The Can’t Miss Games We’ve Played At Gamescom 2026, From Control Resonant To The Witcher 3’s New Expansion And More

Gamescom 2026 has arrived, and everyone here on the Game Informer editorial team has a schedule packed with back-to-back appointments. From Control Resonant to other exciting games like The Witcher 3’s upcoming Songs of the Past expansion, we plan to bring you our thoughts as quickly as possible in this roundup. 

For smaller games and bigger games alike, keep an eye on this story here, and for some games, we might even break out our write-ups into larger previews for you to read. Wherever you click on Game Informer today, you’re sure to find some insightful Gamescom writing, and we can’t wait to bring all the German gaming home to you. Without further ado…

The Most Dope Games We’ve Played At Gamescom 2026

Below, we’ll list the games we’ve played in order of when we’ve actually seen them. As the list fills up, we plan to add a Table of Contents to make this roundup as easy to follow as possible. 

Control Resonant

Let me say right off the bat: I am stoked for Control Resonant as a Remedy-verse fan, but I still have not played the game. Unfortunately, that hasn’t changed at Gamescom 2026 because my preview of a new section of Control Resonant was hands-off. This didn’t inspire confidence in me, especially as Control Resonant marks a big departure for the studio with its melee action combat and RPG elements. However, what I watched the Remedy Entertainment employee play was another exciting look at the game. 

My colleague and senior associate editor Marcus Stewart did go hands-on with it at SGF and came away with positive thoughts about actually playing the game, so I do still have hope, but alas. Okay, that’s enough about that – here’s what I actually saw. 

Dylan Faden, the brother of Control protagonist Jesse, is out of the FBC’s containment alongside all of the Hiss the Oldest House tried to keep at bay. There’s been plenty of looks at the Hiss’ role in Control Resonant, but for this hands-off preview, Remedy showed off a Manhattan park area covered in a blue mold, complete with various mold enemies, too. Dylan is tasked with finding a Resonant here – the big bosses of the game. 

Curiously, Remedy says you will fight the same first and last boss no matter how you play the game, but that all the Resonants you fight in between can be tackled in any order you choose. In this preview, we’re after a moldy Resonant boss, but first, we have to eat some mold to learn more about it. 

If you didn’t already know, the mold in Control Resonant is “delicious,” according to Remedy and hard to resist. As such, Dylan passes all kinds of bodies who look dead but are actually paralyzed in a euphoric state (because they’ve willingly eaten the mold). En route to the mold Dylan needs to eat, we pass an FBC Field Content Research facility before shifting gravity so we can climb up a vertical wall.  

Up ahead, there’s a group of mold enemies. The standard mob enemies are easy to take out, but they’re great for farming dominance, which is an effect activated by Dylan’s combat kit that increases damage after killing an enemy. After garnering some dominance, we tackle the massive garlic bulb-looking enemy skulking about the area, placing mold mines in the area. This enemy is about the size of an elephant and shoots mold mines and other projectiles out of its “trunk,” for lack of a better term. 

Here, Remedy explains that the equipped Dual Blades have a critical chance buff, and that the drill transformation for his transforming Aberrant weapon does some serious Falter damage. Every enemy has a yellow Falter bar below their red health bar – Falter is essentially a Stagger meter. When you fill it up, you can perform an execution by pressing L3 (on PlayStation 5). 

After taking this enemy out and clearing out the other enemies, we make our way toward the mold Dylan needs to eat. On the way, we see a traffic barrier behaving weirdly, rotating in a glitchy fashion; Remedy says this indicates a nearby world event, but we don’t have time to complete it.

At this point, I ask Remedy if there are real-world locations from Manhattan in Control Resonant. They say no, and that instead of actual named locations, the places within Control Resonant are meant to feel inspired by the real Manhattan, but with a “twisted” Remedy spin on it. We continue forward, fight some additional enemies, and I see Dylan’s shoulder button abilities on display; R2 deals fire damage by way of Ignite, while L2 uses the Barrage ability, which pummels enemies with rocks to greatly increase Falter damage. R1 is Push, and it’s basically a Jedi force push. 

I also learn here that there is no parry and no block – there’s just a dodge (and you can perfect dodge to slow down time and deal extra damage). That’s by design, as Remedy wants Control Resonant players to be aggressive; that’s why you can only heal by defeating enemies, as they drop blue orbs that add health to your HP bar. 

A few minutes later and we finally reach the mold for Dylan to eat. He eats it, and we get some strange dialogue choices to select. Remedy says dialogue choices won’t change the game’s ending – there’s only one ending – but that some side quests can have different endings depending on your choices. Plus, your dialogue choices will change how NPCs perceive you. It’s not a Mass Effect-like system or anything like that, but Remedy says you will notice NPC perception in their attitude toward you. 

After eating this mold, Dylan has an idea of where the Resonant he’s after is hiding. We find it underground; it’s called the Collective, and it’s a giant pile of mold shaped into various frowning faces. During this boss fight, Dylan can’t do any damage to the Collective. Instead, you have to attack the Collective’s tentacles attached to the walls in the arena. To do that, you need to gravity shift so that you can walk on the walls and hit the tentacles. All the while, the Collective is firing moldy projectiles at you and summoning enemies to slow you down. After damaging all of the tentacles, weak spots open up, and you finally do some actual damage to the Collective. 

I don’t get to see the fight’s conclusion, but I’m excited to do so myself in the final game. It’s not the wildest boss, but seeing Remedy’s spin on the “attack weak points to defeat the boss” formula is neat. I expect a lot of weird and strange when I play a Remedy game and so far, Control Resonant seems like it’s going to deliver all that and more. 

Control Resonant launches digitally on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on September 24. The physical version is planned for October, and a Mac version will launch later. 

Nekome: Nazi Hunter

Earlier this year, I discovered a trailer for Nekome: Nazi Hunter, which is how I learned it’s a Grindhouse-inspired action game where you brutally kill a lot of Nazis. Immediately, I was in. And now, after playing it for roughly 30 minutes, I’m even more in. 

Nekome: Nazi Hunter is absolutely, deliciously, disrespectful to the Nazi’s of the 1940s Nazi regime in Germany during World War II. It begins with protagonist Vano Nastasu dressed as a butler within a palace of sorts. Inside, a group of Nazis is seated around a table covered in delicious food. As the Nazis eat, a leader figure praises the group for opening up three more death camps, gloating about their awful acts of violence while eating chicken, vegetables, and more. Vano wheels in a silver platter, removing its cover to reveal a decapitated Nazi head with a knife through its skull. 

He then uses a knife engraved with “Nekome,” which is Yiddish for vengeance, according to the game, to completely slice off the leader’s arm. He then guts his belly before slitting the Nazi’s throat. At this point, I take over on the sticks, pressing X repeatedly to deliver all manner of cuts, slashes, and more to the other Nazis in the room – they stand no chance, and I quickly paint the ballroom red. 

You can parry with Y and break their blocks, but ultimately, combat is simple, more focused on delivering bloodshed than intricacy. What I play is in a pre-beta stage, and it’s evident – it’s a bit janky, but not enough to distract me from the delight I take part in as I rip apart Nazis galore. 

From here, we flash back to Vano as a child to learn that his entire family is ripped from him at the hands of “Hitler’s Hyenas,” which is seemingly led by the Nazi leader Vano kills at the preview’s start. I’m glad he gets his revenge because that leader shoots Vano’s father point-blank, then his mother, then forces Vano and his sister to fight over a knife to kill each other, reminiscent of the pool stick scene in The Dark Knight. Vano refuses to kill his sister and stabs himself instead. The aforementioned Nazi leader shoots Vano in the back and doesn’t check to make sure he’s dead. 

I flash forward again to see Vano in the future, somewhere in New York City. He’s speaking with Harold, a butcher-mentor with a heavy NY accent. He explains to Vano the importance of training before exacting revenge, but Nazis soon storm the room and take Harold out, adding more fuel to Vano’s vengeance-filled journey. Searching for Harold’s killer, I stalk through a NYC alley to learn there’s an American-German Bund group in support of Nazis in 1940s America. I utilize the game’s stealth kills here and like the action combat, it’s simple (but effective). Turns out, killing Nazis just doesn’t get old, at least in this 30-minute preview. 

I hope to continue my Nazi-killing delight in the full game when it launches sometime early next year.