Yerli commented, “We’re excited that Warface has been recognised with this award. At its core, Warface is a new social first-person shooter experience that invites players and their friends of all levels to come together and discover Crytek quality for free. This award underlines what we saw on the show floor in Cologne; that Warface is being viewed favorably by everyone looking for something new in online multiplayer gaming.”

Warface is currently scheduled to enter into beta testing for Europe and North America this Fall. Social hub GFACE will be accessible at launch.

5. Sim City

One of the best possible thing you could want from a reboot is that breathes new life into a classic franchise by updating and refining it to meet more modern expectations, and that’s precisely what Sim City does.

The interface is sleek and refined, polished yet still easily navigable. They key difference is the implementation of more social, competitive elements. This is the first Sim City to feature bonafide interconnected online modes, pitching cities either against each other or forcing them to work side-by-side.

Online regions shake up the entire city dynamic, inviting real players into your region to create vast, interconnected states, each affecting one another is hitherto unknown ways.

Even small tweaks like pollution creating visible and tangible smog bring a degree of authenticity into your cities; never before has a Sim City game felt as alive as this.

4. Borderlands 2

There was a time when first and foremost games stood for fun, carnage and vomiting through joy. Borderlands 2 is all that and then some, a robust exploration into what’ll be one of the most joyous 4-person co-op experiences you’re ever likely to have.

Refined and injected with ever more personality than before, Borderlands 2 makes Pandora more open and more varied than ever before. It’s only now you can really look back and accuse the original Borderlands of Chronic Brown Syndrome even though it’s one of the more colourful entrants into the shooter genre.

In fact, Borderlands 2 makes Borderlands look like crap, taking every element and extrapolating it to ridiculous ends, which is really what the Borderlands ethos is all about.

Oh, and Tiny Tina, she’s the absolute boss.

3. XCOM: Enemy Unknown 

Winner of gamescom 2012 Bronze Bolt and Bolt From the Blue.

Now for something completely different, and perhaps the surprising entrant into our gamescom 2012 Top 5 list. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a 2K reboot of a classic 1990’s turn based strategy game widely regarded as having some of the very best PC titles of that era. To the extent that to this day the 1994 UFO: Enemy Unknown -coined XCOM in the American and PlayStation releases- still garners an impressive fanbase.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown manages the spectacular feat of both being being a slick, turn-based strategy game for the current generation, but also captures the very essence of 90’s PC gaming in a neat little bag of nostalgia. The pre-rendered cutscenes whilst in glorious High Definition hark back to the juddery, pixelated mush of games gone-by, gently tickling your reminiscence in a way that’s almost magical.

The turn-based nature provides a plethora of tactical possibility and ingenuity, one can’t simply blame a faster trigger finger for failure in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, for failure you are to blame. Failure also has consequence too, once a solider is dead then forever they are departed from this world, meaning these seemingly faceless individuals may garner significance for the playing; potentially a significant disheartening loss both tactically and also emotionally.

This time, he aimed his ire at big publishers like Electronic Arts taking to the free-to-play model. EA recently announced at GamesCom 2012 that Command & Conquer: Generals 2 would be going free-play, besides announcing earlier that Bioware Mythic would be doing an F2P title.

On Twitter, Broussard stated, “f2p is generally going to be a waste of time for uber pubs like EA. Chasing biz models vs letting game design thrive.”

“Well crap, investors expect us to embrace f2p. We have any old ip just sitting around? Ultima? C&C? Ship it!”, he said.

This could be Broussard complaining more about EA trying to milk it’s IPs over creating innovative games and pioneering game design. But as long as F2P gains traction, it’s a given that more and more publishers will hop aboard the train.

In an interview with The Metro, Jean-Maxime Moris stated that in the entirety of Remember Me, only one person is killed at the hands of the protagonist Nilin, and that person is in a man in the demo.

Remember Me, announced at gamescom 2012, is Capcom’s foray into a Neo-Parisian cyberpunk action-adventure where the primary weapon is the ability to destroy and replace memories.

Playing as Nilin, a former ‘hunter’ and memory stealer, she has the same done to her; Blade Runner meets Mirror’s Edge.

Moris wants to shakeup the way we look at action games of this nature, telling the Metro: “It won’t be just that very nice world-saving person. And she won’t be that mass murdering…. the only person she kills in the game is that guy in the demo.

“There is no killing, I wanted to stay away from the generic violence that is flowing into most of today’s video games. There will be shades of grey and we really want to ask moral questions about her, about how she acts.”

Developers Dontnot have also gone so far as almost entirely limiting the need for any guns at all, banned from Neo-Paris -like in real life, or anywhere that isn’t the USA- and are only carried by senior officials. Instead, Nilin uses a ‘hunting glove’ to remove cherished memories of loved ones, leaving enemies incapacitated, but alive: “She basically overloads their memories and pieces of themselves come flying out of the memory. They’re just there lying on the ground, they’ll get up eventually – they may have forgotten they are married but they’ll get up eventually.”

For the full enthralling interview, head on over to the Metro. Thanks, X360.

One in particular is Media Molecule’s Tearaway, which Yoshia feels “is really a good example of a game made from the ground-up with PS Vita’s functionality in mind.”

“At the launch, we put so many new functions on PS Vita, and many launch titles tried to use functionalities like touch in different ways, and some of it wasn’t natural and was criticised by media people when it felt forced or tacked on. I’m hoping that when people try Tearaway, the use of features on PS Vita will feel much more naturally integrated to the core gameplay.”

Will this close connect between Sony and it’s first party studios help it’s handheld gain an edge at this point in the game? Only time will tell, but regardless, Tearaway looks fantastic.

Source: VG247

“The game is going to send a strong signal to the game industry, but also to Hollywood because of Ellen [Page’s] involvement and the fact that she was so great during shooting. If the game is successful, and if her performance is seen as something that proved the quality of the experience, it’s going to be a signal to the industry that says ‘look, it’s possible to do games this way.’”

But Cage’s comments are directly addressed to Hollywood. “But it will also be a signal for Hollywood to say, ‘this is now a respectable medium. If you are a talented actor, there are games that give you the opportunity to show what you can do, and to treat your emotions in the same way that films do.”

“In Hollywood, many people still think that games are about shooting, so most actors have no interest in them. They don’t want to just be a face on an avatar who is shooting people. So there is still some interest in Hollywood for games, but they are still really cautious. Beyond will send them interesting signals.”

Will it really go that far we wonder? Big promises were promised with Heavy Rain too, at one point, but time will tell as the game is released.

We have the date for next year’s GamesCom event, which is scheduled for August 21st to August 25th. The organizers have also released some stats which shows that 275,000 people attended the event, same as last year.

More than 5300 journalists from 54 countries came to Germany which is a big increase over last year. General attendees came from 84 countries, up from 71 of last year.

“We have expanded the gamescom as international business and new platform, while improving quality experience for our consumers and the community can significantly Innovative ticketing concept for individual days of the fair and the inlet management have worked smoothly and significantly contribute to improving the quality of the event,” said Koelnmess executive director Catherine Hamma.

GamesCom is the largest trade show and much larger than E3, and hopefully more publishers give it the respect it deserves.

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

[Press release]

Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida has revealed that the crossbuy feature that was announced at GamesCom will be restricted to one region – Europe – for now and he doesn’t have definitive plans as to when it will release in the other regions.

Crossbuy is a neat function which requires you to pay for only one version – PS3 or Vita, and you can get the other version for absolutely free.

He refused to reveal the sales of the system which has been a big talking point till now. He only said hthe demand is high and they are planning to release more games for the system in the future.

The PS Vita had a positive showing at GamesCom where a ton of titles were showcased for the system and the company seemed very interested to make sure that the games are in plentiful.

Thanks, Famitsu. Via Andrisang.

The official costume-wearers weren’t half-bad either, but for our money we think the fans take the prize hands down every time.

Except, you know, with dwarves, as the narrator in the new GamesCom trailer tends to mention again and again and again.

Gameplay looks quite straightforward, with the graphical style reminding one of Impire. This one looks decent by itself, though we’re unsure how far it’ll be able to carry itself forward.

No release date set for A Game of Dwarves, but it’s coming soon for PC.