Europe’s biggest gameshow is a beast. Spanning the halls of Cologne Messe, and with E3 now out of the picture, Gamescom is a bigger deal than ever. The show also attracts thousands of public attendees, which gives the show a fairground twist in places. This year, Netflix dominated one of the halls with a faux One Piece ship, sports stadium, a Wednesday-themed cafe and a Stranger Things ice cream stall.
Elsewhere, while Nintendo didn’t have anything new to show, it had plenty of Switch 2 consoles to convince the not-yet-convinced — and some of them had Silksong. Microsoft, too, had a substantial presence, revealing an October 16 launch date for its Xbox Ally duo of handheld gaming PCs. No price, though.
While you can find all the news and previews on our Gamescom page, we’ve also drawn together all the other games we tested during this week’s show, several of which launch in the next few weeks.
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater
Konami
While the man who created Metal Gear moved onto walking sims and Hollywood best friends, Konami is more than happy to beef up and remaster the hits. This time around, it’s Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
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I’ll admit, Snake Eater was when I fell off the Metal Gear Solid train (or nuclear mech), and it came undone by the camouflage system and the difficult-to-navigate early areas. A very tight demo, as the Gamescom crowds rushed to early demos meant I didn’t get a chance to fully test the new style control system that (thankfully) shifts crouch and action/ confirm to separate buttons and adds a degree of camera control even in third-person. But it’s these kind of quality-of-life upgrades you can expect to see.
Of course, the graphics are a huge leap from the PS2 original (or Nintendo 3DS version I bafflingly chose to buy), but the pulpy (occasionally delightfully camp) dialogue remains in place. I look forward to getting through at least the opening scenes now that the game has launched on PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S.
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