ICYMI: Everything From Summer Game Fest 2022

Once again, Geoff Keighley is hosting a Summer Game Fest stream. The event has been going for a few years now, but this year appears to be the major inflection point of E3 at its weakest and Summer Games Fest carrying the most momentum. Last year, the major bomb drop from the show was the first gameplay trailer for Elden Ring, which ended up being probably the biggest video game release of 2022. It’s hard to predict what from today’s show might end up as the biggest game of next year, but there’s definitely a few contenders.

If you missed the two-hour stream and want to catch up on it, we have a handy rundown below.

• The show begins with Street Fighter 6, which was announced a few months ago and detailed last week at the State of Play. The Summer Games Fest announcement is Guile with gameplay, confirming an earlier very-clearly-real leak of all the characters. He has a beard now.

• A new game announcement, Aliens: Dark Descent , is shown from Focus Home and 20th Century Films. It is yet another game in the Alien franchise. The CG trailer is more for tone than a sense of gameplay, but we can tell it’s an overhead game. It’s coming to PC and consoles in 2023.
• We get another look at The Callisto Protocol, starting with a less edited trailer than the State of Play version. After that, director Glenn Schofield introduces segments of raw gameplay. Unsurprisingly, it looks a lot like Dead Space, complete with the visible healthbar on the back and the signature stomp.

• We don’t actually write about Call of Duty for a number of Activision-related reasons, so I don’t really know how to talk about this overlong Modern Warfare II segment going on right now. Except to say it’s weird that they’re calling it Modern Warfare II when that original game was not that long ago. Also, why do soldiers on a mission equipped with bulletproof vests and assault rifles have molotov cocktails made from beer bottles and rags?
• Weirdly, Flashback is coming back with a sequel appropriately titled Flashback 2. It lacks the immediate recognizability of the original’s art design, but it does appear to look like Flashback in other ways.

• Next is Witchfire World, an occult-based FPS that is available to wishlist on Steam right now.

• Fort Solis is next and, despite how it looks, this is not The Callisto Protocol. It’s also not Dead Space Remake. This is a third game that looks identical to those two. Troy Baker comes out to talk about it and I assume try to sell NFTs.

• A world premiere comes to reveal another horror game with shades of Alien Isolation, but seemingly about a scary robot. It’s called Routine and has music from Mick Gordon, who was the composer for the recent Doom games but split with id after both sides lobbed allegations of unprofessional behavior at each other. It’s coming to Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, and PC and will launch on Game Pass.
• Dwayne Johnson showed up and talked shirtless for several minutes and transitioned to a Black Adam trailer which gives me some real Morbius vibes.
• Several commercials begin, including one for the Outriders expansion Worldslayer, multiple Switch games, Fall Guys.

• A new World Premiere from Frost Giant games is shown for a new RTS named Stormgate, featuring a CG trailer of a person in a mech suit fighting a demon. Frost Giant is made of former Blizzard talent, which explains why the trailer looks like Kerrigan shooting Diablo.

• Highwater World, a beautiful new indie game, is shown for the first time. Keighley explains it’s about the climate crisis, which…okay!

• He also mentions Replaced, a game from a Belarusian studio that hoped to have a trailer ready, but was not able to because of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
• Next we transition to American Arcadia, a seemingly Truman Show-inspired game about someone named Trevor escaping the TV show that films his entire life.

• A fakeout for Goat Simulator 3 starts off trying to pretend it’s a revival of Dead Island 2. There is, to my knowledge, no Goat Simulator 2. It is coming later this year to the Epic Games Store.

• Midnight Suns is shown again, having not made a particularly large public splash since its unveiling. The CG trailer shows fan favorites, like Venom and Spider-Man. There’s also an official release date of October 7. The Switch logo has disappeared from the game’s platforms, interestingly enough.

• Cuphead: Delicious Last Course, which Geoff points out acronymizes out to DLC, gets a spot. We get footage of a new boss before the game releases on June 30.

• Neon White, a new game from Ben Esposito, is coming out really soon on Switch and PC. Like, June 16 soon.

• Midnight Flight Express, which is coming on August 23, gets a trailer.

• It’s time for Warframe, where they announce that Warframe convention Tennocon will largely focus on the Duviri Paradox. To whet some appetites, there’s a quick trailer of all that on stream.

• Honkai Star Rail, a new turn-based RPG from Genshin Impact developer Hoyoverse, is shown with an English trailer. Art-wise, it is kind of like a sci-fi Genshin Impact.

• Additionally, Zenless Zone Zero is shown with a world premiere trailer. This one is more action-oriented and, as Hoyoverse explained earlier at its announcement, has rogue-lite elements.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, which is due out June 16, gets its final character announcement in the form of Casey Jones. The violent-but-lovable Casey Jones joins the crew to smack some Foot Clan around. There’s also a six-player mode for local and online so all four turtles, April, and Casey can fight together.

• A game called Super People gets a CG trailer. I have no idea that it is about.
• Humankind adds a Cultures of Latin America DLC pack, which is neat, and also extremely surreal. It’s also coming soon to Game Pass.
• One Piece Odyssey, a turn-based RPG, gets its first big debut trailer. I am guessing this trailer is going to have a hard time selling non-One Piece fans on anything here, but the game does look neat.

• The RPG train keeps rolling with Atlus’ Soul Hackers 2, shown for the first time with an English cast.

• A new Capcom Arcade Stadium is shown with a release date of July 22, including games like Street Fighter.
• Metal Hellsinger, a first-person shooter with heavy metal music, gets a full trailer. I may not have headbanged, but I did nod it at little.

• We get one last look at The Quarry before its release next week.

• Another look at Nightingale, which debuted at The Game Awards last year. The trailer shows some real messed up little guys, first-person shooting, and building a village in some equally messed up areas.

• A demo for Saints Row‘s character creator, titled Boss Factory, is out now. It lets you make the character you can control in Saints Row later this year. The demo is free on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, and PC.

• Another Warhammer game, titled Darktide, is shown because one-third of all video games released every day are Warhammer games. It is, quite obviously, similar to Vermintide but in the 40K age, so there’s a lot of shooting dudes and also popping their heads off with gentle raps on the head. It’s out September 13.
• Bloober Team, who is rumored to be working on a new Silent Hill game, reveals another title in the Layers of Fear series. Titled, inexplicably, Layers of Fears, the third title is on Unreal Engine 5.

• Next is Gotham Knights, which showcases a particular focus on Nightwing.

• Neil Druckmann of Naughty Dog comes out and reveals The Last of Us Multiplayer, a standalone game that Druckmann emphasizes is “really big.” More about the game will be shown next year. Keighley and Druckmann also talk about The Last of Us HBO show. Finally, The Last of Us Part 1, a PS5 remake of the PS3 title, is shown officially after leaking earlier. It will also release on the PC.

Summer Game Fest is part of Fanbyte’s Hot Game Summer coverage, where we’re bringing you recaps and commentary on this summer’s game presentations like Xbox’s showcase, the PC Gaming Show, and the all-encompassing Summer Game Fest hosted by Geoff Keighley. If you’re interested in seeing all Fanbyte’s coverage, check out our Hot Game Summer 2022 hub.