Dispatches from Gamescom

A cosplayer walks at the Gamescom video games trade fair in Cologne, western Germany on August 22. Pic/Getty Images

Ubisoft

Ubisoft showed off two games at Gamescom 2024. The first is the upcoming Star Wars game, which we got to play. Expect a review soon. For the new Assassins Creed Shadows, I got to attend a closed-door, extended technical introduction where we were shown new footage of the game and got introduced to all the latest tech that's running under the hood. Unfortunately, due to the NDA, I am not at liberty to disclose what I saw. The game is shaping up well and I am excited for it.

ASUS ROG Ally X
At an ASUS event held on the sidelines of Gamescom, I got some extended time with the upcoming ROG Ally X, their next handheld console. There are a lot of things to love here: the RAM has been upgraded from 16GB to 24GB, the battery life has significantly improved, and some design issues with the previous generation have been addressed. Gaming on the device was smooth, it didn't heat up too much and it felt well balanced in the hand. Also, with rumours of Steam OS coming to Ally, the appeal of this device shot up exponentially. The Ally X is expected in India over the next few months.

Crimson Desert
Korean company Pearl Abyss presented a playable tech demo of their game called Crimson Desert. The game had a unique combat style paired with amazing graphics and character art. It was pretty polished for a tech demo and featured an amalgamation of inspiration from several games, including Assassins Creed, God of War and Dragons Dogma. The combat style had a learning curve when it came to learning how to defeat opponents effectively. The opponents, even the easiest one in the tech demo, were super tough. This game has no launch date, and it will be a while before we see it in the market.

Phantom Blade Zero

I also got to play a demo of Phantom Blade Zero, a new game out of S-Game, a studio in China. The game has you playing as a warrior traversing an alternate version of China. The lands are filled with both monsters and human enemies. The game is from the soul-line genre, which means the game is challenging and complicated to play. Phantom Blade has a good balance of weapons in the demo that I played, and the combat was tough but fair. It took a while to finish the demo and kill the boss, but it was satisfying.

Zotac Zone
Speaking of handhelds, Zotac revealed their own handheld gaming device. An AMD Ryzen 8840U powers the device and has 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. The design has elements borrowed from Steam deck and also has a good amount of thought given to the longevity of the components. The device was pretty snappy; Forza Horizon 5 worked well on it, the device overall was well-balanced, and attention was paid to quality buttons and materials. The joysticks on the device were the longer-lasting hall-effect ones, and like the Steam Deck, this one had two trackpads as well. The only downside is that the device works on Windows 11, which presents a few drawbacks in terms of power consumption and efficient use of hardware. That said, Zotac said they were interested in a version of Steam Deck OS for their device but had not yet managed to negotiate anything with Valve.

Atari 7800+

Atari has started pre-orders of the mini version of their 7800+ retro console since Tuesday. We had a chance to play around with the retro console and it is a nostalgia monster. You can run the original cartridges on this machine, and it is backwards compatible with the previous gen 2600 machine, so you can use those cartridges on this one as well. The console will retail for $129 and come with a wireless gamepad and a game. While it won't be released initially in India, there are plans in the pipeline to bring Atari's mini consoles here, hopefully with the plethora of original game cartridges.

Manjaro
While not officially confirmed, we heard a rumour that Manjaro was working on their own steam deck rival operating system. The best part of the Steam Deck has been its Linux-based operating system, and now, with so many handhelds launching with Windows, which has proven to be inferior at handling the hardware efficiently, companies are looking for alternatives. Since Valve also seems interested in the prospect of their OS running on multiple devices, it makes sense for the other significant distributions to work on this in stealth mode. Regardless, this is good news for the handheld PC consoles.

The Precinct
The Precinct was one of the more interesting indie games at Gamescom. It's a game where you play a rookie cop, and you have to protect and serve the citizens. The game includes bank heists, wild car chases and shootouts, all from the perspective of the police. As a cop, of course, you are not allowed to break the law. Things like excessive force, unnecessary violence, and even accumulating numerous smaller violations can get you fired from your job. The entire game happens from an isometric view of the map, which seems inspired by games like GTA. The game is expected in the third quarter of the year however, you can wishlist it on Steam right now.