Post by tobychimp on Sept 29, 2014 11:05:55 GMT -5
Hello!
Did anybody else from the UK (or perhaps outside the UK!) attend EGX in London last week?
It was my third time going, and the first time I went for more than one day. I attended all day on Friday and all afternoon on Saturday. Unfortunately I was still unable to play every game on my list. That being said, it was still a load of fun and it's a shame that the Earl's Court Exhibition Centre will no longer be used for the event.
Of the games I did play/see, I would say the highlights were:
Until Dawn - I didn't get to play the demo myself, but my friend and I attended the developer session in which the presenter played through the demo anyway. For those of you who don't know, Until Dawn is an upcoming survival horror game for the PS4. It has a very Heavy Rain feel to it in terms of the focus on story and branching paths. It was an interesting and informative presentation on the butterfly effect system they have implemented into the game. They were very keen to get across that every decision you make in the game, with every character, could have potentially huge consequences somewhere down the line. It's also important to note that everyone can survive to the end of the game, similarly everyone can die. I didn't realise beforehand that there are a few big names doing the VA for the game too - Hayden Panettiere voices one of the characters, and the two characters we saw in the demo had familiar voices too. Graphically the game looked good too, it was clearly making use of all the power the PS4 can offer. The story is of course very clichéd - it's essentially every 80's slasher/crappy modern teenage horror film mixed in with some Saw elements. I think the writers are very aware of that though and the game tries to not take itself too seriously. The demo we saw lasted about 10 minutes or so and got a good couple of jumps out of me! Definitely looking forward to playing this one.
Battlefield: Hardline - I enjoyed BF4 but I hadn't really paid too much attention to Hardline. I knew next to nothing going into the Expo. But I managed to get my hands on the demo and attended the developer session the next day. So Hardline centers around a Cops and Robbers setting as opposed to any kind of modern warfare. It's a breath of fresh air even if the gameplay does feel similar to it's predecessors. I played a multiplayer game mode, 16v16, in which one side were Cops...and one side were the Robbers...obviously and the objective was to "control" numerous vehicles for as long as possible. Whilst they are in your control, which essentially means that you are in the vehicle, the opponent team's ticker will go down - when one team's ticker gets to 0 or the time runs out, the game is over. So basically it's like a game of domination where the capture points are mobile and can be used as weapons themselves. You can lean out of the windows of a car as a passenger and shoot which was pretty neat. Overall, it just looks like a fun game. The Executive Producer's talk was really interesting too. We had all seen the game so rather than talk about it at great length, he instead talked about his history and how we got into the games industry and into the position he is in now.
Bloodborne - I couldn't leave this off my list. As a big fan of the Souls franchise, I was determined to get my hands on this game. As it will be a Sony exclusive, it was in Sony's zone (which personally I think massively outdid the neighbouring Xbox zone!). The only issue I had was that rather than giving Bloodborne it's own box, it was bundled along with The Order 1886 and another game which I feel bad for forgetting about. So in order to play any of these 3 games, you had to be in this one queue, which was later on split into relevant queues when you got close to the front. The box that all these games were available in was fairly small too. There was probably 4 or 5 stations for each game and the queue was fairly long. Pretty strange seeing as I was under the impression that both Bloodborne and The Order 1886 were pretty big, hyped games - surely they should each have had their own booth? Oh well. I eventually got to play Bloodborne. And it was awesome. It looked fantastic, I loved the gothic setting and different kind of weapons. I did feel a little bit cheated out of my turn though! Before I started playing, I was told I only had 3 minutes. I looked to either side of me to see other players getting to a screen saying "Thank you for playing the demo" and I figured there must be an actual end point to the demo you can achieve. Short on time, I uncharacteristically rushed on (not smart in this type of game...) took out quite a few enemies and managed to avoid many others since I had chosen the most agile character. Eventually I was killed though, at which point I got the same screen that I saw earlier. Afterwards, my mate told me that the guy didn't say I had only 3 minutes to play, but that he predicted I would only last 3 minutes before dying...damn.
There weren't many games that I played that disappointed me at all. But there was one:
The Evil Within - Now I don't want to rush into a judgement of this game too quickly, and I certainly won't hold this impression of the game when it actually releases I'm sure. But this was my experience. Outside the Earl's Court Exhibition Centre, before you even got into the Expo, the walls outside were plastered with huge posters and advertisements for The Evil Within. The game was on display and I was pretty excited to see it. It got a massive booth to itself, there were people giving away freebies (always welcome!) and there was clearly a lot of hype surrounding it. The queue was pretty ridiculous and seemed to last for eternity. I think the only other game that I queued longer for was the new Borderlands. By the time my section of the queue got to play I was absolutely starving and just wanting to get off of my feet really! So eventually, I get sat down (relief!) and pick up the controller. It's on Xbox One, first time I had played one so I was pretty excited. The booth was split into two sections so I'm not sure if on the other side it was on PS4, either way we didn't get a choice. We're told to watch an introduction video first to help us get an idea of the storyline so far and the controls and gameplay mechanics. Fair enough, but this lasted for a considerable amount of time. I finally get to play and it was just very underwhelming. For me the camera was too close to the character's shoulder, in fairness I didn't look in the settings to see if this was adjustable but I doubt it was. I walk down a forest trail, open some gates and enter a large, creepy mansion. I do a little bit of exploring, defuse a couple of bomb traps, find a brain which I have to do some laser surgery on (turns out brain surgery isn't that difficult.) There is a short cutscene of sorts and then I get the tap on the shoulder. "Ok time's up, thanks." ....Sorry, what? I barely got to play and barely got to do anything when I did play? And before I knew it I was outside again, disappointed at the time I had just wasted. The graphics were far from outstanding. They could have been on PS3/360 and the framerate was terrible at times. The controls somewhat annoyed me too. To duck you had to press RB - and hold it in, why not just toggle crouch on/off by pressing the button? Anyway, you had to crouch and sneak up on traps in order to defuse them, but most importantly have them not blow your face off. I remember one incident where I attempted to sneak up on a trap, pressed RB, only for my character to instead climb under a bed that was close by. I exit out from under the bed and the trap immediately blows up on me. Brilliant.
Hopefully other people had a better experience than me with the game but it was very disappointing for me. I'll give it another chance when it gets released though.
Sadly I didn't get to play Alien: Isolation
Did anybody else from the UK (or perhaps outside the UK!) attend EGX in London last week?
It was my third time going, and the first time I went for more than one day. I attended all day on Friday and all afternoon on Saturday. Unfortunately I was still unable to play every game on my list. That being said, it was still a load of fun and it's a shame that the Earl's Court Exhibition Centre will no longer be used for the event.
Of the games I did play/see, I would say the highlights were:
Until Dawn - I didn't get to play the demo myself, but my friend and I attended the developer session in which the presenter played through the demo anyway. For those of you who don't know, Until Dawn is an upcoming survival horror game for the PS4. It has a very Heavy Rain feel to it in terms of the focus on story and branching paths. It was an interesting and informative presentation on the butterfly effect system they have implemented into the game. They were very keen to get across that every decision you make in the game, with every character, could have potentially huge consequences somewhere down the line. It's also important to note that everyone can survive to the end of the game, similarly everyone can die. I didn't realise beforehand that there are a few big names doing the VA for the game too - Hayden Panettiere voices one of the characters, and the two characters we saw in the demo had familiar voices too. Graphically the game looked good too, it was clearly making use of all the power the PS4 can offer. The story is of course very clichéd - it's essentially every 80's slasher/crappy modern teenage horror film mixed in with some Saw elements. I think the writers are very aware of that though and the game tries to not take itself too seriously. The demo we saw lasted about 10 minutes or so and got a good couple of jumps out of me! Definitely looking forward to playing this one.
Battlefield: Hardline - I enjoyed BF4 but I hadn't really paid too much attention to Hardline. I knew next to nothing going into the Expo. But I managed to get my hands on the demo and attended the developer session the next day. So Hardline centers around a Cops and Robbers setting as opposed to any kind of modern warfare. It's a breath of fresh air even if the gameplay does feel similar to it's predecessors. I played a multiplayer game mode, 16v16, in which one side were Cops...and one side were the Robbers...obviously and the objective was to "control" numerous vehicles for as long as possible. Whilst they are in your control, which essentially means that you are in the vehicle, the opponent team's ticker will go down - when one team's ticker gets to 0 or the time runs out, the game is over. So basically it's like a game of domination where the capture points are mobile and can be used as weapons themselves. You can lean out of the windows of a car as a passenger and shoot which was pretty neat. Overall, it just looks like a fun game. The Executive Producer's talk was really interesting too. We had all seen the game so rather than talk about it at great length, he instead talked about his history and how we got into the games industry and into the position he is in now.
Bloodborne - I couldn't leave this off my list. As a big fan of the Souls franchise, I was determined to get my hands on this game. As it will be a Sony exclusive, it was in Sony's zone (which personally I think massively outdid the neighbouring Xbox zone!). The only issue I had was that rather than giving Bloodborne it's own box, it was bundled along with The Order 1886 and another game which I feel bad for forgetting about. So in order to play any of these 3 games, you had to be in this one queue, which was later on split into relevant queues when you got close to the front. The box that all these games were available in was fairly small too. There was probably 4 or 5 stations for each game and the queue was fairly long. Pretty strange seeing as I was under the impression that both Bloodborne and The Order 1886 were pretty big, hyped games - surely they should each have had their own booth? Oh well. I eventually got to play Bloodborne. And it was awesome. It looked fantastic, I loved the gothic setting and different kind of weapons. I did feel a little bit cheated out of my turn though! Before I started playing, I was told I only had 3 minutes. I looked to either side of me to see other players getting to a screen saying "Thank you for playing the demo" and I figured there must be an actual end point to the demo you can achieve. Short on time, I uncharacteristically rushed on (not smart in this type of game...) took out quite a few enemies and managed to avoid many others since I had chosen the most agile character. Eventually I was killed though, at which point I got the same screen that I saw earlier. Afterwards, my mate told me that the guy didn't say I had only 3 minutes to play, but that he predicted I would only last 3 minutes before dying...damn.
There weren't many games that I played that disappointed me at all. But there was one:
The Evil Within - Now I don't want to rush into a judgement of this game too quickly, and I certainly won't hold this impression of the game when it actually releases I'm sure. But this was my experience. Outside the Earl's Court Exhibition Centre, before you even got into the Expo, the walls outside were plastered with huge posters and advertisements for The Evil Within. The game was on display and I was pretty excited to see it. It got a massive booth to itself, there were people giving away freebies (always welcome!) and there was clearly a lot of hype surrounding it. The queue was pretty ridiculous and seemed to last for eternity. I think the only other game that I queued longer for was the new Borderlands. By the time my section of the queue got to play I was absolutely starving and just wanting to get off of my feet really! So eventually, I get sat down (relief!) and pick up the controller. It's on Xbox One, first time I had played one so I was pretty excited. The booth was split into two sections so I'm not sure if on the other side it was on PS4, either way we didn't get a choice. We're told to watch an introduction video first to help us get an idea of the storyline so far and the controls and gameplay mechanics. Fair enough, but this lasted for a considerable amount of time. I finally get to play and it was just very underwhelming. For me the camera was too close to the character's shoulder, in fairness I didn't look in the settings to see if this was adjustable but I doubt it was. I walk down a forest trail, open some gates and enter a large, creepy mansion. I do a little bit of exploring, defuse a couple of bomb traps, find a brain which I have to do some laser surgery on (turns out brain surgery isn't that difficult.) There is a short cutscene of sorts and then I get the tap on the shoulder. "Ok time's up, thanks." ....Sorry, what? I barely got to play and barely got to do anything when I did play? And before I knew it I was outside again, disappointed at the time I had just wasted. The graphics were far from outstanding. They could have been on PS3/360 and the framerate was terrible at times. The controls somewhat annoyed me too. To duck you had to press RB - and hold it in, why not just toggle crouch on/off by pressing the button? Anyway, you had to crouch and sneak up on traps in order to defuse them, but most importantly have them not blow your face off. I remember one incident where I attempted to sneak up on a trap, pressed RB, only for my character to instead climb under a bed that was close by. I exit out from under the bed and the trap immediately blows up on me. Brilliant.
Hopefully other people had a better experience than me with the game but it was very disappointing for me. I'll give it another chance when it gets released though.
Sadly I didn't get to play Alien: Isolation
Yeah they both are shaping up to be great games! I'd love to get beta access to both as well.