Gamescom Brings Us the Biggest Indy Game Ever

The rest of the year's release calendar is filling up.

Author

Robert Scarpinito
August 23, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 13 minutes

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It’s Geoff’s Keighley’s World, and We’re Just Playin’ in It

Gamescom Opening Night Live is arguably the biggest story of the week, setting the tone of what we can expect for the rest of the year and beyond from the industry.

We debriefed Geoff Keighley’s showcase on Tuesday evening, and you can hear our thoughts on the TechRaptor Podcast. Andrew Stretch, Austin Suther, and I break down what surprised and excited us from the show. But I’ll give you some highlights here, too (I get it, I barely have time for my podcast rotation either).

We got a confirmed release date for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, along with an official release window for a PlayStation release, further diminishing the meaning of “Xbox exclusive.” HoYoverse showed off all the latest that’s coming to its live service games, and NetEase is adding a new one to its slate soon with the release date for Marvel Rivals.

Stretch and Austin were pretty excited for Blur Studio’s Secret Level, a new anthology series set to premiere on Amazon Prime with Dead Pool Director Tim Miller at the helm. It’s a 15-episode series, where each episode is set in one of your favorite gaming franchises, like Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer 40k, “PlayStation” (whatever that means; we saw Kratos in the trailer), and uh, Concord (which somehow doesn’t fall under “PlayStation”).

The “one more thing” reveal at the end was a new game in the Mafia series called Mafia: The Old Country. It’s set in Sicily, and it’s a prequel to the whole series that’s set in the 1900s. However, it’s not getting the Ghost of Tsushima treatment and won’t sport an Italian dub (or would it be Sicilian?), surprisingly.

There were 62 announcements across the two-hour presentation, but only six of them had a confirmed Nintendo Switch release or are already on Switch. One of them is Civilization VII, which is just shocking to me. I know people play that game on console too, but it sounds like a challenging experience on the Switch, personally.

There’s more that we talk about from Gamescom ONL, and you can hear the rest of our thoughts on this week’s podcast! We even get surprisingly excited for the new Call of Duty? Kind of?

These cannabis gummies keep selling out in 2024

If you've ever struggled to enjoy cannabis due to the harshness of smoking or vaping, you're not alone. That’s why these new cannabis gummies caught our eye.

Mood is an online dispensary that has invented a “joint within a gummy” that’s extremely potent yet federally-legal. Their gummies are formulated to tap into the human body’s endocannabinoid system.

Although this system was discovered in the 1990’s, farmers and scientists at Mood were among the first to figure out how to tap into it with cannabis gummies. Just 1 of their rapid onset THC gummies can get you feeling right within 5 minutes!

Obsidian Art Director Matt Hansen said that a first-person, single-player game doesn’t need to go above 30 FPS, giving his team the opportunity to put in more flashy VFX. Unrelated, but I’m itching to play some Doom Eternal at 120 FPS right now.

“Go Blue” or “Go Bucks”?

EA Sports College Football is perhaps the most sterile name for the most exciting sports game in years, but it’s delivering in spades, claiming the top of the charts for July sales.

Whether you’re using your fancy new keyboard or a script, automation will be a no-go moving forward for Valve’s super lucrative competitive shooter.

If you use D&DBeyond to enhance your Dungeoning & Dragoning experience, you might want to peruse all the latest updates coming to the platform, explained by our masterful Dungeon Master Stretch himself.

This might not make as much money as Pokemon Go, but I haven’t seen a power couple this strong since Lego and Minecraft.

In more Nintendo news, the Animal Crossing mobile game is closing its servers soon, but in its place will be a one-time-purchase version of the game with no microtransactions or online support.

Sony has brought the Hero Project to China and India before, and now it’s bringing the incubator program to the Middle East and North Africa. It’s a good opportunity to prop up voices that don’t get as much visibility on the international stage, as far as gaming goes.

This game has been on a strange journey since it was announced in 2019 and then canned in 2021 and then revived last year. Now instead of the fall 2024 window, we’re looking a little further ahead (which isn’t a bad thing, considering how many games are coming between now and December).

In Amazon Games’ latest attempt at striking gold in the MMO space, its boss Christoph Hartmann has spoken about where the Lord of the Rings MMO is in development. Spoiler alert: It’s still very, very early.

It’s giving Cobra Commander.

You might remember Callisto Protocol as that game that tried to eat Dead Space’s lunch until Dead Space remade itself. Well, now we’re getting a new roguelike spinoff set in the same universe—though you might have seen the game before back in March.

For those of you who’ve poured, blood, sweat, and years into World of Warcraft, there’s a new site that gives you a personalized video based on your own character’s conquests and stats ahead of Blizzard’s upcoming expansion.

What’s New This Week?

Austin sat down to play Tactical Breach Wizards, the latest from the devs behind Gunpoint and Heat Signature. It’s weird, different, and as fun as it is creative, and if you’re a turn-based tactics fiend like him, it’s worth checking out.

I’ll be honest: I know nothing about tabletop war games. They go way over my head. But our resident war game wiz Adam Potts loves them, and he recently checked out the latest expansion for Bushido.