Most years, GamesCom acts like E3's younger brother. It's a big show, no doubt about that, but it's usually a chance for smaller, lesser-known games to really shine. While there will be no shortage of indie darlings at GamesCom 2015, it's starting to look like this year's event will almost act like a second E3. There's already a long list of huge games coming to the show – and said list just got a little longer.
For the first time in over a year, Crackdown will be making its way to the show floor. The news comes from Xbox's own Phil Spencer, who confirmed that the long-awaited open-world superhero game would be making its way to GamesCom:
"Final GamesCom content review was today and things are becoming final. Lots of nostalgia for me with the Crackdown gameplay."
The next-gen Crackdown revival was first shown at E3 2014 – however, after months of no news and the game's absence from E3 2015, fans were starting to worry that the project was stuck in limbo. Thankfully, that doesn't seem to be the case – hopefully, Crackdown's upcoming gameplay reveal can live up to its ridiculously awesome debut trailer.
Then again, Crackdown isn't the only big reveal scheduled for GamesCom – in fact, another open-world action game is set to make its debut at next month's show.
2K just revealed that the Mafia franchise would make its long-awaited return next week – sadly, there isn't much in the way of details, but the fact that the game exists should be more than enough for fans who've waited nearly five years for a follow-up to Mafia II.
There's no telling exactly what 2K will be bringing to GamesCom: it's entirely possible that the studio is working on an extended gameplay presentation, but the announcement picture only mentions the game's 'worldwide reveal' – which usually ends up being a trailer. One way or another, it won't be long before fans get to see it for themselves: Mafia III is set to debut on Aug. 5.
GamesCom 2015 is bigger than ever, true, but this won't be a simple repeat of E3 2015. There are a lot of big reveals set for next month's show: expect to see a lot of what next-gen gaming has to offer when the show begins on Aug. 5 in Cologne, Germany.
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