Early morning queues
Ah new games! Their smell is so inviting! And sure enough, this years Eurogamer Expo drew a merry bunch of bloggers, tweeters and more importantly, gamers to London town. After missing last years expo, I'm so glad I made the short trip into London.
Stand by your beds!
The organised meet-up came together well(although I did lose everyone near the end of the event) and in attendance was: shuttler, pragi_uk, jonshute and vanhemlock, teppotastic, xbevisx, tigerears, oueddy and copperbird. I also spent some time with DolphGB talking over such things as the missed oppurtunities of the PSPgo, why the hell is there no release scheduled for the God of War Collection in the EU and his great site, PS3 Attitude - which does great things for the GamesAid charity.
The expo posse, minus a few...
It can be a little daunting when you meet up with people you have only ever 'talked' to online, for the very first time. I'd like to thank all those I met on the day for being themselves and making the day a very enjoyable one.
Gamer's delight?
So let me first begin with what I thought had the best showing at the Eurogamer Expo.
God of War III
I loved God of War II on my PS2 but I never finished it. Thankfully there's the God of War Collection to come, even if I have to order it on import, where I'll be able to relive the game, remastered with Trophy support.
The proported last in the series, God of War III, looks jaw-droppingly good and the E3 playable demo shown at the Eurogamer Expo shows off some of the new gameplay mechanics. March is beginning to feel too far away.
Plain Sight
A surprise for me was to find an indie game I enjoyed and would consider buying. So step forward Plain Sight, 'a 3D multiplayer arcade game with robots, bombs, swords and messed-up physics'. Fun fighting as a robot with a sword in a multiplayer domain, sounds an unlikely mix but it works. I understand that it's to be released on multiple formats sometime in 2010.
Bonus time needed
The Saboteur looks like it should, given the recent gameplay videos I've seen. But I didn't really get enough time with this title, as there were only two booths for people to try - not sure why that was. For now, I'll be keeping my preorder placed.
While I'm on this subject, I can't for the life of me understand why Assassin's Creed II only had 4 booths when most other titles on display had at least eight. I did hear that the version playable was fairly old but as I couldn't get to try it myself, it's hard for me to comment on this one. It was that busy, I really had problems even seeing the monitors and they were not small by any accounts.
shuttler takes on Global Agenda
Star Trek Online was the first title we looked over at the expo and our playthrough left a fairly good impression, even if the demo was fairly short. It's hard to judge an MMO demo when so many features are not included and the 'Massive' is missing from the MMO. I did sign up for the closed beta - something I haven't done for any MMO this year. For the sake of my fellow gamers who are looking for a new MMO home, I hope STO lives up to its early promise. Check over Shuttler's more indepth appreciation of STO at the expo here.
Flatlined
I'll not be playing Dragon Age: Origins, on the strength of what I saw. I'm will sure it will sell well but it's not for me.
I'll be looking forward to next years Eurogamer Expo with the hope that I can meet up with the same guys and girls. But I wonder, can we expect next years batch of titles match the flood of great videogames over the last two years?
I'd like to think so.