K, some impressions on the games and overall show:
First, the organisation this year has been a shit show. I can safely say that I will not be going back next year, as despite enjoying myself with what was there, this has been the worst EGX I've been to. I'll hope to see improvements next year before I go back.
As has been said, organisation was a mess, with too many huge queues for any AAA of note with only some exceptions.
Couple this with:
-Less interesting dev sessions (from what I heard from people only Yoshida's was busy) that couldn't even fill out their own timetable
-Very little presence from 2016 AAA titles (PvZ GW2, Mirror's Edge, Division I think that was it)
-Piss poor planning on some booths part (why on earth did Mirror's Edge have 8 units?! Division had less than 30?)
-VR. Everything about this set up was wrong. Why bother being here if less than 100 people a day, in a venue of thousands, can see your device?
-This is only in hindsight but annoyed that games seemed to be hidden away. I didn't see Cuphead anywhere and it's no on the website or the app!
-With the limited time given all the queuing, I got no chance to even see the indies and only 2 dev talks. Previous years I'd have gotten more done per day than I did here.
-Shocking behaviour from some people as they clamour for free stuff (which has definitely dwindled over the years)
-And a special shout out to the HTC staff for being totally rude dickheads the whole weekend it seemed
Anyway, games/talk impressions:
Homefront 2: wasn't impressed, seems fairly standard open world FPS with Ubisoft design
Just Cause 3: More Just Cause really, not a bad thing.
Assassin's Creed: Syndicate: Liked this more than I thought, but I still recognise this as just Unity 2. I liked the different options given for assassination and infiltration that Unity introduced, but I never played that game.
Game seemed to run ok for me, but man I've not played AC in so long, I forgot how awkward these controls are!
The Division: Weird, it seems like a solid cover based shooter and I had fun playing it, but it was difficult to tell why we were doing what we were doing. I thought extraction was to get our team out safely and win the match but it was just for getting loot out? By the time the demo was over I couldn't honestly tell you how our team did compared to others, did we win?
Also no indication for the game's grander MMO elements.
Star Wars: Battlefront: I did not get to try the 20v20 mode as it was far too busy, I did play the co-op horde mode. Really liked it, weird to see a big game like this in 2015 using pick ups found on the map. You're given an assault rifle that has to cooldown if you overheat it, no ammo clips. Also some extra equipment on a cooldown (jetpack, lock-on rocket launcher and a shield on a timer to give you some respite from the battle) and by the 3rd wave I was just given a thermal grenade that was just a 1 limited use.
Felt a little easy, most enemies died quick enough and they didn't seem very smart, and I think I would have finished it, but my mate kept dying and I accidentally jumped off the cliff miscontrolling my jetpack =/
Rise of the Tomb Raider: Didn't like this, but I wasn't a fan of the 2013 title either. Story was already stupid from the small snippet (No, Lara, don't hide in the place the enemies are definitely going to look!), and I found the pathfinding a little difficult. I don't think this was just me as the guy next to me had trouble also.
Mirror's Edge 2: Probably my favourite game of the show, even if it's just more Mirror's Edge. I do worry about the Ubisoftification of the game now it's went open world though.
PSVR: Really liked what I experienced here but there's not enough to convince me to buy one yet. I was sat down at a random demo, and I was given the London Heist Getaway demo. As a game, it's not very good, but that's not fair, it's only a proof of concept clearly; just an on rails shooter where you couldn't die.
If anything I was more impressed at how PS Move was implemented with the headset, I've never used it before and it's so responsive! I had one for each hand, left for the gun and right to grab ammo and reload the clip into the gun, felt great! The headset itself felt close to my experience with Oculus DK1, immersive and impressive but improvements can clearly be made. The headset didn't fit fully around my head and if I looked down I could see under the screen at the floor, vision was blurry at the edges and graphical fidelity was not a strongpoint of this demo - PS4 graphics these are not. But it seemed to have a high framerate (I felt no motion sickness anyway), and I couldn't notice any obvious pixelation.
The slot was for a half hour but the demo was only 10 minutes and I was off after that =/
Deus Ex Mankind Divided booth: Really liked it, was an expanded look at the E3 demo
Hitman booth: pointless, it's just the walkthrough that's on youtube.
Yoshida talk: Really interesting, can really tell his passion came across! Compared very favourably to the Kojima talk from a few years back where he wasn't very engaging to be frank.
Some great and some really dumb questions afterwards. I'm glad people asked about Wipeout and Sony Bend, but congrats to the Killzone 2 guy for giving me and my mates laughs as the dumbest question we heard all weekend.
Sadly I and others were turned away from the mic, as questions ran over.
Went to the meet and greet after, and got a photo, but you had no opportunity to talk to him, it was all very much get up and go so they could get through the queue.
Eurogamer Podcast: Found it quite funny, and interesting to see their thoughts on this year as a whole; 2015 really has been great.
If anyone was there, I was the guy asking Chriss Bratt about his Videogamer work
