GamesCon 2026 DayOne -My 5 Titles

Brutal honesty after Gamescom 2026 Opening Night Live

When I applied to become a curator, I promised no sugarcoating. After the title drops and trailers at Gamescom Opening Night Live, here are my unfiltered takes on the standouts that stuck with me with some from prior alpha/beta time, others pure first impressions.

PUBG: DED.NET

This is the one I’m genuinely excited for. After two Alpha tests, I walked away wanting more, and the livestream reactions from people who haven’t touched it yet miss the point: don’t knock it until you try it.

Developed by PUBG Studios*: DED.NET* is a multiplayer first-person shooter that folds roguelite progression into the formula. Set in a twisted 1990s Cascadia soundtracked by grunge, it leans hard into body horror, the occult, dark humor, and pure chaos. A match lost is never a run wasted. Scavenge the world, treat injuries, earn and mix-and-match abilities, and come back stronger. Death is only the beginning. Unorthodox tactics (car doors as shields, cannibalizing enemies for health, hacking payphones, playing dead) give it a wild, experimental edge that battle royales have been starving for.

It’s still in development and subject to change, so specifics will shift. For me it took about two matches to lock in the feel, after that the loop clicked hard. The second playtest left the whole group staring at the screen like the Pablo Escobar meme once the servers went down. The map is packed with little easter eggs and environmental storytelling worth discovering yourself. Platforms announced so far: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (Steam). Closed beta registration is already open. Fresh blood for a genre that desperately needs it.

Rainbow Six Tactics

I’m over the Rainbow Six Siege era. It’s overused and overplayed. Extraction felt like a customized Siege that should have been DLC. Siege X was the same game reinvented as “new.” Rainbow Six Tactics lands in the same territory for me: Siege with extra steps, now turn-based and single-player.

Announced by Ubisoft at Gamescom, it’s a tactical, turn-based experience where you play as Six (Paul Bishop of Vegas fame) commanding squads of up to four Operators drawn from a roster of 15 familiar faces (Nøkk, Glaz, Ash, Doc, Montagne, Sledge, Twitch and others). You plan breaches, coordinate synchronized entries through destructible environments, and tackle objectives like bomb defusal, VIP capture, or hostage rescue. Between missions you train Operators, unlock skill trees and gear, and upgrade your HQ while piecing together a global conspiracy story set in the gap between Siege’s later years. No live-service monetization. Expected 2027 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.

It’s polished on paper and keeps the series’ DNA of gadgets and destruction, but it still feels like an arcade mode or DLC that got promoted to a full spin-off. I’ve lost faith in Ubisoft’s recent direction—even after being paid to playtest some of their titles. Great companies sometimes ship things no one asked for while drifting from the core that made people fall in love. What I wanted was a return to the older Rainbow Six style—campaigns, team-versus-team, the peak Vegas era. Maybe one day.

Gears of War: E-Day

I’m excited, yet after the beta I feel off about parts of it. The promise of finally experiencing Emergence Day—the event every previous game referenced—is huge. Fourteen years before the original Gears of War, we join a younger Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago (plus new squadmates) as the Locust Horde first erupts from beneath Sera. The Coalition (with People Can Fly) is building it from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5 for the biggest campaign in the series’ history. Multiplayer includes refined Versus and a reimagined Horde mode called Horde Siege. Release is locked for October 6, 2026, on Xbox Series X|S and PC (day-one Game Pass).

I’ll hold a full campaign verdict until I finish it. Right now the new Horde is the problem. Classic Horde was about fortifying a position, wave after wave, fighting to the last stand with your teammates. The beta version is extraction- and mission-driven across larger maps with multiple four-player squads, classes (Assault, Marksman, Medic, Breacher), shared objectives, and world bosses. You restock loadouts and buy equipment rather than truly building defenses. Then you extract and repeat in the next chapter. It’s not the Horde mode fans loved—it’s the redheaded stepchild no one requested. The story side still has massive potential; the multiplayer evolution needs work.

Cinder City

I have high hopes, but the developer experience so far has been rough. I received an email invite, accepted it, then watched the key get withdrawn and my player.gg account deactivated because too many keys went out. That account is the pipeline for future sign-ups, key tracking, and Discord unlocks, so a chunk of us are locked out of the next tests because the team didn’t clean up the affected accounts.

Separate from that mess, the game itself looks promising. Developed by BigFire Games and published by NC (formerly NCSOFT), Cinder City is an open-world cinematic third-person shooter set in a dystopian near-future Seoul overrun by mutated creatures and criminal organizations (notably Hyde). You play as a Cinderknight (super-soldier) named Seven on a mission to rescue his daughter amid large-scale multiplayer PvE, tactical gear, vehicles including mechs, story missions, side content, and dynamic events. It mixes the cooperative looter-shooter energy of The Division and Destiny with the desperate survival atmosphere of The Last of Us, but in a fresh urban Korean setting. Steam page and developer previews are live. If they take the time to polish instead of rushing, this could be a real contender.

The Defiant

That brief clip was badass. How often do we get to play as non-American forces in the 1930s–1940s? Past games that let you step into Soviet boots were highlights; constantly defaulting to the American side is overplayed.

The Defiant, from developer Hoothanes and publisher 4Divinity, is a story-driven first-person shooter set against the Second Sino-Japanese War. It spans the 1930s and 1940s across multiple chapters and regions—snowy northeastern mountains with the Anti-Japanese United Army, neon-soaked 1930s Shanghai as a spy relying on stealth and puzzles, sabotage runs against supply lines, and more. Characters are fictional but the battles and locations draw from real history and extensive research. Expect period weapons (Hanyang rifles, Mauser pistols, MP18s and others) and a loyal companion that adds emotional weight. Platforms include PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S; no firm date yet.

We’ve all read about the fighting between China and Japan. Finally getting a dedicated game that puts players in that theater feels refreshing. The trailer sold the atmosphere hard.

These are early reactions—some grounded in playtime, others in trailers and what we know so far. Games change, betas evolve, and final products can surprise. I’ll keep the same standard when the full reviews land: honest, no fluff. Which of these are you most (or least) looking forward to?