In a year without an organized Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) to bring the video games industry together to show, announce, and celebrate games, Geoff Keighley has stepped to the plate with his growing Summer Game Fest celebration. Keighley’s Summer Game Fest Kickoff show ran for around two hours and showed off quite a bit of new footage for previously announced games, as well as a number of surprising new announcements.
One theme that stood above the rest in this year’s show seemed to be space-based horror/thriller games of which we saw a handful of to varying degrees. From Aliens: Dark Descent to Dead Space-like The Callisto Protocol to a more AI-based thriller in Routine to Troy Baker’s Fort Solis, there were plenty of space thrillers to go around. After leaving the space station, the show took a turn and headed into a direction with a lot more variety. We got a good look at just shy of ten minutes or so of a campaign mission in Activision’s upcoming Call of Duty title Modern Warfare 2, a new CGI trailer for MARVEL’s Midnight Suns(set to release this October), and a new look at Nightwing-focused gameplay in Gotham Knights.
Outside of the star-studded AAA lineup, Keighley also delivered a plethora of new indie footage from fluid gunplay meeting magic abilities in Witchfire, The Truman Show come to life in American Arcadia, arcade throwback TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge, DOOM-like rhythm shooter Metal Hellsinger, survival crafting game Nightingale, and so many more. One of the biggest indie developer reveals of the showcase was Frost Giant Studios’ (a studio made up of veteran RTS developers previously at Blizzard Entertainment) new IP Stormgate. We only got to see a short CGI trailer, but it more than captured the attention of real-time strategy fans with its nods to legendary RTS games Starcraft and Warcraft upfront and center.
The show ended with Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann joining Geoff on stage to talk through new things coming for the popular The Last of Us IP. A standalone multiplayer component that evolved from what was originally going to be The Last of Us Part II’s Factions multiplayer mode is set to be shown further next year and HBO’s The Last of Us show is wrapping up filming soon. While the interview ran a bit long and the ending of The Last of Us Part I Remake being revealed was leaked ahead of the showcase, it still ended on a strong note by showing some powerful screenshot comparisons of the game being rebuilt from the ground up for PS5 consoles.
For those interested in checking out the full show, our official co-stream of the event can be found here.
Image from: Summer Game Fest
