The Best Parts Of Gamescom Opening Night Live Happened Before The Real Show Started

Gamescom Opening Night Live 2025 has come and gone, and if you tuned into the whole two-hour show, you may have been rewarded with roughly five minutes of actually interesting announcements. Onimusha looks great, Unbeatable finally has a release date, and, well, I’m sure something else notable happened in there. But as with all of the infinitely multiplying Geoff Keighley-hosted games showcases, it was more show than games. And in what seems to be turning into a pattern, more and more announcements are getting crammed into a lengthy pre-show — and it turns out that’s where they’re keeping most of the good stuff.

The first big announcement of the pre-show was also by far the most surprising: Bubsy 4D. Listen, I know. The original Bubsy games on the SNES and Sega Genesis and their PlayStation sequel are basically punchlines, seen as mediocre Sonic the Hedgehog ripoffs at best. The very idea of bringing Bubsy back sounds like a joke itself. But there’s a very good reason to give Bubsy 4D a fair shot — developer Fabraz. After releasing the phenomenal platformer Demon Turf in 2021, Fabraz has spent the past few years working on Demon Tides, a follow-up that could be even better, based on its excellent Steam demo. The name Bubsy may not inspire confidence, but Fabraz’s track record for making platformers that feel incredible to play, with some of the wildest movement you’ve ever seen, sure does.

Speaking of wild movement, have you ever seen a train do a kickflip? Somehow combining Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Jet Set Radio, and Train Simulator, Denshattack’s first trailer might be the most exciting thing at the whole show. In the upcoming game, you control a train riding a seemingly endless rail across land, sea, and air, performing tricks along the way as you battle giant robot bosses. I’m not going to pretend I entirely understand what’s going on in the game, but it already has an incredibly catchy soundtrack and lets you throw a baseball at a robot that looks like the ice worm boss from Armored Core IV, so no complaints here.

Also deep in hard-to-describe territory is Planetenverteidigungskanonenkommandant, mercifully abbreviated as PVKK. Set in a cramped defense bunker, PVKK is a little bit like a maximalist version of Missile Command. The aim of the game is to shoot down attackers through an extremely complicated series of commands entered on a console full of satisfyingly chunky buttons, levers, and dials to match the coordinates of incoming threats. In between attacks, you can make tea and brush up on the latest propaganda delivered to your bunker.

Valor Mortis brings us back to something a little more recognizable. Developer One More Level, creator of the high-speed parkour game Ghostrunner, describes Valor Mortis as a first-person Soulslike, which isn’t a genre mashup you see often, but one that immediately looks like an interesting twist. The game is set during Napoleon’s campaign across Europe, except in this version of events, you play as a soldier brought back to life and empowered by some kind of plot-relevant mutation-causing goo. The action looks intense and grotesque, and while there’s no release date yet, signups are open for an upcoming playtest.

A couple of far more familiar games round out the best reveals from the pre-show. It doesn’t get much more classic than sidescrolling beat ‘em ups, and two interesting ones appeared before Opening Night Live. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: Dragon Pearl of Destruction is a retro-inspired brawler based on the 1980s cartoon/toy commercial, with wonderfully colorful pixel art and lots of old-school charm.

That was followed by Absolum, a more modern take on the genre announced earlier this year. The two-player beat ‘em up from the team that designed the combat of Streets of Rage 4. Following a fantastic demo earlier this year, Absolum showed off gameplay of a new character, a flying frog wizard who I immediately know is going to be my favorite character, and announced its October 9 release date.

For all the glitz of Gamescom Opening Night Live, where the price of showcasing a trailer has jumped to more than $500,000, the relatively low-key pre-show might be a better use of your time. The main show is home to the heaviest of hitters, punctuated by lots of awkward canned interviews and unrelated commercials, but if you’re looking for something surprising and strange, that comes before the real show even starts.