The New Flesh

That's me on the left

I experienced one of the perks of moving to London this weekend when I spent the weekend at that Eurogamer Expo (can we start calling it E2?). I’m not going to say much about it because I should really be reading ‘The myth of sense-date’ by some berk called Winston Barnes but I want to mention a few things so I’ll just jot a paragraph or two down on each of the highlights and shove them up below. First (or rather last since I’ll post this post last to delibrately break the reverse time order blog format of the site) let me tell a bit of my story of the weekend because it was quite cool dammit.

This confuses me, why is it that people are rewarded for being first the queue? I mean really, why is it considered good to turn up to events incredibly early? Why is it a good thing to wait six bloody hours early when turning up an hour early will get you in the venue at about the same time? It makes no damn sense. However as a selfish consumer if there are freebies on offer for turning up six hours early then they’re going to bloody well be mine! So yeah, I sat in the cold on a dreay monday morning and for my troubles I got a free copy of Uncharted 2, the chance to meet Ellie and Bertie of Eurogamer, a WET t-shirt (I also tried out the game when I was in there, my impression: it’s rather shit) and an apearence on the Eurogamer website. I don’t own a PS3 which did lessen my excitement at what was theoretically the main prize but I intend to get one once my university gets round to paying me so you know, still cool and it’s great to have a physical momento of the event.

I also managed to purely accidentally sneak in early to the Split/Second presentation and for some reason nobody threw me out (maybe Eurogamer thought I was with Black Rock and Black Rock thought I was with Eurogamer? Or maybe it was just because I was wearing a shirt and thus obviously important? I dunno) but appart from the heart pounding induced form my the growing realisation that I really wasn’t meant to be there that was actually pretty dull. Apart from that my experience was probably quite normal. I went to a lot of presentations on a lot of cool games. I got to ask Tom Bramwell why the heck he changed the scoring policy in the Ask Eurogamer session and then made a right mess of my second question because two ideas got mixed up in my head. I got some hands on time with a lot of other cool games, the highlights of which I’ll write about below. I chatted to a few random people, one of whom turned out to work for a friend of mine and another turned out to be LewieP of savygamer. In short I can’t wait till next year. I wonder how much I have to write here in order to qualify for a press pass…

Now for some links to what I saw: -

Plain Sight – my personal game of the show

Split/Second – a new one for my watch list

Aliens vs Predator – very good fun so far

Heavy Rain – the other reason I’ll need to by a PS3

Okay one out of left field which perhaps says more about me as a gamer than anything else but Plain Sight was my game of the show. Shoved into a lions den of tripple-A titles this was the one game that really left me buzzing and made me overcome by shyness and chat to the rep/dev.

The stand such that it was looked oddly out of place with four very ordinary PCs (in contrast all the other PCs on show looked like this) set up in a spare corner of the show floor that wasn’t listing in the program and decorated with with some very home made looking posters (home made in the home of someone with an obvious talent for graphic design but still home made). It looked suspiciously like first time indie developers Beatnik Games had called Eurogamer at the last minute and begged for some floor space. Whoever decided to let them come made a good call because what they had on show was damn good.

Plain Sight is a mutliplayer game where you play a little insanely agile robot with a katana that double jumps it’s way around all sides of a floating level where gravity seems to be defined partly by the last surface you jumped off and partly on the centre of gravity of the object you’re jumping around on (I’m not sure, it’s weird but you get the hang of it very quickly). Combat is a bit TPS and a little bit modern flight sim because you run and jump arround in third person but spend most of the time (once you work out how to do anything but run, jump and die which does take a while) trying to get target lock-on and when you do you click again and go flying towards the other robot and bash him, at least assuming he doesn’t dodge or block. It’s very unique and enormously good fun. There’s also this points scoring system that ties back into how powerful you are which looks like where the depth might come from.

I had a brief chat with one of the devs and apparently they’re hoping to do another beta later this year, one more early next year and then release it on PC. I suspect it’ll be a bit of a cult hit to begin with because it certainly isn’t pick up and play because the combat mechanic is so odd but it has that jena se qua. I also suspect that it’ll be a huge hit on the consoles once they get a console version done because the attack system would be a good fit for a joypad since aiming doesn’t really come into it, however when that will I did not ask so cannot say.

AvP was the most fun I had with any game on the show floor but I am slightly worried about longevity. I played one eight player deathmatch on the PS3 version and I had a ton of fun. I was playing an Alien because the Predator looked a lot more complicated (cloaking, health, multiple weapons etc) and I can’t shoot with a joypad for toffee so Colonial Marine would have been even more suicidal than normal. I also watched quite a lot of Predator play and a little bit of Colonial Marine play. Much of the game as Aliens or Predators boiled down to running about avoiding direct confrontation and pressing the Square button whenever you got behind anyone to perform a set piece stealth kill and then finding that while the animation was playing someone else had run up behind you and pressed the Square button to stealth kill you (which is great when your the last person standing in such a chain, not so much the rest of the time). Play as Colonial Marines seemed to boil down to dying a lot although if you don’t get the jump on them their guns clearly make them the most dangerous opponents for an Alien since running away is always a good option against a Predator or at least against a n00b predator who hasn’t learnt how to shoot.

The best moment was taking out both the guys sitting on either side of me who were playing semi-cooperatively as marines in an attempt to survive. I got the first with a stealth kill and the second, who had just seen me kill his buddy, by making a semi-suicidal leap directly towards him and going mental with my attack buttons. He swore. I smiles and then got stealth killed by a predator. Good times. I think the problem is those stealth kills are rather too easy. In theory they’re just like a back stab in TF2 but they’re actually far far easier than that and you get a pop-up telling you when it’ll work that’s far easier to read than the knife changing position in TF2 so it often didn’t feel particularly skilful. Still that just console multiplayer deathmatch among a bunch of n00bs based on some early code. I should think the Marines would certainly get a healthy buff from mouse control and the sneaky bastard Predator looks like it’ll be formidable in the hands of someone who knows how to use it but for a n00b like me on this code it was Alien for the mid-table obscurity. I’m still more excited by the prospect of the single player campaigns which I didn’t an opportunity to look at but I think I’ll be spending a fare few hours with both halves of this game and there aren’t many games I’ve ever thought that about. Definitely looks like a must buy when it comes out in February. I’ll be getting it for the PC but it’s also coming out on 360 and PS3.

Split/Second wasn’t even on my radar before I went along to it’s developer presentation on Friday. I went along anyway and I have to say was really impressed. I later got to play a couple of races on the show floor and see how it actually handles. It’s a racing game of course, it’s from Black Rock who are the same guys who did Pure and it’s looking pretty good. It’s in pre-alpha and set for a 2010 release on the three powerful platforms but it’s already looking very nice. The concept is that your racing on a future racing TV show and the racers, both you and the AI get to set off traps and shortcuts ahead of you to spice up the action. It’s a paper thin excuse for some big set piece Michael Bay style explosions in an arcade racing game but who cares, this ain’t Heavy Rain. I’m slightly worried it’ll be two easy to learn the tracks and all they’re traps to the point where in spite of the eye candy you treat it just like a normal racer but I think as a silly racer it’ll good generate some good moments, particularly in multiplayer. It’s certainly given the arcade racer a little bit of a shake, enough to set it apart from the likes of Need for Speed and it’s very very pretty so yeah, I’m adding this to my watch list.

Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood is undoubtedly one of the most visually impress 3D indie games I’ve ever seen. It also plays pretty well, sounds pretty good, seems technically solid and has it’s own fairly unique style and yet none of that can save it.

I can’t shake the feeling that this is big. The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition is more than just a game, more than just a port of an old game onto modern computers, a paradigm for the future of video game preservation, that LucasArts has made the move to produce this game may ultimately prove as important as the Abandonware movement, Good Old Games or DOSbox. Right now it’s an amusement but culturally this is a big step forward. Also as a game it freakin’ rocks.

Just a quick post to give you the good news that in an interveiw for CNET News Bill Gates himself has said that they’re bringing Project Natal to PC and also to say that I called it. It may have been obvious, sure anyone with half a brain could have called it but guess who did call it? ME! Jack Black wrote the one note song and I called Project Natal for PC.

I admit it, I’m not very good at real-time strategy games. Actually that’s probably a little misleading, it’s probably more accurate to say I’m really bad at RTS games. Pretty much every game I’ve failed to complete because it was too difficult to be fun was a real-time strategy and I’ve failed to finish pretty much every real-time strategy game (of course I never play on easy mode, I still have my pride). I don’t really know why, they’re just a mystery to me, I think I know what I should do and I try to but then somehow it all falls apart in the execution. I generally put this down to purely a lack of skill on my part but after today I’m inclined to think the whole damn genre is plotting against me.

Blueberry Garden is a lovely game, there’s no other word for it, lovely. It’s also small yet perfectly formed.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun have drawn my attention to Alice and Kev by Robin Burkinshaw aka roBurky. It’s a truely excellent weblog about the lives of his two homeless sims, the insane Kev and his long suffering daughter Alice. Kev has just made friends with a ghost and Alice is going through some difficult teenage years. It’s funny and heartwrenching and the bottom line is it’s brilliant stuff that makes me proud to have occationally healed this guy on the RPS TF2 server.

Damn, I want Sims 3 now but really with a £30 price tag, my ‘to play’ list in the state it is and the important things I should be doing rather than playing games (or indeed writing about playing games) there is just no way.