The Eurogamer Expo 2011

[Andrew 4855]

Heading down to london tomorrow for the 2011 eurogamer expo,which is, among other things, a chance to play a lot of the upcoming blockbusters of the winter

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/expo/whats-on#show-floor

 

Priorities for me are Skyrim, Mass Effect 3, Battlefield, Arkham City and Assassins Creed as well as hopefully a crack at the PS Vita as well as tons of other stuff over the 4 days.

 

Will of course report back on the stuff I get the chance to play

[Bonamental 0]

That looks like quite a lot of awesome. Basically all the games I'm going to be getting come Christmas look like they are on show. Enjoy.

[Andrew 4855]

Well hopefully Ill get the chance to get round everything good, lot of careers seminars and such on as well though which will take up a fair chunk of time

[Inglez 0]

Let us know how awesome Skyrim is! Fantastic opportunity you have there like, would love to play all of those games.

[Andrew 4855]

okay so first day over and it went like this

 

Onlive - free console

PS Vita - really impressive

Skyrim - perfect

few developer things

Arkham City - awesome

Battlefield 3 - great

Mass Effect 3 - great

Uncharted event with the lead designer and nolan north which was excellent

SWTOR - much better than I was expecting

 

full post will come when im back, got tons of pics too though sadly photography was banned in skyrim

[Inglez 0]

Sounds great, look forward to a more detailed post.

[Andrew 4855]

well thats that, once i get home and get my photos sorted Ill have a full rundown of what i played and saw, some amazing stuff over the four days

[Andrew 4855]

ok so going off my little list up there

 

Skyrim

 

Played skyrim twice over the 4 days, unsurprisingly it was one of the most popular things throughout the event and the queues were mental.

 

it was an early build of the game so sadly no dragons, even though I battered my way up to dunbarrow cave in the hope of finding one before I found that out

 

Combat is excellent, tried dual weapon wielding for the first playthrough with is enormously satisfying especially hitting the right move with weapons to get the kill animations which look great

 

second run as a magic user was definitely cool and seems more fun and viable than it felt to me in oblivion.

 

characters look fantastic, quick run through the character creator revealed a huge amount of detail to make characters look really great, argonians especially impressive

 

dynamic conversations are good, allowing you to wander off part way through a conversation rather than being locked into the dead eyed stare of previsou bethesda games.

Arkham City

 

again, such a damn good game, im currently playing through arkham asylum as I had never got round to it which I now regret.

 

catwoman is fun to play as and the combat has been smoothed out and made as seamless as possible.

 

Robin looks cool and will be playable to some extent

 

Battlefield/MW3

 

doing these together for obvious reason though the demos were different, BF3s demo was a big LAN multiplayer game, maps were very battlefield like and the gameplay is really tight and improved over BFBC2, it also looks utterly gorgeous

 

MW3s demo was a 2 player "horde" style game, you and another player V waves of enemies, overall I was less impressed with this than BF but it was still enjoyable, standard CoD fare with little improvement overall

 

Mass Effect 3

 

Mass Effect had a surprisingly small presence since Bioware were pushing SWTOR more at this event, however th 15-30 minute demo on show was pure mas effect, absolute quality, if you loved ME1 and 2 you'll buy this.

 

Uncharted 3

 

I dont actually own a PS3 but damn this was fun, multiplayer demo really enjoyable gameplay but the most we got out of it was the Dev session with lead designer Richard Lemarchand and Nolan North which showed a bunch of making of things and some exclusive gameplay footage, looks like a cracker.

 

SWTOR

 

An MMO I can actually see liking, ive tried WoW in the past and not been particularly enamoured with it but Bioware seem to have hit the nail on the head for me here, 2 gos on this over the course, the first a 20 minute PvP game of Huttball 8 a side dark side and light side, which was a good laugh and then a fuller play on sunday as we had early entry tickets which was a 45 minute go on the single player, its a tough concept to demo a MMO but they got this spot on, Im also on the Beta for the game as I attended the bioware dev session so I'll put in further reports as that happens.

 

PS Vita

 

this is a damn impressive bit of kit, got to play the new uncharted game on it for half an hour or so and its really very cool, looks great, feels good and light but solid, screens excellent, thumbsticks feel good, cant say enough good things, particularly cool (as gimmicks go) was aiming the sniper rifle by moving the console around

 

Onlive

 

having got home and had a crack with my free onlive console Im pretty impressed with the system, no doubt it is extremely clever and is the first step to true cloud gaming. console is tiny and the pad is largely like an Xbox 360 one, feels good in the hands

 

Counter Strike GO

 

another day another shooter, and a top notch one at that, pushing the console market for this one and its really nice feeling, I have a bit of a gripe with shooters that I cant describe, shooting either feels loose or tight to me, this was definitely the latter which is the good one.

 

Dark Souls

 

god DAMN this was a tough game, yet I didnt play anything at EE that was more satisfying when you did get it right, over my two plays I died innumerable times but when I got to grips with the game and vanquished a few foes it really felt good, this was turned into a sure purchase for me before not being too bothered previously

 

Assassins Creed

 

only a MP demo sadly so I never got round to playing, sorry guys

 

Saints Row 3

 

simply enough, great fun, finally a sandbox that IS fun to fuck around in for ages.

 

halo anniversary

 

having come late to te xbox party and not having played the first Halo properly as a result this was always a buy for me, the multiplayer demo on show was good fun though it took a little getting used to the slight differences from reach

 

Skyward Sword

 

Standard Zelda fare really, gameplay improved upon from TP but not a huge leap

 

 

 

right thats it for now, ive left a bit out so any questions just ask, still sorting through a ton of photos so Ill get them up when im done

[Bonamental 0]

Skyrim - Do you have to have a clue about the rest of morrowind or whatever the actual series is to get into it? You make it sound awesome so I feel like I've missed out!

 

Glad Arkham City and Uncharted were good, really looking forward to those a hell of a lot.

 

Dark Souls the sequel to Demon Souls? I spent about 2 hours playing that at a mate's, absolutely brutally hard.

 

Don't suppose there is any mention of a NWN3 from Bioware at all is there?

 

But yeah, sounds like a great little weekend. Don't really know much about the whole thing, did you get tickets as general sale or what?

Edited September 29, 2011 by Bonamental

[Andrew 4855]

you dont need to know about the previous iterations to enjoy TES games no, there are little tidbits for older players but the series doesnt exclude new ones at all

 

Dark souls is the spiritual sequel to demons souls rather than a direct one but yeh, you get the idea hehe insane difficulty

 

afraid not on the NWN front though the Drs Bioware said that between that and jade empire theyve certainly not given up on their old IPs so you never know

 

tickets were bought on the eurogamer website, they go on sale for next year in a month or so i think

[Sonatine 11542]

Skyrim and SWTOR both look quality, got them both pre-ordered so thats my winter gaming sorted