Jun 082025
Table of Contents
State of Play
Summer Game Fest
Ball x Pit: The Kenny Sun Story
IO Interactive Showcase
Wholesome Direct
Future Games Show
Xbox Games Showcase
PC Gaming Show
Xbox Games Showcase & The Outer Worlds 2 Direct
Today’s showcases began with the Xbox Games Showcase. Now, I’m not much of an Xbox person, but sometimes they have some great third-party surprises, so I was hoping for some exciting announcements. They started out with The Outer Worlds 2, which will be out on October 29. I enjoyed the first one, so I’m interested in this.
(I’m not $80 worth of interested, though, which is the price it seems to be set at.)
High on Life is getting a sequel, which I didn’t expect, and there’s a third game in the Plague Tale series called Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy. They spent some time showing off the ROG Ally, which I might not have mentioned at all except that it including the tiniest Silksong tease.
There was also a new trailer for The Blood of Dawnwalker, a vampire game that looks interesting, although I’m not sure if it’s my sort of thing. Super Meat Boy 3D was announced as well.
And Ninja Gaiden 4 continues to look pretty cool. It’s coming out in October as well.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is getting DLC, but the next big surprise was from… Game Freak?? And it doesn’t look anything like previous Game Freak games. I’m pretty curious about this one.
Steampunk game Clockwork Revolution looks like it could be interesting, a sequel to Grounded was announced, and Bloober Team was there with a new trailer for Cronos: The New Dawn. I’m definitely keeping my eye on that one.
After that, new stuff was announced for The Elder Scrolls Online, and Dontnod announced a new science fiction game that looks interesting called Aphelion.
I’m also somewhat curious about the musical adventure game There Are No Ghosts at the Grand, although I’m not sure if I’d enjoy the gameplay or not.
The next announcements were a new expansion for Age of Mythology, a stealth action game called Mudang: Two Hearts, Planet of Lana II (I’m not familiar with the first one), and new content coming for Fallout 76. I was almost interested in Solo Leveling: Arise Overdrive despite its odd title, but it seems it’s at least related to a gacha game, so we’ll see.
Animo and Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 + 4 didn’t especially interest me, but the sidescrolling game At Fate’s End might be interesting. It’s from the team that made Spiritfarer.
Then it was time for the remaster of Gears of War, Gears of War Reloaded, and (much more interesting for me), the long-rumored Persona 4 remake, Persona 4 Revival. Now, I’m on team “Persona 4 is fine and doesn’t need a remake,” but I have to admit the short teaser trailer looks good.
And that was the highlight for me. They followed that with new content for Sea of Thieves, an Invincible fighting game, the announcement of Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade and Final Fantasy XVI coming to Xbox, a game from Double Fine called Keeper that admittedly looks interesting, and then the final announcement of the show was Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.
After the showcase, they went into more detail about The Outer Worlds 2 and Grounded 2.
Then it was time for the PC Gaming Show!
PC Gaming Show
Lots of games are covered in the PC Gaming Show, so I’ll stick to the highlights here again.
The first game that caught my attention was Fresh Tracks, a rhythm game where you’ll be fighting the enemies you face to the beat of the song. The Rogue Prince of Persia is also leaving early access in August.
Mandrake also caught my attention, because even though it’s a life sim/farming game, it’s from the developers of Sunless Sea.
Demonschool continues to look interesting, too.
Meanwhile, I’m not sure if I’d enjoy DarkSwitch, but the cosmic horror elements at least got my attention. Likewise, I’m not sure I’d enjoy playing Hell Clock, but I like the trailer’s style enough that I’m sharing it anyway.
Blippo+ also stood out to me, because I watched the whole trailer and read the description on its Steam page and I’m still confused.
Overall, there wasn’t a whole lot that stood out to me this year, but maybe I overlooked some gems. If a game especially caught your attention, let me know.
That’s it for the showcases! What did you enjoy the most from today’s events? Here’s hoping we get a Nintendo Direct soon to round it out.
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im surprised at how positive you always are, because i love to rant about these showcases and the games in my social media accounts and with friends. in my opinion i love to play games with a lasting cultural impact or just stuff that truly just presses all the right buttons in my brain (like outer wilds or xenoblade x or ace attorney) but honestly this showcase has like 4 interesting new games, like 3 interesting ports or remasters and imo the rest is just generic triple A games that will not be remembered in 5 years. part of me cant help but wonder if you also think like me but i notice you always talk in a good manner about everything which is great too
Well, I try to focus on the parts that I like instead of dwelling too much on the parts I dislike. This year’s showcases didn’t have a whole lot for me, so that was harder than usual, heh. But I try not to get too negative about them, since I’m sure there’s someone out there enjoying them.
That was a lot of stuff from the XBox showcase! Probably could have been its own blog post lol.
Damn, looks like another company pushing $80 as the new game minimum, rushing right past $60, though unlike Nintendo the other companies will likely have the game in half-off sales within a year or two, Nintendo we’ll be lucky to ever see 10% off lol
Very surprised by Game Freak! Unsure if it will be my style. But good to see them expanding their work into new areas! Funny that they aren’t even bothering to bring it to Nintendo Switch 2 though lol
Aphelion looks interesting, Dontnod trying different stuff.
It’s great seeing Persona 4 Revival but it certainly feels like they rushed this to get ahead of all the leaks and rumors!!!
I considered it, but since there wasn’t too much that stood out to me from it, I decided to combine them.
Outer Worlds jumping to $80 is kind of tragically hilarious considering the game’s themes.
Yeah, the Persona 4 Revival trailer feels like they weren’t really ready to announce it yet. XD
[…] We discussed Beast of Reincarnation briefly when it was announced last year at the Xbox Games Showcase. […]