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Quite the grand title. In reality I only visited on one day as a regular visitor, so curb your expectations for this blog post. Frankly I didn't even take pictures because I originally didn't even have plans to report my experience here. So these are my impressions of the trip and trying out Pragmata, Ninja Gaiden 4 and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds.
I went with friends who had tried for years to persuade me into visiting gamescom with them. Years of horror stories about endless queues and overcrowded halls left me only reluctantly joining, planning to just leave early if I felt like it. Fortunately the experience was not that bad and I ended up staying and even playing a couple of games which didn't have expected waiting times of multiple hours (many of them were as short as only 15-20 minutes).
Pragmata
The game's science-fiction setting immediately got me interested when I saw the trailer from Sony's State of Play this year. However I really wasn't sure what to make of the gameplay that was shown, making me glad I got to check the game out to get a feel for it. It's unique mix of puzzle and shooter gameplay turned out to be surprisingly fun, ignoring that I only got to play it for maybe 20 minutes. Not sure how it holds up in the long run because it's quite gimmicky, really. Pragamta is a third person shooter where you take breaks from the action in between enemy attacks to play a little puzzle mini game (instead of continuing to shoot and dodge). The pressure to finish the puzzles as fast as possible makes it more fun than it sounds. But again, I don't know how well it will hold up in the long run. Resident Evil 4 and The Evil Within are probably the only third person shooters I played, also making it difficult to assess if the puzzle gimmick is really worth toning down the action for. Fans of Vanquish for example, which I still haven't played, might not find this mix of gameplay styles as enjoyable.
Overall Pragmata is fun, but all in all a little generic in its systems (save for the hacking mini game), I'm thinking of the way you can scan the area to reveal locations of switches and objectives, and of the presence of a talking companion. But so far the game didn't feel like it was holding my hands too much (there was no map unless I missed it, a huge plus too) and the android girl wasn't as obnoxious as I had feared. The mechanical enemy designs come off as uninspired too, but overall I'm looking forward to the full release.
Ninja Gaiden 4
My first time checking out the series. I thought it was awkward that pressing a few buttons quickly results in various auto combos (and so was a friend who has experience with earlier Ninja Gaiden titles), but maybe I was mashing buttons more than I was aware of. The games doesn't play itself quite as automatically as it may seem though. Button mashing got severely punished as early as when fighting the first boss (that you encounter not even 5 minutes into the demo). I didn't quite get the hang of the controls and mechanics in the short time I got to play, but really enjoyed the demo nonetheless. This game makes another release I'm looking forward to.
Interestingly the demo ran on an XDK (X-Box series X development kit) that looks like a piece of professional AV hardware. And I got to say I really, really wish the actual current gen consoles featured a similar look. I never did a review of the PS5, but I find that it looks atrocious (and unfortunately the Series X looking like a miniature gaming pc tower is not more to my liking either).
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds
My hopes weren't exactly high for this one, but it seems to play surprisingly fine. It's not got Mario Kart World's problems where you get bombarded by items all the time as you drive down straight roads, so that's a huge plus. The track layout felt decent enough. But I'm not a huge fan of the ways the game unnecessarily spices up laps 2 and 3. Trying to improve each lap is fun. Why does this seem too basic for today's racing games? Much like Mario Kart World there's also less punishment for making mistakes. If you don't quite make a curve while drifting you'll just keep your speed and drift along a wall instead of slowing down. You also have to manually disable the assist modes for toddlers that Mario Kart 8 introduced (and deserves all the shame in the world for).
Honestly I was like 6 or 7 when I first played Mario Kart on SNES. I found it almost impossibly difficult. and loved the challenge. Why games for kids these days are expected to almost play themselves is just way beyond me.
Also much like Mario Kart there's a bunch of speed modes to choose from. The demo only had the first three available for selection and I got to say the middle one felt slower than Mario Kart at 50cc. So hopefully the higher levels are unlocked from the start in the full release. All in all this demo was fine. I wouldn't say it was huge fun but it seemed a step up from Mario Kart World, which has to count for something.
Beyond those I also briefly played the demo for Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion. Just for the goodies they hand out, though. The demo can be freely downloaded at home, and I was going to purchase the game anyways. It didn't seem to play very different from the first game, save for the open world shtick they tacked on (I may try to come up with a better comparison when the game's released). Anyways, this demo stuck out to me for throwing the player into its open world. I fought a couple of enemies en route to some mission objective and quit out early as to not let my friends waiting (who didn't care much for this game), meanwhile one of them managed to finish the demo without fighting a single battle by heading straight for the objective. I'm not sure that's the experience the exhibitors had in mind for new players lol.
Overall the day at gamescom wasn't so bad for me (for my friends however it really sucked that exhibitors kept closing queues for games they wanted to stand in line for). Worst part was that moving from one block of halls to another required taking a detour around the premises that was probably 1 to 2 kilometers long (if it didn't just feel that way). Traversing the merchant halls was a giant waste of time and energy, almost nobody was selling videogames (just shirts, trading cards and figurines for the most part) and that place was for some inexplicable reason the most crowded part of the entire convention (as far I could tell). In hinsight I wish I had taken at least a few pictures and maybe looked for exhibits of new display technologies (a subject I hadn't bothered with for quite some time now). It also kind of blows I didn't get to test Metroid Prime 4, but by the time we could have gone there nobody was still willing to stand in a three hour queue for it. Still, the day was overall fun and not just a giant pain (as I had anticipated). Chances aren't bad I'll visit it again in the future.