My first time at gamescom!
And definitely not my last!
It was absolutely amazing! I had such a wonderful time there, it was so exciting and my poor little gamer-heart was totally overwhelmed by everything!
My sister, a friend of ours and I spent the last three days at the world's biggest games convention, where we enjoyed a truly unique and exciting atmosphere, got to play some of the most awesome games before their release, and just bathed in all the glory of the world of video games.
Once you enter the fairground you're in another world!
The biggest publishers and developers from all over the world gather here to put their outmost effort into promoting their newest games. You're literally bombarded with trailers, videos and gameplay on huge screens, stages and canvas all around you. It's incredibly loud, there's music and sounds coming from everywhere, and even though it's pretty dark inside, the halls are lit with hundreds of spotlights in different colors and different intensity. People are excited, and their excitment shows. They cheer at screens or stages where bits and pieces of video games are shown, they're in awe, overwhelmed and full of joy.
It's like a rock concert. Without a band.
Honestly, I didn't think seeing a trailer of a video game on a big screen could give me as much excitement as it did. It was utterly amazing, it made me incredibly happy and I truly felt like "This is exactly why I love video games."
Games are amazing. And to have been able to experience them in such a fantastic and almost breathtaking atmosphere was just utter bliss.
It was even better, because my sister was there with me, and shared the same kind of excitement and happiness, and we just felt like we were in heaven. :)
We got to play a bunch of games we are really excited about, first and foremost FINAL FANTASY XV. We've all been waiting more than 10 years for this game, and now it's finally here!
Other games we got to play include:
World of Final Fantasy
Kingdom Hearts II.8
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Black: The Fall
Outlast II
Tekken 7
We also got some official and exclusive goodies (like T-shirts and lanyards) from the publishers! :D
Still, the best thing was that we got to play the full version of FINAL FANTASY XV yesterday!
We were able to play the game from the very beginning, including the complete intro sequence, cutscenes and chapter 0. Starting from the title menu we even had the option to change settings such as difficulty, language, audio, subtitles etc. to our liking before actually heading into the game. I didn’t waste much time on that, though, because we only had 30 minutes of playtime. But I did take a quick look at the language options and was able to choose between German, English, Japanese and French. So that’s awesome.
Even though 30 minutes of playtime was more than most other games were offering the players, it was still far from enough time to check out everything thoroughly. I chose to follow the main quest closely to see how far I would get, which meant that I didn’t get to see very much of the area as I was sprinting only to the related points marked on the map. I didn’t bother with the in-game menu, character settings etc. either.
I won’t spoil anything story-wise (not that there’s much to spoil in the first 30 minutes). The quest at hand was to do some monster-hunting for Cid and Cidney in order to get them to lower the price on the repairs of our car. So that’s what I did. The first few enemies and fights were very nice and easy to understand tutorials. Compared to the Duscae demo the battle system has changed quite a bit. Nothing drastic, but it is different, much more elaborate, complete with team attacks and an updated evading/counter feature. It also feels like the rest of the team fights much more efficiently. So even if you don’t or can’t do anything in battle, Iggy, Gladio and Prompto might very well take care of it for you.
What stood out in my opinion was that the rest of the team is really focused on Noctis. As long as you’re doing fine they’re minding their own business more or less, but as soon as Noct’s HP are dropping dangerously low, at least one of the three will fall back to your position to shield and/or heal you!
The AI works extremely well in that sense and the way in which the developers made this whole feature work is even better, because it doesn’t feel mechanical at all. You don’t feel like your sorry ass is being saved by a computer because the difficulty is set too high. All you get is Noctis being saved by his friends. That’s because the characters communicate with each other during battles, and whenever Noct gets hurt badly, it’s not like everyone rushes to his side immediately.
I managed to get to the first small boss battle of the game, and because I hadn’t had the chance to level up beforehand, the fight was pretty tough. More than once Noctis was on the brink of death. I managed on my own until I ran out of potions. From then on I HAD to rely on my team mates. Admittedly, I was very skeptical at first. Every time my HP dropped to 0 I got out of the enemy’s reach and waited. And every time, one of the three guys eventually noticed Noct wasn’t doing so well.
The thing is, the situation was always different. First time I needed help, Ignis excused himself out of the active battle to fall back to my position where he shielded me at first and after noticing I wasn’t going to heal myself, also healed me. Then I broke down next to Prompto, who was by my side and quickly healed me in passing before I even needed to move out of the monster’s reach. Another time I wasn’t doing well and stepped away from the fighting, Gladio noticed, but instead of helping me himself, he told Prompto and Ignis to take care of it. I don’t remember what exactly they said, but they exchanged a few words on how to best go about it, before Ignis eventually came over and shielded me until Prompto also reached us to heal me.
Those little and absolutely precious interactions in battle make the system quite unique and refreshing. It’s also bound to get very, very emotional, I can tell you that.
Apart from that, there’s also a new feature that allows you to talk to Ignis, Prompto or Glaidolus before certain fights in order to come up with some kind of strategy. If you follow the plan during battle and win, you’ll get bonus EXP. This is kind of like what we’ve already seen in the DUSCAE demo with the first fight against Deadeye.
If I had been fast enough, I could’ve even gotten our car back and taken it for a drive around the area! But after barely winning the boss fight I didn’t make it back to the garage in time…
All in all I can now safely say what we already knew: THIS GAME IS GONNA BE AMAZING. :)
It was absolutely amazing! I had such a wonderful time there, it was so exciting and my poor little gamer-heart was totally overwhelmed by everything!
My sister, a friend of ours and I spent the last three days at the world's biggest games convention, where we enjoyed a truly unique and exciting atmosphere, got to play some of the most awesome games before their release, and just bathed in all the glory of the world of video games.
Once you enter the fairground you're in another world!
The biggest publishers and developers from all over the world gather here to put their outmost effort into promoting their newest games. You're literally bombarded with trailers, videos and gameplay on huge screens, stages and canvas all around you. It's incredibly loud, there's music and sounds coming from everywhere, and even though it's pretty dark inside, the halls are lit with hundreds of spotlights in different colors and different intensity. People are excited, and their excitment shows. They cheer at screens or stages where bits and pieces of video games are shown, they're in awe, overwhelmed and full of joy.
It's like a rock concert. Without a band.
Honestly, I didn't think seeing a trailer of a video game on a big screen could give me as much excitement as it did. It was utterly amazing, it made me incredibly happy and I truly felt like "This is exactly why I love video games."
Games are amazing. And to have been able to experience them in such a fantastic and almost breathtaking atmosphere was just utter bliss.
It was even better, because my sister was there with me, and shared the same kind of excitement and happiness, and we just felt like we were in heaven. :)
We got to play a bunch of games we are really excited about, first and foremost FINAL FANTASY XV. We've all been waiting more than 10 years for this game, and now it's finally here!
Other games we got to play include:
World of Final Fantasy
Kingdom Hearts II.8
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Black: The Fall
Outlast II
Tekken 7
We also got some official and exclusive goodies (like T-shirts and lanyards) from the publishers! :D
Still, the best thing was that we got to play the full version of FINAL FANTASY XV yesterday!
We were able to play the game from the very beginning, including the complete intro sequence, cutscenes and chapter 0. Starting from the title menu we even had the option to change settings such as difficulty, language, audio, subtitles etc. to our liking before actually heading into the game. I didn’t waste much time on that, though, because we only had 30 minutes of playtime. But I did take a quick look at the language options and was able to choose between German, English, Japanese and French. So that’s awesome.
Even though 30 minutes of playtime was more than most other games were offering the players, it was still far from enough time to check out everything thoroughly. I chose to follow the main quest closely to see how far I would get, which meant that I didn’t get to see very much of the area as I was sprinting only to the related points marked on the map. I didn’t bother with the in-game menu, character settings etc. either.
I won’t spoil anything story-wise (not that there’s much to spoil in the first 30 minutes). The quest at hand was to do some monster-hunting for Cid and Cidney in order to get them to lower the price on the repairs of our car. So that’s what I did. The first few enemies and fights were very nice and easy to understand tutorials. Compared to the Duscae demo the battle system has changed quite a bit. Nothing drastic, but it is different, much more elaborate, complete with team attacks and an updated evading/counter feature. It also feels like the rest of the team fights much more efficiently. So even if you don’t or can’t do anything in battle, Iggy, Gladio and Prompto might very well take care of it for you.
What stood out in my opinion was that the rest of the team is really focused on Noctis. As long as you’re doing fine they’re minding their own business more or less, but as soon as Noct’s HP are dropping dangerously low, at least one of the three will fall back to your position to shield and/or heal you!
The AI works extremely well in that sense and the way in which the developers made this whole feature work is even better, because it doesn’t feel mechanical at all. You don’t feel like your sorry ass is being saved by a computer because the difficulty is set too high. All you get is Noctis being saved by his friends. That’s because the characters communicate with each other during battles, and whenever Noct gets hurt badly, it’s not like everyone rushes to his side immediately.
I managed to get to the first small boss battle of the game, and because I hadn’t had the chance to level up beforehand, the fight was pretty tough. More than once Noctis was on the brink of death. I managed on my own until I ran out of potions. From then on I HAD to rely on my team mates. Admittedly, I was very skeptical at first. Every time my HP dropped to 0 I got out of the enemy’s reach and waited. And every time, one of the three guys eventually noticed Noct wasn’t doing so well.
The thing is, the situation was always different. First time I needed help, Ignis excused himself out of the active battle to fall back to my position where he shielded me at first and after noticing I wasn’t going to heal myself, also healed me. Then I broke down next to Prompto, who was by my side and quickly healed me in passing before I even needed to move out of the monster’s reach. Another time I wasn’t doing well and stepped away from the fighting, Gladio noticed, but instead of helping me himself, he told Prompto and Ignis to take care of it. I don’t remember what exactly they said, but they exchanged a few words on how to best go about it, before Ignis eventually came over and shielded me until Prompto also reached us to heal me.
Those little and absolutely precious interactions in battle make the system quite unique and refreshing. It’s also bound to get very, very emotional, I can tell you that.
Apart from that, there’s also a new feature that allows you to talk to Ignis, Prompto or Glaidolus before certain fights in order to come up with some kind of strategy. If you follow the plan during battle and win, you’ll get bonus EXP. This is kind of like what we’ve already seen in the DUSCAE demo with the first fight against Deadeye.
If I had been fast enough, I could’ve even gotten our car back and taken it for a drive around the area! But after barely winning the boss fight I didn’t make it back to the garage in time…
All in all I can now safely say what we already knew: THIS GAME IS GONNA BE AMAZING. :)