Introduction

Gamescom 2026 marks my third year making the trip over to Cologne, although this one is very much a flying visit.

I’m here for Opening Night Live, spending Wednesday around the show itself, and then I’m already heading back home on Wednesday evening. Short, sweet and considerably less punishing on the feet than previous years but far more intense in terms of appointments!

Opening Night Live itself was once again absolutely packed, with around 5,000 people crammed into the Confex of the Kolnmesse.

As a live show, it remains incredibly slick. The scale of the stage, screens, lighting and production is difficult to appreciate properly unless you are actually sitting there watching it all unfold.

One immediate improvement over last year was also the organisation when leaving. Last year, getting thousands of people out of the venue seemed to involve the sophisticated organisational technique of pointing everybody in roughly the same direction and hoping for the best, to then leave via one very small exit. It was dangerous to say the least.

This year was much smoother.

So credit where it is due.

Unfortunately, some of my other criticisms from last year have survived perfectly intact.

Haven’t We Seen This Game Already?

I complained last year about just how many games seemed to fall into exactly the same small handful of categories.

This year?

Well…

Soulslikes. Action RPGs. Shooters. MMOs. Anime MMOs.

Lots and lots of them.

The sheer number of Soulslike or Souls-adjacent games in particular was overwhelming. It genuinely felt like we were comfortably into double figures by the end of the show. Last year, live-service games seemed to be absolutely everywhere. This time the pendulum has swung toward Soulslikes and action RPGs instead.

And look, I understand why. These games sell. There are enormous audiences for them and there are obviously some fantastic games being made within those genres. My problem is when seemingly everybody decides they need a slice of exactly the same pie. After a while, the trailers start to blend together.

Dramatic fantasy landscape.

Enormous monster.

Character slowly unsheathes sword.

Dodge.

Parry.

Dodge again.

Big explosion.

Skill tree.

COMING 2027.

Some of these games have genuinely beautiful art direction, fantastic animation and incredibly talented people working on them, but mechanically everything feels increasingly safe. Modern gaming is becoming depressingly predictable. Almost everything now seems to fall somewhere inside the Soulslike, shooter, RPG, MMO or action-RPG family tree.

Even when developers come up with interesting worlds or art styles, the actual game underneath often ends up looking suspiciously familiar. And then everybody wonders why so many games struggle.

Studios close.

Projects underperform.

Developers get laid off.

Yet publishers continue asking teams to build games for genres which are already completely saturated. It is difficult not to wonder how many genuinely creative ideas get killed before development even begins because somebody decides another Soulslike represents the safer option.

If ten companies are chasing the exact same audience, they cannot all win.

Anyway. Rant over. Because despite that, there was still plenty shown that I really liked.

Pre-Show

Worms: Galactic Tactics

The pre-show got off to a surprisingly strong start with Worms: Galactic Tactics.

Worms is going tactical. Grid-based movement, turn-based strategy and what looked like some fairly obvious XCOM inspiration thrown into the mix. But importantly, it still looked like Worms. You still have ridiculous weapons. Destructible environments. Explosions. Tiny worms screaming at each other. Basically all the important stuff. Changing the formula this dramatically could have easily resulted in something that just had the Worms name slapped onto it, but from what we saw, it seemed to retain plenty of the charm of the originals.

Then came the really interesting bit.

Team17 also confirmed that a proper remake of the original Worms is in development. There wasn’t much more information than that, but that one immediately got me interested.

Watch the Opening Night Live Worms: Galactic Tactics trailer

RollerCoaster Tycoon Wonderworks

Another game appealing directly to the part of my brain permanently stuck in the late 1990s was RollerCoaster Tycoon Wonderworks.

RollerCoaster Tycoon is properly back. Build your park. Design rides. Keep the guests happy. Charge them £14 for a burger. And perhaps occasionally remove a section of rollercoaster track shortly before a train arrives. For testing purposes, obviously.

From what we saw, Wonderworks looked great. It appears to understand that half of the appeal of RollerCoaster Tycoon is building the perfect theme park…

…and the other half is seeing exactly how badly everything can go wrong.

It is heading into Early Access first, with the wider release expected afterwards. Another one I will definitely be keeping an eye on.

Watch the Opening Night Live RollerCoaster Tycoon Wonderworks trailer

Opening Night Live

Gears of War: E-Day

One of the first genuine heavy hitters of the night was Gears of War: E-Day.

This time we got another look at the early days of the Locust invasion and a younger Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago.

E-Day takes place years before the original Gears of War and gives The Coalition the opportunity to show just how horrific the Locust emergence actually was before everybody became accustomed to fighting them. We also got our first look at one of the new Locust leaders.

Graphically, E-Day continues to look incredibly impressive. The Coalition are masters of pushing graphical boundaries while maintaining performance. Considering this footage was from an Xbox Series X, that is all the more impressive.

Character models, lighting, environments and facial animation were all fantastic, and the darker horror influence feels much closer to the atmosphere of the original Gears than some of the later entries. Definitely one of the visual highlights of the night.

Watch the Opening Night Live Gears of War: E-Day trailer

Mega Man: Dual Override

I really enjoyed this one.

There seems to be a nice theme developing around bringing older franchises back. Mega Man: Dual Override immediately gave me some of the same vibes I got from Shinobi last year.

You still have that classic side-scrolling Mega Man gameplay, but everything is presented with this really attractive mixture of 2D gameplay and 3D models and environments. It looked incredibly colourful and most importantly, instantly recognisable as Mega Man.

We also got a look at some new characters alongside returning favourites.

This is exactly how I like seeing older series brought back.

Keep what made them great. Modernise the presentation. Don’t completely reinvent everything because somebody in a boardroom wants to appeal to “modern audiences”.

Sometimes people just want Mega Man to play like Mega Man.

Who knew?

Watch the Opening Night Live Mega Man: Dual Override trailer

Rayman Legends: Retold

And the retro revival theme continued.

Rayman Legends: Retold is coming on October 1st and we got another look at one of the game’s musical levels.

This time?

The Macarena.

Naturally.

Anyone who played Rayman Legends will remember how fantastic its musical levels were, with the entire stage effectively becoming a rhythm game disguised as a platformer.

Jumping, attacking and moving all happened in time with the soundtrack. Retold appears to be taking exactly that idea and expanding on it. It looked colourful, ridiculous and fun.

Three things ONL desperately needed after the seventh trailer featuring a miserable warrior standing in a swamp.

Watch the Opening Night Live Rayman Legends Retold trailer

Metro 2039

Metro 2039 received a lot of attention during the show. 4A Games has continued developing this project while members of its team in Ukraine are living through a real war.

That context makes watching developers talk about creating fictional post-apocalyptic Moscow feel very different. Putting all of that aside for a moment, though, the game itself looked fantastic.

Dark. Oppressive. Atmospheric. Basically everything you want from Metro.

We got another look at the tunnels, combat, stealth and some of the environments above ground, all running on 4A’s own proprietary engine. And visually it was probably one of the strongest games shown all evening. 4A is pitching Metro 2039 as both a continuation for existing fans and somewhere new players can jump into the series.

Metro 2039 is currently scheduled for February 2027.

Watch the Opening Night Live Metro 2039 trailer

Stage Tour

If you miss Guitar Hero and Rock Band…

Hello.

Stage Tour looks like it has been specifically designed for you.

Plastic guitars are back. Plastic drums are back.

Standing in your living room pretending you are performing at Wembley while actually annoying your neighbours is back. The game features a huge collection of licensed songs and is even getting proper physical guitar and drum peripherals. I spent an embarrassing amount of time playing Guitar Hero back in the day, so this one immediately appealed to me. There was a time when these games were absolutely everywhere before the entire genre seemed to disappear overnight.

If Stage Tour can capture that same party-game magic again, I can see this becoming very popular.

It arrives in December 2026.

Watch the Opening Night Live Stage Tour trailer

Crazy Taxi: World Tour

Crazy Taxi: World Tour returned with another trailer showing more of the multiplayer.

Lots of taxi drivers tearing around the city at once, desperately trying to collect passengers and get them to their destinations before everybody else. Basically Crazy Taxi multiplied by several people.

Which sounds like a very good idea. We still don’t know everything about how the different multiplayer modes will work, but the footage certainly gave us a better idea of the scale SEGA is aiming for.

There is also a full single-player element alongside the online multiplayer, so this thankfully isn’t simply Crazy Taxi turned into some enormous live-service experiment. More importantly, we’ll have considerably more to say about this one following our own preview. So stay tuned.

Crazy Taxi: World Tour is coming in 2027.

Watch the Opening Night Live Crazy Taxi: World Tour trailer

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation also received another big showing.

This is the final game in Square Enix’s remake trilogy and we got another sizeable look at the gameplay.

The Weapons featured prominently, including Ruby, Emerald and Ultimate Weapon, alongside more footage of the Highwind and the wider party. At this point, I’m not really sure how Square Enix can make this game any bigger than Rebirth.

Visually it looked incredible and the scale appears enormous.

This trilogy has already taken a game from 1997 and somehow turned it into what will probably amount to several hundred hours of content by the time everything is finished.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is currently planned for Spring 2027.

Watch the Opening Night Live Final Fantasy VII Revelation trailer

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered

This was probably one of the most interesting announcements of the entire show.

The Witcher 3 is getting another major overhaul and existing owners get it for free. Not a £10 upgrade. Not a “deluxe edition upgrade pack”. Free. This isn’t simply someone increasing the resolution slider and calling it a day. The remaster includes revamped combat, changes to movement, improved horse handling, visual upgrades, changes to the skill tree, new effects, improved animations and modern rendering features such as DLSS. It sounds substantial.

Which immediately made my Shenmue brain kick into gear because obviously we have Shenmue 3 Enhanced coming.

ININ has previously spoken about wanting to offer some kind of upgrade path for existing Shenmue 3 owners, although that is apparently complicated by the publishing and rights situation around the original game. When something like The Witcher 3 Remastered gets announced as a completely free upgrade, there will inevitably be people who look at Shenmue 3 Enhanced and ask the same question.

“Why isn’t that free?”

And I understand the comparison. The reality is that these are completely different situations. The Witcher 3 has sold tens of millions of copies. CD Projekt Red has enormous resources. The Witcher is one of the biggest RPG franchises in gaming.

ININ simply isn’t operating on that level. The overhaul to The Witcher 3 also appears considerably larger than what Shenmue 3Enhanced is doing. CDPR can afford to absorb that cost because they have a gigantic existing audience and a huge commercial incentive to get everybody back into The Witcher ecosystem. ININ does not have that luxury. So yes, it does put a little pressure on the Shenmue 3 Enhanced upgrade conversation.

But it isn’t really a fair one-to-one comparison.

Watch the Opening Night Live Witcher 3 Remastered trailer

The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past

The Witcher wasn’t finished there either. We also got our first proper look at Songs of the Past, a completely new expansion for The Witcher 3. The trailer was CGI rather than gameplay, but visually it looked great. The expansion takes Geralt to a completely new region and introduces new enemies, abilities and story content.

I will absolutely play it, especially because the whole thing has been structured incredibly cleverly.

Existing Witcher 3 owners get the Remastered upgrade for free. The previous two expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, are also being made available to existing owners. Then you have Songs of the Past waiting as the new paid content.

So I’m already being encouraged to reinstall The Witcher 3. I’ll already have all the previous content. I’m probably going to start another playthrough. And then you offer me a brand-new expansion at the end of it?

Watch the Opening Night Live Songs of the Past trailer

Final Thoughts

Opening Night Live 2026 was, once again, a pretty good snapshot of where the modern games industry currently finds itself.

Huge production values, massive games, incredible visuals and an awful lot of developers seemingly being asked to make different versions of exactly the same thing.

The sheer number of Soulslikes, action RPGs, shooters, MMOs and anime MMOs became exhausting after a while. Individually, some of those games will probably be brilliant. But when you put them all into one two-hour presentation, the repetition becomes impossible to ignore.

And that remains the biggest problem for me. The industry regularly talks about games failing to meet sales expectations.

Studios get closed. Yet publishers continue flooding the same handful of genres because those are supposedly the “safe” options. At some point, perhaps the safer option is actually making something different.

A lot of my personal highlights from ONL 2026 were exactly that. Or, at the very least, they were older ideas being brought back in interesting ways.

Worms becoming a tactical game.

Mega Man getting a gorgeous modern 2D/3D treatment.

Rayman returning with its ridiculous musical platforming.

Stage Tour reviving the plastic-instrument era.

Crazy Taxi embracing multiplayer chaos.

These were the games that gave the show some personality.

Metro 2039 was also hugely impressive, both technically and because of the extraordinary circumstances under which parts of it have been developed.

And then The Witcher 3 Remastered probably delivered one of the most consumer-friendly announcements of the evening with its free upgrade.

So while ONL 2026 occasionally felt like somebody had discovered the “Generate Action RPG Trailer” button and refused to stop pressing it, there was still plenty here that I genuinely enjoyed.