Microsoft’s July Games Showcase event has just wrapped up and we’ve had an hour of new games making their way to both PC and Xbox consoles to mull over. The star of the show will undoubtedly be news about Halo: Infinite as it’s primed to be the first Halo to hit PC at the same time as consoles in almost twenty years but there’s plenty to get to so: As usual, the full show can be watched above or you can scroll down for individual games.
The new Halo: Infinite trailer kicks off with a few moments of CGI showing Master Chief’s personal brand of armour being manufactured, nothing too exciting until it wraps up with a shot of a gauntlet mounted grappling hook. Cut to gameplay and we join Master Chief and a pilot as they’re shot down by a trio of anti-aircraft platforms and the Chief disembarks with his trusty assault rifle and mows down some hapless Grunts. The rifle looks like it’s the same as the assault rifle from Halo 5. As Chief looks around we can see the shape of the ring and it looks much thinner and larger than previous games.
As the gameplay continues a map is pulled up that shows Chief and his pilot have crashed on a plateau amidst several other larger landmasses. Chief sets off towards one of the guns in a Warthog and after a much bloodier than expected suicide Grunt explosion we see Chief pull a new pistol – clearly different from the Magnum that has been the series go-to sidearm since the beginning. Very shortly afterwards we see another new gun – a semi-auto rifle also distinct from the previous game’s DMR. We see deployable shields make a return as well as HUD markers for what looks like an airstrike/Longsword fighter, and Brute spike grenades but the trailer moves on rapidly to another new gun, a burst fire plasma launcher called the Ravager.
As Chief ascends an elevator towards the first gun we can see out across the ring and clearly see that it’s incomplete with a gigantic gap in the superstructure. But we’re on to another new gun again: the pulse carbine which looks like it behaves similarly to the human battle rifle from previous games but with a Covenant weapon style battery. It’s around this point that we start to see what the new grappling hook can do; we’ve seen it pull the Chief towards enemies and pull small objects into his hands which he can then throw. We also see the return of the Brute pistol-shotgun and a whole new human pump action shotgun.
A new Brute villain that looks equal parts like James Earl Jones as an orc and like he belongs in Gears of War, drops a scenery chewing monologue to tell us that the Covenant faction is called The Banished. He even helpfully name-drops Halo Wars 2‘s villain Atriox because, as we all know, that was a truly memorable story that every Halo fan will never forget and remembers in intricate detail. Yes, we’re joking, we’re huge Halo fans and couldn’t tell you a single event from that game. The gameplay caps off with a release date in the Holiday 2020 period.
Studio Head, Chris Lee, tells us that the new ring you’ll be exploring will be larger than the last two Halo games combined. Judging by the map structure and a button prompt for a mission list, the game looks to be open world too.
In quite the departure from the last game, we cut to a woman making bolts for a crossbow around a campfire in a snowy forest when a wolf approaches and she screams at it with the same tone we’d use if we got our scrotum caught in our zipper. She tracks a blood trail to find the wolf dead and being devoured by a zombie deer, it screams like you know what and we cut to a title drop announcing the game for Xbox Series X and PC.
Turn10, developers of Forza are confirmed to be early in development of a new game that will take advantage of ray tracing. A trailer shows off a bunch of slick imagery supposedly captured “in-engine” if Phil Spencer and a watermark are to be believed but we’ve heard that one before and let’s just say we’ll be very impressed if the final product looks anything like what’s shown. Unfortunately there’s not much info other than a lot of supercars going very fast while sounding like lawnmowers on helium.
Rare are up next with Everwild. Immediately striking are the graphics which look like a fancier Breath of the Wild. Unfortunately the trailer talks a lot about curiosity but doesn’t do much to sate it. We see plenty of weird and fantastical creatures while the narrator talks about the rhythm of the world and rituals but a cut to title leaves us with all the questions it’s possible to have about a new video game and none of the answers other than the fact it’ll be coming to PC and Xbox Series X.
Tell Me Why‘s trailer shows us two siblings who return to an old family home in a rural town in an attempt to close a chapter of their lives but find that they experience visions when experiencing strong emotions. The trailer doesn’t even tell us who the studio developing this one are. We do know that chapter one is releasing on 27 August 2020 and will be coming to PC, Xbox One, and Series X.
Moon Studios have a very brief segment showing off a 120 frames per second version of Ori and the Will of the Wisps. The segment says this version is for Xbox Series X but it’s a safe bet that the PC version will also be able to run at this speed.
An expansion for The Outer Worlds; Peril on Gorgon will take players to a new moon and if the trailer is anything to go by we’ll be in for some lightly comedic old-school sci-fi adventure movie shenanigans involving more corporate evil and the player character beating it to death with a stick. Peril on Gorgon is releasing on 9 September 2020.
Obsidian Entertainment’s second game in a row is a departure from their usual genre and looks to be a first person survival crafting game where you’ll take on the role of kids shrunken down to insect size in a garden. We see combat with a variety of bugs and spiders as well as crafting both simple and complex structures much in the same way games like ARK and Fortnite handle that mechanic. Frankly, apart from the setting it looks a lot like every other survival crafting game of the last few years. Maybe that’ll be enough for it to be successful but my critic spidey-sense is telling me that cautious optimism is in order for anyone interested in this one. The game will be available in Early Access via Steam and Xbox Game Preview on 28 July 2020.
Can we send someone over to Obsidian Entertainment to make sure they’ve not been replaced with game creating robots, please? Avowed is their third project in development and the trailer follows a burning arrow through clouds, a skeleton, and down into underground ruins where a sword is drawn in first-person and off-hand magic reminiscent of The Elder Scrolls apparently flares up. All the while an doorway is lit ominously orange as dust billows out and the screen shakes but we never get to see what’s in there so we’re going to assume it’s the California Raisins in some kind of Voltron style mech. Joking aside, if anyone can do a first-person action RPG right it’s probably Obsidian Entertainment so keep an eye out for more of Avowed.
Developer Interior/Night have revealed their upcoming interactive drama, As Dusk Falls. It’s not clear from the trailer what form the gameplay will take but the trailer shows a family on a road trip who stop at a motel right before it’s robbed by gun wielding criminals. As the trailer progresses we see a hostage situation, the motel on fire, and finally cut to the family’s daughter all grown up approaching a log cabin, apparently summoned there by letters from its occupant.
Ninja Theory have revealed that the sequel to Hellblade will be taking place in Iceland. Unfortunately there’s not really any info about the game other than that and even the developer diary video is largely panning shots of the Icelandic countryside. Moving on.
A new trailer for Psychonauts 2 shows the series hero Raz popping into a brain in a jar via a handy portable door before launching into a musical number by Jack Black while the visuals go on a psychodelic journey through some of the mindscapes you’ll be exploring. Everything looks heavily influenced by the brightly coloured LSD soaked age that jumps to the front of our pop-culture addled minds when we think of an acid trip.
GSC Game World have somehow untangled themselves from the legal quagmire that brought the up-and-coming studio down a decade ago to show off a new trailer for Stalker 2. The CGI trailer opens with a shot of the infamous ferris wheel at Pripyat (site of a nuclear disaster) slowly turning while small animals scamper about. It then cuts away to show what looks like a military bunker and several anomalies replete with the series trademark method of spotting them: throwing a bolt. A man patrols a run-down village while men nearby play music and talk around a fire. Then we cut to a mutant twitching in a glass jar and back to a forest where a hooded Stalker is approaching the Duga antenna array (a real-world location at Chernobyl and an over-the-horizon radar array.)
Four Imperial soldiers carrying Warhammer 40K’s trademark lasgun and plasma rifle weapons step into a dark corridor beneath a Hive city, one struggles with his light. Cut to another shot of them walking past windows, the rearguard’s flashlight still flickers and an out of focus creature slinks away. More shots of exploring the darkened Hive city and the squad’s lights pan over a horde of diseased and mutated people who look like they’ve been infected with Nurgle’s specific brand of Chaos. A hulking demon lurks in the shadows at the rear of the horde. Developer Fatshark are behind this one, and they already proved they can do Warhammer fantasy justice as a first-person coop game so we have high hopes for Darktide when it releases next year.
Another trailer that doesn’t really show us anything. Thankfully, it’s Tetris, a game about making lines out of a bunch of shapes so it’s not too complicated of a concept. Tetris Effect was released in 2018 for the PlayStation 4 so it’s quite a coup for Microsoft to be showing a new edition of the game off at their showcase. The trailer promises optimized singleplayer and all-new multiplayer but it’s entirely clear what those mean yet. Expect this one to release in Holiday 2020 for PC, Xbox One, and Series X.
This trailer shows off a woman exploring an alien world wearing slapdash looking sci-fi gear and a large glove tool. We see her use the tool to suck up a floating oil-like substance and she’s off running through caves lit with orange glowing cracks in the floor and turqoise plants. The colour scheme carries through some light platforming across an alien landscape before a large green plant rapidly blooms infront of her and an alien creature makes its presence known.
Bloober Team’s new trailer starts with a moth flying into a flame just in case you’re not good at metaphors. With that out of the way the view shifts to a dark forest and a woman getting shot on a pier before shifting again to the protagonist pushing a covered body into a morgue drawer. We see the heroine exploring both the real-world location and a creepy flesh and monsters version where she has white hair and runs away from things a lot. It’s pretty, and evokes the best memories of Silent Hill but we’re still ultimately left in the dark when it comes to learning more.
Sega have shown off some footage of what appears to be an expansion for long-running and much loved MMO Phantasy Star Online 2 that’s coming in 2021.. The trailer mixes CGI and a little bit of gameplay but since the game still isn’t available in Europe it may as well be in an alien language to us. Sorry PSO2 fans, you’ll have to make sense of this one yourself. The CGI character’s face does look like someone took an anime potato and played football with it for a couple of hours though, so try not to laugh too hard when you get to that bit of the trailer.
Remedy (most recently of Control fame) has a take on first-person military shooters, CrossfireX, which was announced at E3 2019. Today’s trailer reveals that the previously multiplayer only shooter will have a campaign too. We see all the bombastic military fetishist stuff you’ve come to expect from these types of games: a wingsuit, weapons with more attachments than bullets, a cool looking suit that can turn invisible, car chases, and more explosions than you can shake a stick at. CrossfireX‘s multiplayer will be free to play but the single player campaign will require a purchase.
Playground Games also had a CGI trailer for a new Fable game. A fairy zips past a sword and skull, a toadstool mound, and admires a blooming flower right before they’re eaten by a large toad that has definitely had enough of all their whimsical flitting about. The camera pans up to show a shot of a distant city which we assume to be Bowerstone from the previous games though it has grown quite a bit since the last time we saw it if that’s the case. We’ll have to wait for more info but a new Fable game is very intriguing.
Overall, we’ve seen a lot in this showcase even if half of it had little to no information presented in its CGI heavy fluff trailers but we’ve also had some nice surprises too. The Medium continues to be mysterious while looking like it’ll take good advantage of a dual worlds mechanic and the reveal of Fatshark’s Warhammer 40K FPS actually had us not rolling our eyes at a new 40K game for the first time in years. Stalker 2 may turn out to be just what some hardcore shooter-RPG fans have been waiting for, assuming GSC actually ever finish the thing. For us the game with most potential, despite lack of any actual information, is Obsidian’s Avowed because they rarely, if ever, disappoint.
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