On October 27th, I took a trip down to the newly introduced Leeds leg of the Eurogamer Games Expo to cock a snook.
Pew pew +1 eleventy!!11 etc.
Now in its second year, Eurogamer acts as a mixture of showcase, mini careers fair and developer talks host for the general public to get a hands-on look at what’s coming out games wise in the next year or so. The punters, a mixture of nebbish young men, their reluctant girlfriends and Leeds hipsters, piled in by the thousands but the well laid out Expo meant that everyone could casually wander about.
Quiet, but as deathly silent as the Dragon Age stand
One of the major attractions this year was Left 4 Dead 2, the sequel to last years zombie smashing first person shooter on the PC and Xbox 360. Its brief demo was attracting a large bulk of people eager to smack zombies and each other in the face with a frying pan, leaving only some disappointment that it was only playable on a love-it-or-loathe-it-for-FPS Xbox controller. Dragons Age: Origins, sadly dumped opposite like an older uglier sister, seemed unable to compete and grabbed little interest.
Retro Remakes Rob Fearon performs abysmally at his own game.
A small section of the hall was given over to the Indie Games Arcade, a showcase for smaller developers who have less of a budget and criteria to work for (or as one overheard punter called it, “the hippy section”). My favourite was Joe Danger – a friendlier, bouncier alternative to the addictive but frustrating Trials 2. Sat next to this was Squid Yes! Not So Octopus 2: Squid Harder, the inscrutably named and eye watering shooter by Rob Fearon of Retro Remakes. Other standouts were the meandering bicycle game Fig. 8 – the equivalent of idly running your finger round a patterned piece of paper, and the claymation modelled Cletus Clay.
Other notables on show included God of War III and it’s identikit cousin Dante’s Inferno (smashy smashy), the Batman:Arkham Asylum game showcasing nVidia’s new 3D Vision with stereoscopic specs (like watching a hologram in a fish tank) and the new Aliens V Predator (sadly only showing one single multiplayer section). The rest seemed to merge into a mishmash of driving, fighting and sports sequels.
Hello Games’ Sean Murray gloats over my poor attempt at a Joe Danger run.
At the end of the day, Eurogamer resembled more of an old arcade than an actual expo. Except for the Indie Games Arcade, there was a lack of anyone who could actually talk you knowledgably through the game unless you just wanted learn the demo controls. There was a distinct feeling that a lot of potential goodies were down in London (where they were possibly also giving away free money, diamonds and sex). As the Eurogamer Expo continues, which it most definitely will, the organisers should probably work on evening or matching up the events between the locations. The publishers should definitely put more effort in to getting someone who knows what they’re talking about, even if it means coaxing the odd programmer out of their darkened, womb-like hole.
