eurogamer expo thoughts
so I went to eurogamer expo yesterday, as has become a bit of a yearly tradition. unfortunately none of the developer sessions on the saturday sounded interesting, but I did wander the entire show floor and checked out a bunch of games and saw a bunch of stuff.
sim city: aaa this looks so cool. the depth to it - all those simulations going on, the way you can track individual sims just doing whatever, it's crazy. it looks really nice with the simple brightly-coloured style and the extreme DoF effect, the data layers are fascinating, and being able to make wibbly roads blew my mind. curves? in sim city?! (you can tell I haven't played since sim city 2000)
chompy chomp chomp: some ex-jagex friends founded an indy developer and made this silly, fun, frantic little xbox game. reminds me of chu-chu rocket with that 'oh god what is going on' sort of feel. very cute and fun, would be improved with drinking game rules imo :v we're going to buy this and two more controllers for parties imo.
proteus: this was in the indie games arcade as sponsored by RPS, and um... yeah. wow. the dude who was playing with it before me got up after a couple minutes, complaining to his friend that 'it's so BORING, nothing HAPPENS!', and whoever you are, dude, you missed the point entirely. if you like wandering around in games like minecraft or terraria and you do not require every game you play to have a minimum gun quotient to be fun, check out proteus. it is beautiful and probably my favourite game of the show.
F1 race stars: mario kart with the formula 1 license. adorable silly art style, fun silly game. I mean, I love mario kart and have a passing familiarity with F1 due to alex being a huge fan, so I enjoyed this a lot. the other F1 fans we went to nandos with afterwards puzzled over 'who is this game even aimed at?' because it's not at all accurate to the real F1(codies have three F1 games on the go now: this, the super serious hardcore one, and an online unity-powered one), and I think alex probably hit the nail on the head when he described it as 'it's for F1 fans with a girlfriend who isn't into F1'. and I can't really argue with that I guess, except maybe replacing 'girlfriend' with 'partner' :p
the cave: really pretty! it's a trine-esque puzzle game with a good sense of humour and an interesting roster of characters(even male:female ratio = winner!); alex and I played through the demo puzzle and enjoyed it well enough but the lack of split-screen was puzzling and having to switch control between all three characters just to get them all in the same place was a bit tedious and clunky, even with two of us playing. I watched a dude play it by himself and it looked even more annoying. might give it a look when it comes out since playing via LAN instead of on the same screen would presumably help. we got some figures but didn't get to pick which ones we got(I wanted the awesome time traveller lady, got the creepy children), and they smell like a chemical factory so... yeah.
I kept thinking 'I wouldn't mind having a go on the wiiU' but every time I passed the stall the queue had gotten longer and longer, and... well, much like the PS vita, I guess I don't care that much.
I was super disappointed to see booth babes at the expo, I have to say. happily though, I noted only three exhibitors had stooped to that level and only one of those was actually a developer. virgin media and nvidia each had a complement of pretty girls in skintight clothing and skyscraper heels(I saw them standing once, every time after that they were sitting on something to take the weight off their feet), and the company of heroes 2 marketing machine had dressed up some girls in ushankas, mercifully flat boots, and hotpants... with a QR code on the ass :I really. going to express my displeasure at them I think.
there were plenty of women that weren't being paid to be there though, so I was quite glad about that. even if some of them were cosplaying the assassin nuns from that awful hitman trailer... *facepalm*
sim city: aaa this looks so cool. the depth to it - all those simulations going on, the way you can track individual sims just doing whatever, it's crazy. it looks really nice with the simple brightly-coloured style and the extreme DoF effect, the data layers are fascinating, and being able to make wibbly roads blew my mind. curves? in sim city?! (you can tell I haven't played since sim city 2000)
chompy chomp chomp: some ex-jagex friends founded an indy developer and made this silly, fun, frantic little xbox game. reminds me of chu-chu rocket with that 'oh god what is going on' sort of feel. very cute and fun, would be improved with drinking game rules imo :v we're going to buy this and two more controllers for parties imo.
proteus: this was in the indie games arcade as sponsored by RPS, and um... yeah. wow. the dude who was playing with it before me got up after a couple minutes, complaining to his friend that 'it's so BORING, nothing HAPPENS!', and whoever you are, dude, you missed the point entirely. if you like wandering around in games like minecraft or terraria and you do not require every game you play to have a minimum gun quotient to be fun, check out proteus. it is beautiful and probably my favourite game of the show.
F1 race stars: mario kart with the formula 1 license. adorable silly art style, fun silly game. I mean, I love mario kart and have a passing familiarity with F1 due to alex being a huge fan, so I enjoyed this a lot. the other F1 fans we went to nandos with afterwards puzzled over 'who is this game even aimed at?' because it's not at all accurate to the real F1(codies have three F1 games on the go now: this, the super serious hardcore one, and an online unity-powered one), and I think alex probably hit the nail on the head when he described it as 'it's for F1 fans with a girlfriend who isn't into F1'. and I can't really argue with that I guess, except maybe replacing 'girlfriend' with 'partner' :p
the cave: really pretty! it's a trine-esque puzzle game with a good sense of humour and an interesting roster of characters(even male:female ratio = winner!); alex and I played through the demo puzzle and enjoyed it well enough but the lack of split-screen was puzzling and having to switch control between all three characters just to get them all in the same place was a bit tedious and clunky, even with two of us playing. I watched a dude play it by himself and it looked even more annoying. might give it a look when it comes out since playing via LAN instead of on the same screen would presumably help. we got some figures but didn't get to pick which ones we got(I wanted the awesome time traveller lady, got the creepy children), and they smell like a chemical factory so... yeah.
I kept thinking 'I wouldn't mind having a go on the wiiU' but every time I passed the stall the queue had gotten longer and longer, and... well, much like the PS vita, I guess I don't care that much.
I was super disappointed to see booth babes at the expo, I have to say. happily though, I noted only three exhibitors had stooped to that level and only one of those was actually a developer. virgin media and nvidia each had a complement of pretty girls in skintight clothing and skyscraper heels(I saw them standing once, every time after that they were sitting on something to take the weight off their feet), and the company of heroes 2 marketing machine had dressed up some girls in ushankas, mercifully flat boots, and hotpants... with a QR code on the ass :I really. going to express my displeasure at them I think.
there were plenty of women that weren't being paid to be there though, so I was quite glad about that. even if some of them were cosplaying the assassin nuns from that awful hitman trailer... *facepalm*