The second day at the TGS always feels like a race. You know you need to cover this and that, and now you have a clear time bomb working against you. And to make things worse, this second business day was absolutely packed with people again. It’s almost hard to believe how many people managed to fit in there. The public days is worse, of course, and will make you fit like fish in a can.

New Games

So on the second day there were a bunch of titles I still wanted to try. Here’s a quick wrap-up.

Ninja Gaiden 4

This new entry in the Ninja Gaiden series is a collaboration between Tecmo and Platinum Games (Bayonetta). And that shows. It feels like a different Ninja Gaiden - closer to the Raiden game they also made with Konami a long time ago. The action is very fast, and the whole difficulty is to coordinate your moves on time while avoiding the multiple attacks that try to land on your face. In the 20 minutes demo, you face other ninja as well as some kind of drones. You are introduced to special moves, such as being able to walk and run on vertical walls, and using a grapple hook to attach yourself to certain spots on walls, enabling attacks on enemies from high up.

It was fun for the first 10 minutes, until you reached the first boss. And then you kept dying. And apparently, it was not just me and my terrible skills - everyone I checked playing around me at the same time were having a hard time with the boss. Very strong attacks and combos that remove half of your life, some special attacks that you can’t pary, and a long life bar that you finally manage to deplete, until you discover it refills it twice during the fight. FOR. GET. IT. I think I tried over and over again 15 times at least, and I did not feel I was making much progress.

I’m sure that this is something that gets easier the more you play, but the difficulty felt brutal. If this is what the final game looks like, with bosses that require hours and hours to beat, I’m not sure I want to pick this up…

League of Legens: 2XKO

Riot Games was at the TGS for the first time, and it came with the goods! 2XKO, a new 2 vs 2 fighter, aimed at competitive environments, with all your favorite characters from League of Legends. I like Jinx. The concept is nothing new, you have seen it in Tekken, Dragon Ball Fighter Z, and more. But for a first fighting game by Riot Games, they did they well. The game is fun to play, there are many moves, specials and combos, and visually it looked great - in the same vein as Dragon Ball Fighter Z or Guilty Gear Strive.

We did not have to wait too long to play a game, but it looks like there were always people coming to try out 2XKO. Probably a good move to expand in a new genre. It will bring new players who were not into the LOL game in the first place, but who approached the world thanks the popularity of Arcane, the TV Series.

Ghosts of Yotei

One of the most prominent games at the Sony booth, you had to get your slot to play as early as possible as they were running out pretty quickly. I did not know Ghosts of Tsuchima, so it was something new for me. To make things simple, it’s a narrative open world action game set in the samurai era in Japan, that tries to make itself sound realistic (ahem, a woman samurai? I guess let’s forget about realism after all), and is rather slow paced. They had two different demos, one taking place at night and another one during the day. I had the day time one, where you were trying to track someone you were chasing in the wilderness. Just like in the Witcher, you could call your horse to cover larger distances rapidly.

The demo was just 20 minutes - hardly giving a good glimpse of the game, but it looked interesting and well made (while the framerate could be better). It apparently launched just one day ago, so you can already pick it up (on console). The PC version will come later (next year?).

Ananta

Probably one of the most impressive games of the show was a Chinese game, Ananta! This is going to be a recuring theme, but China is really becoming a powerhouse for video games. China was everywhere at the TGS, be it AAA games or hardware, accessories, tools, and more. Of course there was Black Myth Wukong not that long ago, but this TGS proves that this was not an exception. Just look at the trailer and tell me you are not blown away by the overall quality.

This is GTA 5 level of production, with a much anime-like spin on it. And nothing like that has ever come from Japan (and probably never will), while this is screaming Hey my characters could be from a Japanese anime. Besides the GTA aspects, there is a lot of character customization going on, and the game is picking up ideas right and left to integrate them in its adventure. The main hero can move like Spiderman between buildings, you get car chases where you have to shoot at enemies coming too close, and brawling scenes where you can use objects in the scene to beat up your opponents (throwing them in the trash, hitting their head against a car, etc).

If this game delivers on half of what it even shows in the gameplay trailer, it will be huge. It’s supposed to hit the market in 2026. I would highly recommend to stay on top of that one.

Silent Hill f

Just a brief mention of that one here. While it was heavily advertised at the show, it was not playable (even though the game released during the TGS!) which is really hard to comprehend. Why not let people play it as it’s out so that you can benefit from the additional coverage? Instead, they had some video content for the lore behind the story (I did not see it). Since the release it looks like it’s received some positive review (85% on Steam right now) - so it looks like it’s decent, while not exceptional.

And that’s it for now. There’s still a lot of things to say about the TGS 2025, so there will be follow-up articles pretty soon. In the meantime, have a great weekend!