EB Games Expo Re-cap

Hey guys! What a great couple of days I had at the EB Games Expo with my awesome girlfriend. It was such a great experience, and it allowed me a great sneak peak at lots of fantastic upcoming game.It was a weekend full of motocross riders, fireworks, games, cosplayers and even more games. So I'll just get on with it, this is what happened during my time at the EB Games Expo. FYI, when I refer to "we" I mean myself and my girlfriend.

SESSION ONE
Our first session at the EB Expo was kicked off with a quick presentation involving a montage of awesome trailers accompanied by rock music, and the monster energy drink motocross riders. The opening event was pretty cool, but once it was over, the real show began. We were set loose onto 10000 square metres of gaming for 6 hours, and most would say it wasn't enough. Luckily we had another two 6 hr sessions to get.

First up for us was the Uncharted booth, where we played a chapter each of the upcoming Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. The excerpt I played was the "Burning Chateau" chapter from some of the earliest demo's. I'm glad to say that Drake's Deception handles as well as, if not better than, it's predecessors. Drake moves naturally and the combat, both melee and ranged, feel solid and the controls work well.
Lauren (the Tophat Girlfriend) played the cargo plane chapter that has been seen recently, which I played later in the weekend; so I'll get to it later. Lauren isn't the most practiced of gamers, but she felt that Drake's Deception was easy to pick up and play, with no direction or help.

After we left the Uncharted booth, we made a bee-line to Saint's Row The Third, which was situated conveniently close. As Lauren perused the new clothing options, I had a look at the character creator. With so many clothing items, and customization options, you could play as anyone you choose, in theory. After creating my purple ponytailed, musclebound, hung-like-a-horse pirate, I exited the lastic surgeon and started busting faces and performing nutshots.

While the customization has improved somewhat (despite it being amazing in SR2), the controls are a bit of a mixed bag. They work well enough, but they've been changed since the last Saint's outing. They felt quite a lot like GTAIV's control scheme, but don't fear. The car physics feel as Saint's-y as ever, whereas the on-foot physics have a significant amount of weight added to them, making them feel more powerful and more realistic, without compromising the over-the-top action.

Next on the agenda was Batman: Arkham City; which had an obscenely large line attached to it. During the hour-long wait, however, I got a chance to play some of the Darkness II. Now, never having played the darkness, I didn't know what to expect. However, the colourful, slightly stylized visuals helped me get sucked into a game that eventually allowed me to dual wield weapons as well as slice dudes in half with demon tentacle arms. The action in this game is nice and varied, as well as solid and visceral. It's satisfying being able to pick up a pole and impaling a person on it, then being able to throw his buddy down an alleyway to his doom.

Finally, the line for Batman dwindled, and it was our time to put on the cowl. But not after whipping some thugs with Selina Kyle's Cat-of-Nine-Tails first. Catwoman feels fast and agile, possibly quicker than the dark knight. Playing as the femme fatale is a lot of fun, but let's face it, she's no Batman.
After kicking ass as Ms. Kyle, Batman is tasked with saving her from Two-Face, giving us a short amount of time to do as we wish in the new Arkham City. I spent my first outing beating people up as Bruce Wayne, and boy, does he have some new moves.

Certain takedowns can bring down more than one opponent, and the reversal button is a lot more flexible than in the previous game. Batman is still able to take on more foes than a few, and it feels powerful to be back in his boots. Batman also has a lot more freedom in his movement, with the pitch of his glide being controllable, allowing you to divebomb down and regain altitude.

Our time with Arkham City was cut short by the attendant, but little did they know we'd be back. oh yes, we would be back.

After a quick lunch, we were back in, looking at the Lollipop Chainsaw trailer, as well as some sweet tech. Seriously, the Batarang ps3/360 Controllers are completely awesome. I want one. Now.

Back on the game side of things, my lovely girlfriend and I lined up for the Assassin's Creed multiplayer LAN party. It was an intense battle, but I come up 800 points over the nearest follower, who coincedentally was Lauren. The multiplayer plays much better than it did during the Beta, with very few glitches hindering the experience.
The "Honourable Death" reward feels a lot better than the game not registering your stun attempt at all, and it feels good to at least put up a fight. The amount of customization is pretty cool too, with custom symbols being on display during our play-time. For my efforts, they gave me postcards. Win!

For the remainder of the first session, we played parts of Sonic Generations. I played the green hill zone, but as current Sonic. While I feel that Sonic lost his way when he went to 3D, the "Current Sonic" variations on levels feel really good, and the blue hedgehog retains his speed throughout. As with the demo earlier this year, Classic "Chubby" Sonic still feels great, and hey, we love 2D.

SESSION 2
As the first session ended, we made our way out of the convention centre, and quickly went back in, Session 2 wristbands on tight. As soon as we got a chance, we went straight to the Skyrim line which, as we had foreseen, was really really long. Luckily, someone had seen us wandering near the line before, and invited us to come to the next session available.

As we were lead into the box like room in the middle of the showroom floor, we were greeted by a large projector screen and a dozen "Lovesac" beanbag chairs. As Lauren and I settled into the marshmallow like seat, the film started running. If you've watched the Skyrim demo from E3, then you know pretty much what we saw. I must say, however, there were extra bits that I'd never seen before. Not a whole lot to really dwell on, however. Got a sweet poster out of it though.

After leaving the Skyrim theatre, we went straight to the Battlefield 3 line, which stretched farther than the Batman and Skyrim lines combined. Whether it was worth it or not, I'm still not entirely sure. After the attrocious wait, we played through part of the mission "Operation: Guillotine", where your character is tasked with taking out machine gun nests and clearing out an enemy building with the help of his squad.

All in all, Battlefield 3 feels really good. The weapons have a nice weight to them, and the audio accompanying the game is loud and powerful. Shooting down enemies has a satisfying feel, and while it isn't as action packed as a CoD game, the core gameplay felt more grounded than any recent CoD game ever will.

While we were at the EA Booth, Lauren and I decided to check in on our favourite Commander, Shephard. The demo we played begins with familiar face Mordin Solus telling us about the fertile female krogan he has come across, and informs us that she is central to helping an alliance between Turians and Krogans against the Reaper threat. After a quick cutscene, Cerberus operatives crash the party, like the jerks they are.

The cover based combat is as strong as ever, with Commander Shephard feeling more agile on the battlefield than he used to be. Also welcome are the re-addition of grenades to your standard arsenal; as these come in serious aid when you're faced with massive shield carrying opponents. If the action for the rest of the game plays out like this, I'm confident that Mass Effect 3 will be one of my games of the year.

On our way out, we checked out some others playing Need For Speed: The Run. It looked really good, with fluid graphics helping the gameplay seem really fast and entertaining. If it plays anything like NFS: Hot Pursuit, the gameplay will be more than enough to match the high quality graphics.

After visiting nintendo's little area; during which we saw the awesome looking Kirby's Return to Dreamland (I Think) and Super Mario Land 3D (when I discovered that the 3DS hurts the fuck out of my eyes), we wandered back to Warner Bros booths, and tried out LOTR: War in the North.

While I am a huge fan of Lord of the Rings, I found that War in the North didn't really scratch any itches. I suppose the gameplay was solid enough, I wasn't really given enough instruction, or enough context to make me care about the game or its characters. I did enjoy taking off goblin heads as the dwarf, however, so I may check it out when it finally hits store shelves.

After the massive wait in the Battlefield line, it was no wonder that our time in the second session had come to an end so quickly. As I bought myself a t-shirt, we packed up our posters and headed for the door. We'd be back tomorrow, full of energy, ready to go back over the things we loved the first time around.

SESSION 3
As our 3rd Session began, we made our way to the arena to see some Live shows from some of the developers. First off, a Representative from Sony took the stage, heralding the amazing qualities of the upcoming PSVita. I was already sold on the device, but Lauren on the other hand was not. The showcase certainly changed her mind. After a quick showing of "Reality Fighters" which has a humorous charm to it, the presenter gave us a demonstration of LittleBigPlanet Vita.

Now, it's no secret that I love the LBP franchise, from the PS3 titles, to the PSP one. PSVita looks to have its own promising entry in the serious that utilizes most of the device's features (front and back cameras and touch-pads) to not only create levels, but to play them as well. As with it's PS3 brothers, LBPVita has a cute charm to it, which is as endearing as ever.

The Altered Reality technology that Vita brings to the table is also pretty cool, which is saying alot, seeing as I'm not a huge fan of gimmicks. If the videos were anything to go by, the Altered Reality features on the system will prove to be an interesting waste of time, if nothing else.

Following that was the Ubisoft Rep. with the Gamescom Demo of Assassin's Creed Revelations. And let no one tell you that it wasn't actual gameplay being played. I've seen that demo played well, and not-so-well now. But in all honesty, the game still looks fantastic, and the bomb crafting feature looks very interesting, if nothing else.
After a quick "Just Dance" demo, another UbiRep showed of Gunsmith in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier; featuring the Kinect.
While the feature looked pretty cool at E3, here it seemed a bit lacking, with the Kinect not being responsive to movements OR Voice controls.

Back out into the showroom for the last time, we made our way back to booths that we had wished we spent some more time at on our first day. We backtracked over Uncharted 3, Saint's Row the Third and Batman: AC again, trying to do different things to our last playthroughs.

Back at Drakes Deception, Lauren and I chose the alternate levels to our first choice. As I controlled Drake during the Cargo plane mission, I noticed a particularly cool new move in his repertoire. At one point, I pressed the melee button, and launched Drake down a drop at an opposing guard, promptly knocking him out in the process. This impressed me to no end.

Uncharted continued it's reputation as a highly cinematic game, when I had to jump Drake from a speeding jeep to the landing gear of the large plane. It was an exciting moment, even though it wasn't terrible difficult. That isn't to say I didn't see people fail at it.
After making my way onto the plan, I find myself in a fist fight with a large, very angry guard. If you've seen the recent trailers, you know this ends with him, and a lot of cargo, flying out the back end of the plane. After this, however, a gunfight ensues with many guards and Drake as you struggle away from the cargo bay door. Just as the fight begins to die down, a massive explosion tears a hole in the ship, sucking the enemies and Drake to an unknown fate. I guess I'll have to wait til November 1st to see how it turns out.

Rushing back over to the Saint's Row booth, I take a little time to fuck around with everyone. The shooting gameplay works really well, and guns are alot of fun to play around with. While none of this is new, I did find the "Awesome" Button. Now, the Awesome button is essentially the sprint button, except now it adds a touch of awesome to anything. Melee a guy? The awesome button makes you smash his face into the ground with enough force to make a jedi blush. Steal a car? Awesome button it! It causes you to missile dropkick into the front seat of the vehicle of your choice.

Once more over to the Batman section, and we're right back into the swing of things. Instead of fighting random thugs, I choose to try and get as far through the mission at hand as I can. It takes me to the courthouse, where two face is holding catwoman. After beating the ugly out of a dozen guys, a cutscene plays where Ms. Kyle takes some revenge out on Harvey. Near the end of the scene, however, someone takes a shot at Catwoman, which gives me a chance to use Batman's detective vision to deduce where the shot came from. It's a far better use of the feature than spotting tobacco traces and following them to the next target. Instead, a calculated trajectory of the shot directs us to the next location. Unfortunately, my time is done before I can follow it up.

Not wanting to waste the last few minutes of the Expo, we decide to go to the Modern Warfare 3 booth, at last. While we didn't have a 2 hour line to wait in this time, we also didn't have a playable demo. Instead, we were given a quick presentation on the CoD Elite service that was going to be implemented for MW3, which featured it's in depth stat tracking and connectivity features. As a whole, the presentation wasd pretty interesting, but it was nice to finally see some gameplay right at the end.

We were shown the dying minutes of a "Kill Confirmed" match, on the map Village (Or so I'm led to believe). Players have to pick up a fallen foe's dogtags to score points for their team. Kills are no longer enough in this game mode. If this demo is any indication of the multiplayer to come, then we have yet another solid multiplayer title to sink our teeth into this coming year.

And just like that, our time was over. We had seen and played alot of really fantastic games, and met alot of colourfully costumed characters. I look forward to it next year, and I hope all of you who couldn't make it enjoyed my little recap. Next week, I review either Batman Arkham City or RAGE. We'll See how far I get in either of them. See you next time!