[EVENT] GAMEfest

Finally, after six or seven long, dull weeks of summer, another blog post! My urge to write has been dampened not only by my beloved Tropico 4 being put back to September 30 but also a metric shitload of university work to be completed before any gaming could occur. (For those wondering, I'm with the Open University, we don't get holidays!) Other little diversions such as the release of the ten NES games promised to the Ambassador Scheme participants proved to be fairly short lived, as I received a harsh reminder that games used to be MUCH harder, Back In The Day.(TM)

So around rolled GAMEfest, a three day event at the NEC in Birmingham showcasing the best that this Christmas would have to offer, and promising a first play of such favourites (can you hear me rolling my eyes? That's unintentional, I apologise) as Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3 and Gears of War 3. Considering that its UK release was approximately 72 hours away, a staggering amount of people queued to get a first glimpse of Gears of War 3 (to which I say, should have gone to Gadget Show!) and to the right is a quick snapshot I took of the Battlefield 3 queue, which I could almost not believe, despite it being there in front of my face.

So, not wanting to spend my afternoon queueing to get my ass kicked by some spotty teen at CoD, we went for a wander and started playing the first of many 3DS games we would try that day: Mario and Sonic at the London Olympics. Now I must admit to having a bit of a soft spot for the Mario and Sonic Olympics franchise - from the time I first played the Wii version and hurt myself breaking the world rowing record to the time I borrowed the Winter Olympics game on the DS and spent a very silly week playing the adventure mode, I've considered this game a harmless and enjoyable bundle of fun. Technically, I hate minigame collections, but these seem to have more of a purpose behind them and hold my attention by always promising that I might just do a little better than last time if I try again.

The next game we looked at was Sonic Generations. The 3DS and the 360 versions looked quite different, at least from the demo versions we looked at, and the word on the grapevine is that the 3DS version is going to contain different levels from the big console versions. One thing that they will have in common however is that they will contain a mix of classic levels from throughout Sonic's history, and the feeling of absolute speed is back, and stronger than ever. I wasn't feeling 100% when I played it, and felt my eyes weren't quite refreshing fast enough, but The Husband was absolutely stoked to be playing a new Sonic game, and was only dissapointed when the screen he was playing on decided to overheat and turn itself off... true story!

After swinging by the Metal Gear Solid stand to check out the port of Peace Walker, we went for a bit of a wander around the rest of QUEUEfest, and decided that an awful lot of things weren't worth standing around for, a good look over someone's shoulder was enough to remind ourselves that certain titles were coming. After a narrow escape by the Dance Central 2 stand, we wrung our hands in despair at all the new dance titles, (ABBA: You Can Dance anyone? The Black Eyed Peas game? Obviously they will make millions, but not in our house, thankyou.) stopped for a quick squizz on Soul Calibur V (looks very shiny indeed) and Pacman Championship on 3DS (shiny in a rather different way) and then headed to the Nintendo stand.

I've not really got a whole bunch to say about Mario Kart 7. I played a couple of levels lifted from the latest Wii incarnation, and yes, it plays like a dream, yes, there's customisable karts now, yes, there's all your favourite characters and yes, it's a good deal of fun. But there's nothing new to report. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, afterall, if they changed it too much, it just wouldn't be Mariokart, and then I'd be slating it for that. I'll definitely buy Mario Kart 7, but somewhere in my mind I'll be conscious of the fact that I've already been there,  done that, and literally got the t-shirt. Super Mario 3D Land looked a bit more interesting, even if I was having major brain fail at that point and couldn't do it. The 3D adds some tricky puzzles in, like platforms not appearing where you think they should until you rotate the scene. Not one to play with a hangover!

And finally, to the overall wonderful surprise of the day. I was tired, had a headache you could split rocks on and ready to go home, when The Husband spotted the WWE '12 stand. I've never played a wrestling game, and had no intentions of after seeing the floaty mess that was Allstars. After a short queue (part of which was spent sitting on chairs, thank god!) his Miz thoroughly kicked the arse of my Zack Ryder (WWWYKI) and I laughed hysterically. Out of everything I played that day, who'd have thought I'd now be looking forward to this the most?

So that's all over for another year now. What are you most looking forward to for Christmas?

[EVENT] E3, or not, as was the case.

An awful lot of press coverage has been given to E3 already, and I was desperate to give you my take on things, but a week has passed and a lot has happened to dampen my enthusiasm. For me, E3 couldn't have come at a worse time, in the week where I was seemingly working all the overtime in the world, and had a uni assignment due in at the end of it. The only announcements I got to see live were the EA ones which I saw whilst half asleep with a headache, and to write a story based on those would make for angry reading! Nonetheless, here are the main points I have derived from the conference, mostly from gossiping around the water cooler.

Need For Speed: Run With Us - Or whatever it's called. I shan't lie. I'm not a massive fan of the N4S series, but boy, do I sell a lot of them at my day job. The premise is simple. Drive around, often avoiding the cops, sometimes being the cops, sometimes just racing for the hell of it. The point is, this is a purebred driving game, which is why I recoiled in ABSOLUTE HORROR when it was revealed that in the new game, at certain points your character (your what now? There's never been an actual character before, surely!) gets OUT of the car and RUNS OFF! You must then perform a series of quicktime events to ensure that your character does the right jumps and rolls to be able to get to another car, which in the demo they showed happened to be a POLICE CAR. Well done that chap. Cue facepalm, and much shouting at the TV.

The Wii U - Just as when the MotionPlus was released and everyone started bashing Nintendo for not having the technology to put it in the Wii Remote in the first place, I have a similar feeling in the pit of my stomach about the Wii U. It looks near identical, but with rounded corners, uses the same controllers but is in full HD. Obviously, this is just my first impression, and a lot more lies beneath the surface. It's just what they actually DO with it that I'm dreading. The original Wii cornered the casual market so effectively that hardcore gamers were left feeling that their Wii had become a bit of a novelty, the slighly retarded, standard definition cousin that everyone said they were fond of but no-one invited to parties in case it got drunk and ran around with no pants on. Hopefully this time around Nintendo can get a few more developers on board if they don't have to release watered down versions of 360 and PS3 titles anymore.

And that's without mentioning the gimmick controller once!

Luigi's Mansion 2 - Nintendo did redeem themselves by announcing this title for 3DS, amongst a few others. I heard the news about this one from my overly excited husband who came rushing in to tell me all about it as I was getting myself settled in bed. My admission that I've never actually played the first one was responded to with a ten minute rundown of the entire game from start to finish. Other old favourites are in the works such as Mario Kart, a new Super Mario (but this time, not called New Super Mario. A bit confusing, I agree.) One thing I REALLY wish I'd seen was Tetris. There are some details on the Nintendo website, and to quote one of my other half's favourite sayings, it looks "wacky as fuck". Just when I thought that every possible game mode had been covered, the new version claims over 20. Just how many ways there are to fit tetraminos together simply boggles the mind!

Right, that's enough blagging blogging for now, I'm off to play some actual games!

[EVENT] Gadget Show Live, 12th April 2011 - The Game Zone (part 2!)

The Game Zone (sponsored by, you've guessed it, GAME) at Gadget Show Live was an entire hall dedicated to showing off the latest and most exciting upcoming games, hardware and accessories. A quick wander round revealed demo machines showing off titles like Shift 2, Dirt 3, Gran Turismo 5 and a whole bunch of other franchises. There was one franchise, however, for which we made an immediate beeline.

And here it is! A first exclusive look at Duke Nukem Forever! Alright, maybe it's not THAT exclusive. The game (or demo, at least) begins with the urgent need for Duke to have a wee, which when you consider that this game has been twelve or thirteen years in the making, is entirely reasonable! Those familiar with the Duke Nukem series will be familiar with the story, aliens have landed and are stealing all the women, which has thoroughly annoyed our chauvinistic Duke - they're HIS women, dammit! (Or something like that.) The game looks pretty slick, and has taken notice of other leaders in the FPS genre, with cheeky nods to other titles such as Half Life in the dialogue. In the time Duke's been away, he's been honing his skills and trying his hand at some new things (as illustrated here in my gallery of photos from the Duke Nukem stand!) but the tried and tested formula remains the same. Chew bubblegum. Kick ass.

A few other highlights from the 18+ section included the Gears of War 3 demo, guaranteed to delight fans of the series. Admittedly, Gears isn't really my kind of game but the visuals are slick and the gameplay seems to handle well. Codes for the beta are now available from Gamestation in the UK when you pre-order the game, so now there's no excuse for not having a go yourself. Also played in this section was Mortal Kombat, on PS3s that were set up arcade style with proper old school sticks and buttons. I am terrible at fighting games, but my other half showed me how it was done, and later on the demo at home proved that he still knows all the fatalities. Gory, gruesome and grim! (But highly recommended, obviously!)

After leaving the 18+ area, we took in the rest of the Game Zone, which included a rather neat retro area, where we had a quick game of MarioKart 64, some fake Pac Man machines, complete with a Pac Man with ARMS, a few Kinects, (where I got stage fright and couldn't quite bring myself to play Dance Central!) some chaps playing Portal 2 who looked like they'd been there for HOURS and finally, the 3DS section. With the 3DS having been out for three weeks by this point, I'd managed to get my hopes up that we would be able to see some of the games scheduled for later on in the year, such as Zelda, Steel Diver and the Resident Evil games. Unfortunately it was not to be, as the only games displayed were the launch games. However, every cloud has a silver lining, and we picked up a ton of StreetPass hits from the area, and on this week's Gadget Show, we caught a split-second glimpse of my other half inside the 3DS area! (Which can be seen here! Literally the first second of the footage.) Trust me to be standing behind the camera!

Oh well, maybe next time! :)

[EVENT] Gadget Show Live, 12th April 2011 (Part 1)

A while ago, my partner and I were lucky enough to be invited to Gadget Show Live Professional, a sneak preview of GSL for trade buyers and people in the industry. Obviously, we jumped at the chance to be able to visit this event and hot-footed it down to the Birmingham NEC to see what it was all about.

On entering the first hall, one of the first things to greet me was this super-cute robot from the Future Technology area. Using Microsoft's Kinect, he can sense depth much better than a robot using a regular camera. More on this in a future post!

Walking around the first hall, where most of the home-oriented gadgets and technology were situated, there seemed to be a massive focus on 3D home entertainment, with most of the major television manufacturers represented. All dependant on 3D glasses, the quality ranged from excellent (The Batman demo at the Acer stand was a favourite) to "Oooh no." (A direct quote from myself.) If I had money to burn, I'd certainly invest in a top of the range set, however at the moment 3DTV for me is marked under the heading "Purely Aspirational", at least until the costs come down... or the glasses come off! Speaking of aspirational, one company were exhibiting their top of the range hot tubs, complete with champagne glass holders. As the husband quite rightly pointed out, it's not merely the extortionate cost of such a luxury that prevents us from owning one, it's the fact that we simply don't have room in our house!

Next stop was the Gadget Hall of Fame in association with the Centre for Computing History. A little confusing at first, as we stepped straight into the 1980's exhibit only to be met with a genuine Sinclair C5 and the red JVC camcorder made famous in Back To The Future! Closer inspection of a BBC Micro computer revealed that it contained the text based game Hampstead, and confirmed that twenty years later, I am still  no good at text based games. Around the corner was the 1970's exhibit, faithfully decked out in obnoxious wallpaper, with working Pong machine and an actual Betamax recorder! I had to capture the moment as I doubt I shall ever see one again! The 1990's exhibit was filled with a few more familiar toys such as a Mega Drive, the first iMac and a selection of early mobile phones, but the computers of the 1960's were almost unreal! I found it fascinating, but almost impossible to comprehend how those boxes of circuits relate to the technology of today. Guess I've got a lot of history to catch up on!

After blagging a glass of wine from the lovely people at Orbitsound (Who also gave me one of their T3 personal speakers to test - review to come!) we headed down to the test track, where all kinds of bikes, radio controlled vehicles, scooters and such were being tested out. On the way we met none other than the man himself, Jason Bradbury! He was running around like a bit of a madman trying to get things organised for the live show, undoubtably we caught him at probably one of the busiest times of his life, yet he still gave two minutes of his time to say hello and pose for a picture with us. What a pro! Then onwards to the track, where my other half got to try his hand at riding a Segway!

All in all, an absolutely superb day out, and that's even before I've told you about the Game Zone! But more on that later in the week...