Summer Games Fest 2025: not enough racing games, but some reveals turned our heads

When you post something on social media, you don’t tell everyone about all the holidays, nice dinners and weddings you’ll be attending for the next two years. The trailers you see in the cinema are generally for a handful of upcoming movies you might want to watch in the next month. Meanwhile, over in the games industry, in the last three days we’ve been shown every game in existence from now until the heat death of the universe. 

But aside from that opening salvo, we’re not here to question the wisdom of an annual event which blurts out more titles than anyone could possibly pay attention to or remember. No, instead we’re going to sift out the good stuff. 

If you missed our roundup of PlayStation’s State of Play showcase, you can find that here. 

Sadly it wasn’t a big one for racing games. In fact we counted a grand total of one to add to our radar, but the other genres fared better, so these are the titles that caught our eye during Summer Games Fest 2025. That means there are approximately 3,000 games that won’t be mentioned here, but it doesn’t mean that they won’t be good games or that we think you’re wrong if you liked them. 

It’s just that this is the year 2025, and ruthless economy of attention is required in order to survive and go about our lives. 

From the excellently named Beethoven and Dinosaur comes an interactive adaptation of all those coming of age teen movies of the ‘80s and ‘90s. You know, the ones with soundtracks you wish you were cool enough to listen to, and handsome youngsters desperate to leave the cosseted confines of their home town while also being scared to enter the big wide world.

Dontnod’s Life is Strange touched on the feeling, if not the plot arc, of that cinematic sub-genre, but this looks like a more direct take. Gameplay includes lots of skating, TP-ing a house, and rolling down a hill in a shopping trolley. Finally, the Last of the Summer Wine adaptation we’ve all been waiting for.   

Will the evil never stop taking residence? Nine games in (not counting spinoffs), it appears we’re still not safe from making shameful squeaking noises at our consoles at the hands of Capcom’s nightmare-weavers. The horror this time seems more grounded than ever, based on the reveal trailer, beginning with an FBI technical analyst who’s called to investigate a murder and quickly escalating into some personal jeopardy for poor protagonist Grace Ashcroft. 

What’s most striking is that there’s not a zombie in sight until the very final shot. Until then, the mood is very police procedural and the overall composition of this first showing suggests a moodier and subtler take on survival horror than recent triumphs like RE6 and Village.

It might look like streamer-fodder at first glance, but this slapstick physics-driven walking sim has some nuanced comedic performances in the trailer. Following in the fine lineage of ‘the protagonist is a bit useless’ games like 1994’s SNES platformer Lester the Unlikely, this Devolver title is about a fairly useless, unremarkable chap who’s dying for a wee and must learn to walk effectively in order to a) find somewhere to relieve himself and b) grow as a person. Don’t look at us like that, it’s going to be good. You’ll see.

You know Super Meat Boy? Well it’s that, but in 3D. 

To elaborate, the return of the infamously challenging platformer that had you bouncing a fleshy lump of matter between surfaces with extreme precision represents a strange ouroboros moment for indie gaming. Part of the original Super Meat Boy’s appeal was that it was a return to old-school, side-on, 2D platforming, many years after the industry had translated that genre into 3D when consoles like the Nintendo 64 arrived which were powerful enough to handle the polygons. And then quietly sidelined the whole genre in favour of more modern flavours.

So to see such a seminal indie platformer series doing exactly what first-wave platformers did in the '90s by going 3D, it’s… well, let’s not overthink it. There’ll be many finely wrought levels that test your muscle memory and patience, and that’s probably all this needs to find success.

Has COD been reading some books lately? Its latest series entrant certainly seems to have something to say about our societal distrust of big tech, messianic CEOs and the illusory nature of truth and reality, but don’t worry – there are still soldiers running about and shooting at the end of its otherwise artsy reveal trailer.

As a statement of intent, it’s admirable and even exciting. Very few studios have the budget to make a CG trailer this luxurious, so it would be fantastic to see Treyarch and Raven take some creative risks knowing that they’ll be received by a mainstream audience.

Speaking of creative risks, here’s a game about being a wobbly sentient lighthouse. The legendary Double Fine is behind this one, and maybe we’re simply seduced by that name and all the gorgeous colours but there seems to be some real substance to this one.

It’s a puzzle-adventure that’s trying to tell a story without any words, and seems to have some of that enigma and magic you experience in Journey and Psychonauts. We’ll find out on 17 October when it arrives. 

Go on, guess. Guess what you do in this game. Developer House House is definitely a graduate of the Ronseal school of game nomenclature, having put itself on the map with Untitled Goose Game and now followed it up with an upcoming co-op adventure that’s about walking and talking as you explore a big open world together with your friends.

To that end, the studio’s added an impressive variety of ways to communicate, from proximity voice chat that adds audio effects reflective of your surroundings to gestures and signs. It looks like a heady mix of wholesome adventure and friendship-ruining trolling.

Here it is. The sole significant representative of racing, and it’s a game that was officially unveiled last year. Sonic Racing Crossworlds’ new trailer shows a game that looks quite a lot like the impeccable Mario Kart 8, a racer so perfect that even Nintendo’s having to work extremely hard to top it. We think that’s a wise move, as is the voluminous roster of characters and tracks, with cameos from the likes of Persona 5’s Joker and Yakuza’s Ichiban Kasuga.

It’s unlikely to tear us away from hotlapping in Rennsport or Le Mans Ultimate, but if the handling has anything like the same deceptive nuance of MK8, we’ll consider this an essential part of a balanced racing diet.