Eurogamer Expo, now in its 5th year (3rd at Earls Court) promised to be bigger and better than ever before. With first-seen in public AAA games such as Black Ops II, Halo 4 and Medal of Honor, through to comparatively little known indie titles such as Prison Architect and Hotline Miami, there was something for everyone at the show.
The Gamergeddon staff and some friends from our small gaming community Quit or Die were there for the first two days (Thursday and Friday) to play as much as we could. Spending two days there is definitely recommended as unfortunately the expo has grown so popular even the usually quiet Thursday felt like a very busy Saturday. Black Ops II and Halo 4 had the most popular queues, expect to see a few hours fly by waiting for those two. Other games had queues of around thirty minutes which were more reasonable. Despite spending two days there, we did not see everything due to the queues, factor in the developers sessions running all day it was very hard to fit everything in.
Over the next four pages are the collected thoughts of Bradley, Luke and myself (Dave) of some the games we played. Some of our impressions on games are a little short as we will be going into more depth on them over the coming weeks with reviews and previews of the games which are released or in beta form.
[nggtags gallery=EGExpo2012-1]
XCOM: Enemy Unknown
As some of you may know I am a massive fan of the X-COM series, so my first port of call was the soon to be released XCOM. Both single and multiplayer versions of the game were available to play. Having already played the single player demo on the PC we got seated in front of the very cool arcade style cabinets for the multiplayer demo. The game is played 1v1 and you can pick your squad by spending a limited number of points. The map we tried was fairly small but well designed to offer close and long range combat. Each player has two minutes to perform their turn before it switches sides. We enjoyed the strategy of finding cover, choosing the best plan of attack and despite some very dodgy action camera angles it felt spot on to what we hoped for. The game converted a few friends into pre ordering it so we hope for some great things in a few weeks time. Personally, it was one of my favourite games of Eurogamer Expo, I could have happily played it all day!
Medal of Honor: Warfighter
Medal of Honor was our second port of call. A few of our gaming community Quit or Die were at the show and we all play a hell of a lot of Battlefield 3. Opinions were very mixed on the first Medal of Honor and we wanted to see if anything was different about the second. We all got on the same side (thanks EA staff!) and easily won 5-0! There were a few glitches in the game as understandably the game was still in development so we won’t comment on those. The game itself was more enjoyable than the first, it seemed to flow much better thanks to the objectives, it is similar to a game of Rush on Battlefield 3 but in close quarters style combat. There was a choice of classes which offered different weapon and perk setups which we found interesting. Depending on your class, your perks included mortar attacks and smoke screens through to a gunship patrolling the area which you could spawn and abseil out of, very cool! A beta release is expected on Xbox 360 in the next few weeks so keep an eye out for that!
[nggtags gallery=EGExpo2012-2]
Assassin’s Creed III
Assassin’s Creed III was popular with expo goers and we spent some time playing the ship based part of the game. Our resident nautical expert Captain Bradley was telling us to turn port and starboard as we sailed through the waves trying to defend a ship against two enemy ships. We had no idea which was port and starboard so we staged a mutiny and spent most of the time crashing into the ships, firing our cannons and missing the target a lot… we sunk them both in the end! It was nice to see something new in the game and we enjoyed it a lot.
Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider was a nice surprise after getting our hands on the game. The open world area was vastly different to the on the rails style gameplay in previous games. The demo saw Lara tasked with finding a bow and arrow and then going hunting for food. We saw Deer and Rabbits, the former being the easiest to kill, though hearing the rabbits squeal was interesting to say the least. The demo was a good balance of platforming and exploration showing the differences since Lara’s last outing.
