Eurogamer Expo 2009
Nov 1st, 2009 by shuttler
So on Friday I headed up to the London Eurogamer Expo 2009 at Old Billingsgate. In what seems to be turning in to an annual event I braved the oceans, rail service and london underground to arrive at this years impressive venue. For those that didn’t attend last year the venue is definitly bigger and split across 2 Upper Floors and 2 Underground levels was indeed much more impressive. Meeting with the usual suspects and new friends we had an enjoyable day browsing all the titles and the usual banter.
You can see the video I took here. So seeing as this was a gaming expo I figured I should talk about the games….
Star Trek Online
I have to admit this was really high up on my must see list, I had already planned that being in the press queue would get us in early and that I was heading straight for it. Thankfully David knew exactly were it was (right by the entrance) and we headed straight over. The demo was split in to two parts of the same mission arc incorporating space and ground game-play. The first part consisted of fighting off 3 ships and once this was completed you headed (beamed) into a mission map and then in turn a planet setting.
The first thing that struck me was how pretty space looked, beautiful bright planets, backdrops, gas clouds along with the colourful warp emissions and phase blasts. I was welcomed with a pop up screen inviting me to complete a destroy the ships quest by a really nice character model. In the video I notice I described the game play as ‘twitchy’ I wasn’t using that in the right context at all the shooting is indeed lock on and fire all phasers with the space bar, I was referring to the fluidity of the ships movement in space. The gameplay had the fun of twitch but retained it’s traditional’ MMO game play. As you can see at first this was hard for me not to get shot, you have shield arcs which you need to protect, manoverability is the key here and fast is not always best. Second time around I kill all 3 birds of prey with more movement. I also noticed the menus had green, yellow, blue & red buttons marked with a,b,x,z like an xbox 360 controller which suggests you can use the pad on a PC and maybe even an xbox release as with other Cryptic titles like Champions Online.
After another LONG loading screen we beam into some sort of ship, warehouse or station environment map for some hand to hand combat. The rifles and phasers work well and the game play is simple for anyone with prior MMO experience. I did prefer using the butt of my rifle for hand to hand combat instead. The next part impressed me the most, beaming down on to the planet showed off more combat but the planetscape and the winds and ash looked amazing and felt very alien.
I’ll certainly pick this up based on the strength of the demo, to me it felt very much like the Star Trek universe and despite not knowing how it will stand longevity-wise I wan;t to give it 30 days if not more.
Global Agenda
The game looked great, another example (like Star Trek Online) Showing how great MMO’s can look. It seems this next wave of titles will move a step closer to the theory that MMO’s do not need to look worse than single player games. The part we played was very much an arena style combat and I liked this, but to me it felt like I was playing any generic 3rd person shooter. We were told that outcomes will effect the state of the persistent world, but I am not really clear how this will work out. Obviously some territorial control and Team Fortress style game-play.
They have made it clear that you cna buy the box without a subscription and play in shooter style matches, but adding a subscription gives you access to the territorial stuff. I am concerned that it will very much just be a fancy lobby system without seeing more from the developers. I’m going to look in to this over the next few days.
Nvidia 3D Vision
Two types of 3D systems were on offer at the Expo. Avatar the game has the 3D coded in to the game and then you play it back in 3D mode on a 3D TV which was a JVC prototype and when you put on the glasses (the same ones you get when you watch UP or Coraline at the cinema) the game really does jump out at you and look very impressive. However the Nvidia technology looked much better, maybe it was the smaller screen and higher resolutions, but this tech works with a 120HZ monitor, glasses and software. 400 titles work out of the box and it will attempt to make any game work. A simple racing game looks wonderful as you get the depth of the steering wheel, speedometer and dashboard then look up to the window as another car passes you it really adds another layer of realism to your gaming.
New Super Mario Bros Wii
To many peoples surprise this was another favourite of mine, whilst action adventure & shooter titles are two-a-penny a good platform game is hard to come by. Mario does it well and this Wii version is no exception to the franchise. Taking a step back to it’s roots with 2d game-play and the usual coin grabbing, mushroom eating affair with some nice new touches and level design Mario fans are in for a treat. Co-Op play for up to 4 players means this will be a ton of fun and reminded me of the fun had in Little Big Planer Co-Op at the last yearss event. This is a must have title for me over the next few weeks when it’s launched.
Other Stuff
Of course plenty of other stuff took my eye and ears with the terrible rock band renditions going on downstairs. God of War 3 looks really nice and if that comes with the re-mastered original games on the PS3 launch as promised then I will be getting that too.
Dragon Age looked great, although I wish I hadn’t seen it on all 3 platforms as I am now torn to which platform to get it on. The PC version looked fantastic naturally, the PS3 version looked washed out and frankly horrible and the 360 did a great job of looking nice on the console. I probably would have been happy to have played it on the 360, but seeing the beauty in the PC edition made me wonder if I need to leave the sofa for this title.
The indy games section was a ton of fun as always and I could happily spend a whole day in there. Great to see Plain Sight back again and closer to a release date with the added bonus of a Mac client! For more from ‘us lot’ or indeed ‘that lot’ from the Eurogamer Expo check out these other bloggers…
I’ll have to blow up your robot when Plain Sight is released. It’s a frantic and fun game!
Hehe, sounds like it will be lots of fun!