Mobile Games News Recap | Week of August 22 to 28, 2022

Discover the weekly recap of the mobile gaming news on Android and iOS for the week of August 22 to 28, 2022! On the agenda this week: a maximum of video games on all supports, the beta of Rogue Company on mobile, the release of Dragon Trail: Hunter, the arrival ofeFootball 2023 and much more to discover in this recap. We'll let you read all about it below. ⬇️

GameMobi at Gamescom 2022

This week's recap is a bit special, as we're bringing you a special Gamescom edition. This international video game trade show was held this week in Cologne, Germany and Mobi.gg went there to cover the gaming news and meet people. So here's a behind-the-scenes look at Gamescom 2022 as seen by our extremely professional Mobi.gg team.

So I'm going to introduce you to the car show, which shined with the presence of Toyota, a Red Intel car, a tractor Farming Simulator, the PUBG Mobile LeBouseuh Kart, the Aerosoft truck, the famous Mini Pokémon, and even the motorcycle Tower of Fantasy hidden on the right side of the Level Infinite booth. With all of this, I almost expected to find a real airplane at the Microsoft Flight Simulator booth.

But if we look under this impressive number of vehicles, we discover again a unique video game show in Europe with big names like Tencent, Ubisoft or Bandai Namco, but also small independents who came to present their best creations.

Gamescom x Hellsinger

On the Tencent booth, we could discover the announcement of the metal concert during the presentation of the game Hellsinger which made the whole Gamescom shake. It must be said that Tencent did not do things by halves by setting up its Level Infinite booth with a floor-shaking sound system, between the metal of Hellsinger and the epic presentations on a big screen of Dune: Awakening, GTFO or Tower of Fantasy trailers.

On its side, Honkai Impact 3rd has chosen to propose a much softer virtual concert on August 28th by Dreamy Euphony to amaze all the senses of its players. Music is honored before the beginning of the new school year with beautiful live and virtual performances powered by the video game and it's a pleasure to hear.

Pokémonthe king of partnerships

While the internet communities were busy debating the latest soccer and RPG news,Mobi.gg was also at Gamescom, testing some surprising activities like the Toyota agility course or the McDonald's escape box in a big cube that smelled like French fries. So even if we would have preferred to give you news about the Harry Potter games on PC and mobile which are really overdue, we especially saw Pokémon showing off its Mini and its McDonald's partnership.

Starting September 13, the McCafé will host a Raid 3 times over a year with a very "rare and powerful" Pokémon according to Niantic. Personally, I'm most interested in the presentation manual of this special and somewhat out of nowhere Mini that took a huge place at Gamescom.

Gamescom 2022 most beautiful stands

Among the exhibitors at Gamescom, we will note the magnificent stands of Outcast 2, the whole THQ Nordic section where we could test the prologue of Alone in the Dark, the areas of test Bandai Namco with Park Beyond, One Piece and Dark Pictures, that of Tencent with Level Infinite and that of Ubisoft with Skull and Bones and Roller Champions highlighted.

The Gamescom is above all about queuing for 2 hours to play for 10 minutes and realizing that the guys who come with easy-to-carry stools are much more stuff than you are, but we were still able to enjoy some of the games present, some of which you already know, like Tower of Fantasy, Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, Earth: Revival, PUBG Mobile and others that we can't tell you about yet and that were only available in the business part of Gamescom, inaccessible to the public. But if you like PvP, there should be some in stock for 2023.

Test of Honkai Star Rail

This Gamescom was also the opportunity to meet members of the Hoyoverse communication, on a booth as beautiful as well thought. Divided in two sections between Honkai Star Rail and Genshin Impact, the booth welcomed all the visitors with its cosplayers and offered them to leave with a bag of goodies if they managed to complete the quests planned for the event during their session of test. Pure and satisfying fan service, so thank you miHoYo. I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you aboutHonkai Star Rail, which we were able to test on site during a 30-minute session.

And if you have played Honkai Impact 3rd, you will not be disoriented. While discovering the story of the game, Star Rail offers strategic fights at turn-based with a team of 4 characters to compose in gacha mode. The test session was level 40 to 50 for the characters, so we can't tell you more about the beginning of the story. However, your starting character seems to be Dan Heng, a member of the Star Rail Express company who joined the company to escape his mysterious past and now fights with a spear.

In addition to Dan, you can find some characters from the Honkai license. To make the fights and the team composition more dynamic, each character has an element and a type of weapon that gives him strengths or weaknesses depending on the enemy to face. By varying the blows with your basic attacks, your two special attacks and your ultimate, you get an explosive cocktail of possibilities in combat and can even interrupt the order of the action turns.

Even so, the loading times on test 's machine quickly became burdensome and I don't know how it would feel on a less powerful smartphone or tablet. When a low level enemy gets in your way, every transition in and out of combat eats away at your patience and you end up feeling much the same sense of frustration as when your journey was stopped by a level 3 Rattata in Pokémon Rouge.

But if you're smart, you can bypass visible enemies during the exploration phases, avoid being spotted, and even attack them by surprise to get a combat start bonus. During the walking exploration sequences, you can destroy scenery and interact with small objects to discover the secrets of the world around you.

With an obvious resemblance to Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail confirms the excellent character design of HoYoverse and its mastery of graphics in terms of animation and its choice of shaders without losing in gameplay fluidity, even if we hope that it will not require a war machine to run it. With no release date at the moment, Honkai Star Rail continues to raise the hype among players of HoYoverse titles.

Test of Earth: Revival

Near the Hoyoverse booth, we could also test Earth: Revival, the futuristic shooter proposed by ByteDance, which we talked about in the last review. After a 30 minutes game session, it must be said that the game is quite easy to take in hand.

In addition to the well worked scenery and an interesting post-apo atmosphere, what we liked was the versatility of the fights. With a hand-to-hand weapon and a ranged weapon, each with its own set of attacks, transitions between proximity to enemies and headshot finishes are very natural. In addition, there is a MECHA suit, much like Pharah from Overwatch, which allows you to pulse lasers, blow up entire areas, or propel yourself through the air to change the dynamics of a fight.

When you're not torturing or roasting the critters that cross your path, you can explore the world and participate in local challenges in the manner of a timed Mario challenge, as I was able to test in a repurposed mall. But you won't be alone in this task as you can choose between two rather strange pets as your companion and right hand man in your battles.

During this Earth Revival test, I could also observe that even if the environments are pleasant to explore, the few mobs I could meet were not very convincing and were rather content with a predictable pattern and a design a bit déjà-vu, but we will have to wait to get our hands on more content to make a definitive opinion on the matter.

New mobile games and global announcements

Announced at Gamescom or not, let's take a look at this week's mobile game releases and important announcements of games in development on Android and iOS.

Dragon Trail: Hunter World release

Let's dive into the fascinating world of Star Island and its incredible chimeras. To introduce you to the release of Dragon Trail: Hunter World, I could detail its gameplay for several minutes, tell you about its choice of four classes, your quest for the giant dragons, make you believe in beautiful illusions hidden behind a colorful and neat creature design, but I'll cut it short and tell you right away to skip this game if you're really looking for a title where there's something to do.

With auto mode enabled by default, if you have the misfortune to turn it off, you'll realize that this Dragon Trail is nothing more than yet another Asian filler RPG, with no depth and leveling up to fifty in just an hour without having to look at the screen.

Very poor mechanically, the game is mostly a disappointment for us since its original universe promised great gameplay sessions, but we will surely never re-launch this gacha RPG that automatically placed itself in the trash, without needing our help. It's amazing what an auto mode can do these days on all options. After Noah's Heart, Dragon Trail is the second to make this mistake for its August launch.

Rogue Company: Elite Beta on iOS

This week, we also learned that the Rogue Company: Elite beta is starting on iOS. This mobile port of Rogue Company has just opened registration for its pre-release phases at test . A third-person shooter, the title features 4v4 and 6v6 battles with a limited choice of mercenaries, of which we already know 10 characters that will fight on 7 maps currently announced.

Hopefully, by registering on the official website, you'll be able to get your hands on Hi-Rez's title and later compare it to Rainbow Six Mobile and Valorant on mobile.

Release of eFootball 2023 Mobile

In a completely different style, the update from eFootball 2022 to eFootball 2023 reveals its additional content. Among the new licenses obtained, Inter Milan and AC Milan will soon make their arrival in Konami's title in addition to the Mexican Premier League, Liga BBVA MX.

8 months after its release on PC, the successor of PES still doesn't have a Master League and shouldn't get one for a while, but it has two new ambassadors: Bruno Fernandes from Manchester United and Trent Alexander-Arnold from Liverpool.

Moonbreaker announcement

During Tuesday night's Opening Night Live, we discovered the trailer of Moonbreaker, the new title from Unknown Worlds, the studios behind the sublime Subnautica, bought by Krafton almost a year ago. A strategy and miniatures game, it reminds a bit of Figure Fantasy on mobile, but offers the possibility to paint your miniatures from the game interface and has chosen to work with Brandon Sanderson, the successful fantasy writer who took over from Robert Jordan on the Road to Time.

Unfortunately, this title is not planned for mobile, so you'll have to make do with Figure Fantasy or other strategy titles to improve your tactical skills.

Updates of the week

In addition to the busy news with the Gamescom announcements, major updates also appeared this week on several flagship mobile games.

The 2.0 update of Tower of Fantasy : Vera

While quietly reaching 10 million downloads in 11 days, Tower of Fantasy is fighting back against the Genshin Impact 3.0 update with its own update. To face the new region of Sumeru imagined by HoYoverse, Level Infinite and Hotta Studio present their Vera zone that will land this fall, on the occasion of the MMO version 2.0.

A true cyberpunk hub with its city Mirroria, Vera will be a massive region to explore with its irradiated deserts and a wide variety of mobs, simulacra and additional weapons in addition to mounts and battle royale mode. To learn more about Vera, check out our article dedicated to the Tower of Fantasy 2.0 update.

TFT : Patch 12.16 and Set 7.5

A lot of changes this week on the TFT side. The title of Riot Games title releases its 12.16 update on the live servers and immediately unveils the next one on the PBE servers. The first patch attempts to nerf Yasuo and the dragons while the mid-season update on set 7 will soon feature 5 new dragons. For more details on the dragon champions Miamsy, Zippy, Sohm, Swain, Tera and their synergies, check out our article dedicated to TFT Set 7.5.

Apex Legends Mobile : new season and new character

While PUBG: Mobile and Earth Revival are advertising at Gamescom with booths decorated with a LeBouseuh kart or a giant mechanical arm suspended in the air, other mobile shooters are getting new content. I'm obviously talking about Apex Legends Mobile which is rolling out an update this week to feature the legend Crypto in its dynamic battle royale.

This new character, already available on PC and consoles for some time, takes part in the battles as a surveillance expert accompanied by his drone. In addition to Crypto, other new elements are appearing in-game, so check out our detailed article on the Hyperbeat season and Crypto.

Fortnite x Destiny 2

This week was also the opportunity to announce the Fortnite x Destiny 2 update. It brings emotes, skins and new content on the battle royale of Epic Games, which multiplies collaborations in recent months with the Dragon Ball partnership presented 10 days ago. That said, it's still better than last year's uncredited copy of Among Us content that they finally acknowledged publicly before discussing with Innersloth other avenues of collaboration.

The masterclass of Farming Simulator

To conclude this recap, I'd like to offer a medal of merit to one particular booth that managed to attract a crowd in an unlikely but true way. Forget everything you know about video game business models and advertising techniques. If Farming Simulator or rather Landwirtschafts-Simulator, which reads like this, managed to conquer the visitors, it is thanks to its secret technique: throwing chips into the crowd.

Not only does it attract the curious, but people who have understood that they can get chips by standing there are also ready to do anything to get more chips, which gave a hell of an atmosphere and a group of players ready to step on each other's fingers to get the next flight of doritos, it's a memory that we will keep for a long time of the Gamescom and it's on this beautiful image of players hungry for chips and new content that we end this little special recap

Thank you all for reading this far, and see you next week for more mobile gaming news!