Best PS4 and Xbox One trailers from Gamescom 2014

Gamescom may not be as high-profile a show as E3, but there were still plenty of surprises in store for those that kept an eager eye on all the major press conferences over the last two days. Sony wins the award for the highest number of brand new announcements, but Microsoft’s extended gameplay demos of upcoming titles such as Destiny and Quantum Break also had us feverish with excitement. Now that the dust has settled, we’ve rounded up the top ten best PS4 and Xbox One game trailers and gameplay demos that we just couldn’t get out of our heads.

Tearaway Unfolded

Tearaway was one of the PS Vita’s biggest hits, and now its sequel Tearaway Unfolded is coming to PS4. You play a small messenger travelling through a world made out entirely of paper, and you’ll use the PS4 controller’s touchpad to help create new pathways for your errant delivery boy.

In the trailer above, we can see the touchpad being used to create gusts of wind, part seas and even let you bounce up to higher platforms. It also looks as though you’ll be able to fire projectiles back at the screen using the controller’s gyro sensors as well as shine patches of light on certain parts of the screen. We don’t have a release date yet, but if it can replicate Tearaway’s original success, it will be one of the PS4’s must-have titles.

Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain

Until Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima took to the stage during Sony’s press conference, Gamescom had been a rather po-faced affair, but he made sure to poke some fun at the assembled crowds with an “exclusive look” at the new cardboard box mechanics in The Phantom Pain. The Metal Gear series has never been afraid to poke fun at itself, and Snake’s new “sticker camouflage” takes things to a whole new level.

Players will apparently be able to adorn their beloved boxes with bikini babes in order to distract guards, before popping out with an unexpected CQC surprise. It’s just one of many ways The Phantom Pain will let players experiment with different play styles, as the open-world game breaks free of the series’ trademark pacing in favour of wider exploration.

Quantum Break

Having teased a full Gamescom reveal at E3 earlier in the year, all eyes were on Remedy entertainment to deliver something special with Quantum Break. The mixed media game/TV show certainly has high aspirations, and based on the first gameplay video it looks visually stunning, although how main character Jack Joyce will use his time-bending powers for more than just combat remains to be seen.

We were more impressed by the Time Stutters, isolated incidents where time simply stops altogether, leaving Jack to move through his motionless surroundings as lorries explode, cars fly through the air and bridges collapse. Apparently your performance in-game will affect the accompanying TV show too, so there will be extra pressure to get things right as you progress.

Bloodborne

The next project from Dark Souls creator Hidetaka Miyazaki, PS4-exclusive Bloodborne is a dark, foreboding third parson action adventure that promises to be just as soul-crushingly difficult as its spiritual predecessor. Inspired by gothic architecture and Victorian London, the city of Yharnam looks set to be every bit as memorable as Dark Souls 2’s Drangleic.

Rather than simply drag the same Dark Souls mechanics across to a new game engine, Bloodborne instead focuses on aggressions with a two-weapon play style, adding firearms and transforming melee weapons that can be chained together in brutal attack combos.

Until Dawn

Having started off life in 2012 as a PS3 horror game developed specifically for the PlayStation Move motion controller, Until Dawn went into deep freeze until Gamescom this year where it was re-revealed as a PS4 exclusive. Now using the DualShock 4 controller’s light bar, the survival horror puts eight teenagers in the remote mountain getaway of Blackwood Pines – with predictable, life-threatening results.

Running on an updated version of the Killzone: Shadow Fall engine, the first re-reveal trailer shows the eight teens in various degrees of distress, hiding from a deranged serial killer as you try to keep them all alive through the night. Keep your eyes peeled for some famous faces, as developer Supermassive has cast actors Hayden Panettiere, Rami Malek and Brett Dalton as the main characters.

Rime

Originally announced at Sony’s Gamescom conference last year, Rime got a brand new trailer yesterday that looks even more gorgeous than it did before. The latest game by Deadlight developers Tequila Works, Rime is a third-person puzzle adventure game that looks a lot like a cross between Ico and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

While previous footage seemed to suggest that Rime would take place on a single island, this latest trailer begs otherwise, as we see our young hero riding on storm-beaten ships and two-legged mechanical monsters. There’s still no release date yet, sadly, but we can’t wait to see the finished game.

Ori and the Blind Forest

So far, the Xbox One hasn’t proved to be a particularly great platform for indie developers, but Ori and the Blind Forest looks spectacular. First unveiled at E3 earlier this year, you play as the titular Ori, a tiny spirit that was raised by his bear-like companion. But evil forces are on the hunt for Ori and it’s up to him to fight back and save his spirit brethren from destruction.

This latest trailer from Gamescom shows a lot more of the game’s platforming sections, with Ori’s abilities gradually growing throughout the video. From attacking enemies to hovering through the air and wall-jumping, Ori looks as though he’ll be quite the nimble adventurer. Ori and the Blind Forest is expected to launch before the end of 2014.

Tomorrow Children

Tomorrow Children is the latest game from Q-Games, the developers behind the PixelJunk games. Set in a kind of Soviet-esque alternate reality where humankind has been enslaved by strange robotic aliens, a small group of rebels fight back against their glistening, glowing overlords.

You’ll be able to choose from a variety of character classes to help you explore further and gather valuable materials to aid in rebuilding your town, and you’ll also need to create robots of your own to help defend your homestead when it comes under attack.

Destiny

Destiny’s new multi-player trailer was unleashed at Gamescom and amid the flurry of dense particle effects, and endless multi-kills, we could just make out all the game modes for the competitive part of the game – The Crucible. Control featured in the beta, and you have to capture and hold points in order to get point bonuses for your kills, which makes it a little different from a purely objective-based mode. Clash is the name of the 6v6 deathmatch mode, while Rumble is the all-vs-all mode, for those who hate everyone.

The 3v3 modes include Skirmish, which is supposed to require teamwork with longer respawn times necessitating the revival of allies, while in Salvage you must retrieve artifacts that spawn around the map and scan them, a kind of capture the flag variant by the sound of it.

Most exciting to us though, as big Halo fans, was the Combined Arms mode, which apparently will combine infantry and vehicle combat. Now we’ve already seen vehicles in Control games in the beta, so we were surprised to see a separate mode dedicated to them, maybe the vehicles themselves are the targets?

Wild

The first game from Michel Ancel’s brand new Wild Sheep Studio, Wild is a huge online survival adventure game where you can play as both man and beast. Set 10,000 years ago, all manner of creatures roam this land including wolves, bears, crows, goats, boars and even sentient skeletons.

While very little is currently known about the game, hunting looks to be a key part of getting by in this strange, green world, as we can see a pack of wolves closing in on a hapless boar and humans crafting spears and bows to slay huge beasts. It also looks as though some creatures may be able to morph between the human-animal divide.