2013 Eurogamer Expo

Burning Eclipse

So, the PS4 and Xbox One both playable and lots of interesting dev sessions taking place. Looks like this year could be great.

Am going with a couple of mates Thursday-Saturday, and really looking forward to getting hands-on with the new consoles. Also expecting massive queues!

Top of the list of things to play are Titanfall, Dark Souls II and to try out Oculus Rift.

Anyone heading over? What are you looking forward to? Any dev sessions that are must-see?

Burning Eclipse

/tumbleweed

Sabre0001

Yep, I'll be there. Planning to check out Bayonetta 2, Titanfall, Batman: Arkham Origins, Hotline Miami 2, Need for Speed....and a lot more. A little curious to see the new Rocksmith to see what's changed.

Otacon

I'll be there tomorrow, Friday and Saturday. While a few games have piqued my interest, like Titanfall and Resogun, to be honest I am more interested in the hardware. I can't wait to finally get the DS4 and XBone controller in my hands, as well as try the Oculus Rift.

tok9

Thanks to Otacon, I'll be there on Saturday too and Oculus Rift is top of the list of things to see.

FutureGuy

I'll be there. Oculus Rift is probably my major interest but will also hang out around the MS and Nintendo booths

Retr0gamer

Apparently you win some goodies if you can complete the Dark Souls 2 demo.

tok9

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Apparently you win some goodies if you can complete the Dark Souls 2 demo.

Well I'll have to try that so

...and die

Burning Eclipse

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Apparently you win some goodies if you can complete the Dark Souls 2 demo.

Well that's decided what I'm going to try first then. :P

tok9 wrote: »

Well I'll have to try that so

...and die

Indeed.

CastorTroy

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Apparently you win some goodies if you can complete the Dark Souls 2 demo.

So you're saying no one will be winning any goodies. :pac:

tok9

It'll probably be something like the tutorial level from Demon Souls... where you must beat the boss and then beat the final boss in the game :P

So things to check out for me are : Hardware, Oculus Rift, Dark Souls 2, Titanfall.

After that I'll probably check out indie stuff. Hopefully they'll have Tearaway and some PS4 games to play too. I don't think Sony have announced anything yet?

tok9

Looks like it's been updated now.

Octodad it is! :P

http://www.eurogamerexpo.com/whats-on/show-floor

tok9

Anyone there today?

Just curious, I've heard a few things regarding fast passes. Can you get them inside for certain times or do you have to have them before going in?

Also I assume it's okay to show my ticket on my phone..

CastorTroy

how are the Wii U games looking if anyone here played any?

BlitzKrieg

I was there today

I'll say this, i've been to the eurogamer expo 3 times out of the 4 years its been running

and **** me it was a slog today

the queues were downright ridiculous

titanfall had a 2 hour queue at its height, hell there were some indie games that had an hours wait.


So I tried the following:

Started with Dead Rising 3, any fears of this being a *serious* dead rising was crushed when I combined a Harley bike with a steam roller and created the Roller Hog, a motobike with a steamroller for the front wheel and two flamethrowers. The demo was pretty much a showcase for how far the xbone has moved beyond the 360, massive crowds of zombies

Then I got in the occulus rift queue and tried War Thunder (which I love normally and was squeeling like a pig at the chance to try it with the rift. Very short demo and the rift suffers because you cant calibrate it for your eyesight so I found the focus off but the ease at which you look around and the sheer fun of it made me a fan.

Upstairs next to try battlefield 4. Along the way we passed titanfall where I talked to a respawn interactive developer about titanfall, specifically about it using the source engine (which surprised me) and if that meant EA might return to steam for the pc version to take advantage of all the support for source on the platform and of course the answer was no comment.

Chatted to a DICE developer and played Battlefield 4 which was an xbone exclusive at the show with a never before seen map (which I feel is the weakest map yet I've seen for BF4)

game was solid all running at a smooth 60fps.


took a break for a late lunch and then just to give our feet a rest we played payday 2 for a bit as it was one of the very few games without a queue.

Went downstairs and tried sonic and the lost worlds on the wii u mostly cause I'm a sonic fan, but also cause at this point we were picking games with short queues and zelda was overflowing in its queue.

Sonic was pretty damn solid, some interesting things that havnt popped in the advertising is how much more tactical the combat is (shocking I know) you have to combo some moves and coming at some badniks from the wrong angle can either be blocked or worse actually be a trap.

Then I walked the floor watching some games tried a few indie ps4 games (that really cool shhoter where its a 2.5D plane but its a twin stick shooter was really really good)

which brings me to my main take away from the show

Microsoft have made a slight mistake with the xbone gamepad. Everybody I talked to had the same issue with it, both me and my friend felt the same comment just after dead rising 3. The shoulder buttons (not the triggers) feel all wrong on the pad. they are flattened against the body so have this odd distance from the trigger that makes them awkward. My best comparsion is if you had played a european sega saturn they are like the shoulder buttons on that controller.

which makes this surprising: The PS4 controller is better. Not because of that share button or touch screen, its just more comfortable then the xbone pad. For the first time since the Duke, sony actually has the better controller.

The queues for all the big games were huge so I hoped in to a queue for another indie game that was using the occulus rift, a space shooter. At first I thought it was Valkyrie from the EVE developers but sadly it was a different indie game. But it was the most fun I had with the occulus rift, cause of the scale of space. Sadly it was another queue that ate up too much time.

Very quickly went back to nintendo as they had a swag competition, it seems all the big three had this system that if you get stamped for playing X number of their games you can win swag (microsoft even had xbones as a possible prize, but for the best chance you needed to play 8 of their games and the queues!!!). Nintendo just needed you to play 1 wii u game and 1 3ds game, so I hoped on the only one without a queue which was the 3DS version of sonic lost worlds, which plays exactly like its big cousin but with different levels.

Got my two stamps and hit the nintendo swag where I won a sonic the hedgehog hat (seems to be a theme, but I wanted it over the windwaker stickers)

Hit the shops for the end. Scan had an offer that if you bought a motherboard combo pack you got BF4 for free but the cheapest boards was £390 which was too rich for me, even with a free bf4. Only thing I bought was a fallout vault dweller hoodie which is pretty damn awesome.


In the end I think the news of both the ps4 and xbone being on show put the show at bursting point, it was nuts and my feet are ****ing killing me now.

some games where just impossible to play unless you were willing to lose half the day for them. Call of duty ghosts, Titantfall, Batman and Elder Scrolls online were overflowing with people.

And this is on thursday usually the quietest day.

Hate to be there on saturday.

biggest disapointment is I couldnt find hotline miami 2 and I really wanted to play it.

mikeruurds

I have two tickets going spare for Saturday afternoon if anyone is keen (2pm to 7pm). Can't make it out there anymore.

Please PM me if you want them - only punters with more than 100 posts please. No charge.

BlitzKrieg

oh i'm tempted just so I could get to those games I missed

mikeruurds

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

oh i'm tempted just so I could get to those games I missed

They're yours if you want them

BlitzKrieg

if you havnt passed them on by tomorrow I'll pm you. I think it would be better to give someone who didnt get a chance at all to go then just me to go back and play hotline miami 2 and titanfall

FutureGuy

Mini review of Day 1.

Travelled with burning Eclipse and Sabre0001 (boardsies unite!!!) and got in around noon.

As has been said before the queues for the top games were ridiculous. Titanfall is grabbing the most attention by a distance.

Started with Killer Instinct. Very impressed with the controller. You can't realise how they made the 360 better until you get it in your hands. As I found later with Forza 5, the vibrations in each shoulder trigger and throughout the controller were amazing. I have a growing concern about the LB and RB buttons. They feel dead and too close to the controller. Killer instinct was really cool.

Messed around for a while but played little else until after lunch due to the queues. Played octodad which was hilarious.

Played in a Mario Kart 7 tournament. Really annoyed. Told it was one race which I won. Then wondered why everyone was playing a second course as I looked up from my phone. Turns out they meant 4 races. Never recovered. Returning for another today )

Won £20 eshop voucher on the spin the wheel after demoing the new 3ds zelda and Mario Wii U games. Can't tell much from the quick plays but they both look great. I'm not sure about some levels in Mario. One was all 4 players on a dinosaur which we all had to control. It felt like a Mario party game. Not good. Got to play wind waker but was really annoyed that the used a Nintendo Wii U pod you'd see in game stop - poor screen with terrible motion blur. Silly from Nintendo.

3 hour queues for Pokemon.

Played the Oculus Rift. Fantastic but was a little motion sick. A kick starter were showing their omnidirectional treadmill which can be used with the rift. Unbelievable.

Ps4 controller >>>>>>> PS3 controller. Better shoulder buttons than Xboxone.

Towards the end of the day the queues settled down but I still avoided COD and Ryse.

We're all going to get up early and queue for Titanfall. That's the main one.

cherryghost

Well I'm hugely confused with the above Blitz. Dead Rising 3 has been confirmed locked to 30fps at 720p :P

BlitzKrieg

cherryghost wrote: »

Well I'm hugely confused with the above Blitz. Dead Rising 3 has been confirmed locked to 30fps at 720p :P

oops sorry got my notes mixed up when writing that.

It was BF4 that was a smooth 60fps

dead rising was impressive by the sheer numbers it was doing in the zombies

considering in a 5 minute demo I killed 1200 zombies and there were still massive crowds of them chasing me you can get an idea of the numbers.


two things I forgot to mention was a xbone crashed (well 2 did) while I was in the queue for BF4 and aside from the crowd doing red ring cat calls to the staff one thing I noticed was how unbelievable long it took the xbone to boot up. It was really long, now once the initial boot was done it got into BF4 really quickly, but that first time launch was well into a minute.

Secondly while BF4 ran damn well on the machine, there was this really annoying box at the top of the screen warning us that the kinect could not find the player (the kinect was no where to be seen on the setup) and it wouldnt go away. So that might be a problem if you want to put tape over your kinect sensor.

mikeruurds

Tickets have gone to Mystic86. Enjoy!

Otacon

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

biggest disapointment is I couldnt find hotline miami 2 and I really wanted to play it.

Not sure if you'll get the chance but HM2 is beside the Fish and Chips stand at the back of the hall, right next to LUFTRAUSERS... and it is a lot of fun.

Also, I suggest that if anyone gets into the PS area, try Octodad - the only game besides Titanfall that had me smiling from ear to ear leaving it.

tok9

I'm getting the feeling that one day won't be enough.

Going to start making tracks there now and probably straight to octodad!

Thanks again Otacon

tok9

Jesus... easily the longest post I've ever written - ye lazy readers... skip to the bottom!

Well.. that was a long day of queuing!

Started off with a quick go of Rain which looks really interesting. Really love the look of that game.

Moved on to Batman on Vita. The combat feels just as good as the previous console games which is great but there was no sense of discovery in the demo. You just kept on moving left to the next building or building in the distance where you would be prompted to go to. So I'll wait on reviews for that.

Now to the big stuff.. straight to Dark Souls 2! Firstly the prize they gave away to the 1st person who beat the demo was amazing. PS3, Turtle headset, Dark Souls 2 Collectors edition, Year PS+ and a tshirt (maybe more).

On the game itself.. It's more of the same really and it looks and plays a lot smoother than it's predecessor. Took me a while to get back into it but I must admit I'm in the mood to get back into Dark Souls now. The Boss was the Mirrors Knight and he could do these electrical sword attacks. He'd also hit his shield to the floor which would add another warrior to the fight. I hear in the actual game this will be a real player! Not looking forward to that.

Anyway, I got close, but didn't beat the boss myself. Certainly a game that makes me think about holding off for Next Gen.

Moved to the Playstation area after where I played Octodad and Killzone along with watching a good bit of Hohokum and Resogun.

The PS4 really is so small. Sony did a great job on the design. I was actually surprised at the size of the controller. For some reason I thought it'd be bigger. I've never had any issues with the DS3 but this really is a significant improvement. Triggers are great, analogs are way more resistant and the controller is really comfortable.

Octodad is a game I imagine a lot of people will ignore but it's genuinely funny. The game has just about the right controls that it's not frustrating to play.

Killzone was probably the best looking game on show. It looks amazing and runs solidly. Played a game of warzone I think. 2 rounds of search and destroy and one of domination basically. I can't see it dragging many of the COD/BF crowd but it's an entertaining game.

Finally got to check out the Oculus Rift. While I don't have a PC, I'm still pretty excited for this. I got to test it out with War Thunder. I didn't really care much for the game as I didn't even know what my objective was but the experience was class, especially when you have headphones on too. I must have looked like an idiot but I kept looking around me and it's just class how you can see everywhere around you. It's amazing and I need to get this somehow :P

I was hoping to kill two birds with one stone playing Titanfall as I assumed it was on Xbox One but it turned out to be on PC with 360 controllers so that was annoying for me. Game itself is great fun. Easiest way to describe it is COD with jetpacks and mechs therefore making a fast paced game even faster. From the game I played it looks like the Titans are your Killstreak... or at least the better you play the quicker you'll get one (Top player on my team :cool:). It's pretty awesome blowing up a Titan, ejecting out of your one and killing someone on the roof you land on. So ya... it's easy to pick up and play.

By this stage my day was pretty much over, I went to check out the indie section but Volume was being played at the time and I couldn't spot Hotline Miami 2 so I moved on to Tearaway which is ridiculously charming. Couldn't help but smile every so often at the game. Anyone with a Vita should have this pre ordered on Amazon right now (Only £20). It was so good I completely forgot to go back and check Volume.

Last thing I did before leaving was find the Xbox One controller... fortunately Zoo Tycoon was still on so I just picked it up for a bit and messed around with the controller itself. I have to say I really liked it too. Found it very comfortable and the only thing I would say against it is the front shoulder buttons. They are a little flat. I didn't really play Zoo Tycoon so I didn't get a chance to properly test the controller but it's really good imo too. Very little between it and the DS4.

Would have loved to check out some of the nintendo stuff, Indies and BF4 but I just didn't have enough time. The queues were very long all day for the main stuff. Of everything though I couldn't understand whu Oculus only had 8 devices in their stall. Surely they would have known from previous events that they would draw a crowd. Same with Titanfall which had about 24 PCs yet the likes of Wolfenstein (which I played for a minute too hoping it was on Xbox one but it wasn't either) and AC4 had roughly 48 (more for AC as that was in the Sony area too).


tl;dr

Rain - Interesting

Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate - Wait and See on this

Dark Souls 2 - Excellent and looks a lot better (Framerate/Textures)

Octodad - Funny game.. well worth a playthrough

Killzone - Looks gorgeous and was a lot of fun but I can't see it taking much of the COD/BF Fans

Oculus Rift - Amazing! Wish I was able to accommodate a PC and this in the future.

Titanfall - Great fun, easy to get into, really fast place and I can definitely see this taking over from COD. I think EA are on to a winner with this and BF.

PS4 Hardware - Looks great and compact. Controller smaller than I thought and the changes have been excellent.

Xbox One - Not a fan of the console design but if you can store it somewhere who cares. Controller is really great too and I found it really comfortable.

Anyone with a spare ticket tomorrow :P

GTR63

Thanks for the awesome tearaway tip tok9. What did you play in the Blackgate demo?
Was it chasing Catwoman & The Bronze Tiger mini boss, I seen they demoed the same E3 Console Demo of Origins on Eurogamer.net
Didn`t even bother watching it again.

tok9

GTR63 wrote: »

Thanks for the awesome tearaway tip tok9. What did you play in the Blackgate demo?
Was it chasing Catwoman & The Bronze Tiger mini boss, I seen they demoed the same E3 Console Demo of Origins on Eurogamer.net
Didn`t even bother watching it again.

Ya it's the same demo. Maybe that was part of it too since I knew what was coming. Realistically you need more time with a game like that and since I just got inside I realised I better check out some of the bigger games before the queues build up. I didn't even get as far as the boss.

Otacon

GTR63 wrote: »

Thanks for the awesome tearaway tip tok9. What did you play in the Blackgate demo?
Was it chasing Catwoman & The Bronze Tiger mini boss, I seen they demoed the same E3 Console Demo of Origins on Eurogamer.net
Didn`t even bother watching it again.

tok9 wrote: »

Ya it's the same demo. Maybe that was part of it too since I knew what was coming. Realistically you need more time with a game like that and since I just got inside I realised I better check out some of the bigger games before the queues build up. I didn't even get as far as the boss.

My biggest issue with Blackgate is the sense that you are being led, rather than leading yourself. IN AA and AC, you feel powerful because they give you the tools to be Batman and then get out of the way. Due to the 2D nature of it, it immediately restricts where you can go.

I have heard the main game uses a Megaman-like boss structure so there will be some freedom but is still not an ideal Batman experience outside of the combat.

GTR63

Otacon wrote: »

My biggest issue with Blackgate is the sense that you are being led, rather than leading yourself. IN AA and AC, you feel powerful because they give you the tools to be Batman and then get out of the way. Due to the 2D nature of it, it immediately restricts where you can go.

I have heard the main game uses a Megaman-like boss structure so there will be some freedom but is still not an ideal Batman experience outside of the combat.

Sorry for derailing the thread but I think exploration in the game is more back tracking & using a recently acquired gadget to get to somewhere you couldn`t previously. I imagine this is more to create shortcuts through the map than it is opening up newer chunks of it though.

Burning Eclipse

Had a great 3 days at the expo. Don't have the time right now to do a full rundown, but it was cool to get hands on with Oculus Rift and the new consoles. Loved both new controllers, but the guys are spot on when they say the bumper buttons on the Xbox One controller are off. DS4 would be perfection itself if the left analog swapped place with the d-pad.

Also, I didn't play Titanfall, because the shortest queue it had any time I checked was 2 hours. F*ck that noise. I've better things to be doing with my time.