Next to E3, Gamescom is one of the main red letter dates on the gamer calendar, with the big studios taking the time to drop new trailers and details on the games coming over the holiday season and into the new year. Read on as New Atlas picks out the best on show this year.
Resident Evil 7 Biohazard
Remember when Resident Evil was a survival horror franchise? The last three numbered entries in the series were (mostly) solid action games, but it's nice to see Capcom return to the genre it pioneered. With a slow-burn tension and a series-first first-person view, Resident Evil 7 channels games like Outlast and Amnesia, and looks poised to fill a void left by the cancelled Silent Hills game we were promised.
Resident Evil 7 Biohazard is due January 24 next year for PS4, Xbox One and PC.
Watch Dogs 2
In the absence of an Assassin's Creed title this year, Watch Dogs 2 takes its place as Ubisoft's holiday tent-pole release. The Gamescom trailer focuses on the sequel's expanded multiplayer, which is starting to sound a whole lot like GTA Online with a cyberpunk skin. This time around, it's not all about hacking other players, with new co-op modes putting more emphasis on playing nice.
Watch Dogs 2 is due November 15 for PS4, Xbox One and PC.
Metal Gear Survive
The first Metal Gear announced in the wake of the messy breakup between Konami and Hideo Kojima, doesn't look very Metal Gear. Billed as a co-op stealth game, Metal Gear Survive picks up immediately after Ground Zeroes, casting the player as a soldier dragged into an alternate timeline by unexplained wormholes in the sky, and forced to team up to fight off strange creatures. And why not? As weird as it looks, Konami promises familiar Metal Gear themes and mechanics in a new setting and gameplay style, but we're not sure how that will pan out.
Metal Gear Survive is due sometime in 2017 for PS4, Xbox One and PC.
South Park: The Fractured But Whole
South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are equally vocal about their love of games as well as their disdain for the marketing machine surrounding them. The announcement video for a new piece of hardware, the Nosulus Rift, ties those two together in a neat satirical bow. Exclusive to the upcoming South Park RPG, the Nosulus Rift apparently allows players to get an immersive whiff of the game's many, many farts. Whether the joke has been taken to the extreme of a functional device is up in the air, but Ubisoft does claim that users can get nose-on with the Nosulus at Gamescom.
South Park: The Fractured But Whole is due December 6 for PS4, Xbox One and PC.
Battlefield 1
After years playing in the warzones of World War II, the modern era and the future, Battlefield 1 takes players back to where it apparently all began: World War I. EA's already revealed pretty much all it can about the game, but a shiny new Gamescom trailer shows off more of the old-timey action we can expect on the, well, battlefield. Period vehicles like bi-planes, tanks and horses get a starring role.
Battlefield 1 is due October 21 for PS4, Xbox One and PC.
