord. Coming from humble beginnings, the Mount & Blade franchise seems to take great strides forward with every iteration of the product and I couldn’t be more happy with how it’s looking. These games always have such great depth and re-playability and potentially one of the best, most passionate player-bases to boot. Add some Gamescom ‘siege’ gameplay in to the mix and you have a winning, medieval formula.


Star Citizen
 |  Article

Born out of a Kickstarter campaign that raised a ridiculous $2,134,374USD, Star Citizen is beginning to look like it was worth every cent. I will always be impressed when a developer isn’t afraid to release a huge chunk of unedited, gameplay footage for their title because it shows the pure confidence they have in their game. That is exactly what this game bestowed upon us at Gamescom and I’m ever so glad that they did.


Little Nightmares
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Beautiful art, horror aesthetic, puzzles and platforming, new IP – this game is basically ticking off every one of my hypothetical boxes. Little Nightmares looks creepy, intriguing and downright clever in its design and puzzling. Most certainly one of the best things to come out of Gamescom was the gameplay trailer that was released for the game.


Prey
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Prey is a bit of an enigma at this point. Some information has been revealed but not enough to fully grasp the intent of this re-boot. Either way the reveal at Gamescom is note-worthy because it gave us a deeper look at the direction this project is taking. The creepy shape-shifting enemies are cool and open up some great opportunities to invite some genuine horror into the game and the ability for Morgan himself to shift for his own creative goals fills me with some optimism.

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That about wraps things up here for Gamescom, 2016. A lot of great reveals accompanied by a few unfortunately mediocre ones. What do you think? Does our list of the best match up to your own? For more Gamescom coverage feel free to search our News section for announcements and trailers that didn’t make the cut!