Hoping everyone enjoyed EGX 2015 this year.
My second time attending following on from last year and overall I have to say it was a much more enjoyable experience than it was going to London and Earls Court last year, hoping it is held here going forwards.
In terms of the event being held in Birmingham, I much preferred it. Not a huge fan of London and found it rather unfriendly and very overpriced. Birmingham was just as easy to travel to and we stayed on Broad Street which had a massive choice of hotels, places to eat and pubs/bars to go to all of which were pretty reasonable price wise. The Rugby World Cup being on meant it was nice and lively too with plenty of different people to talk to over a beer.
Obviously the NEC is out of the city but New Street train station was a ten minute walk and there were regular trains to get there; a lot cheaper than travelling on the tube in London too. Obviously with it being at the NEC travelling by car was a good option for lots of people and there was plenty of parking. £12.00 a day to park but it's cheaper than a lot of city parking and if you are car pooling not much at all.
I found the event overall to be a lot better organised than at Earls Court; queuing to get in was much better (and inside instead of out in a car park) and when the doors opened we got in pretty much straight away instead of having to go through 3 different queues like last time.
The NEC facilities were also a lot better, plenty of places to get food and drinks, bathrooms etc and I didn't think the prices were too bad although we did think ahead a bit and went to Morrison's or Sainsbury's on the morning and grabbed a few things to take along.
We went on Friday and Saturday this time round and I didn't find Friday too bad in terms of queues but Saturday was lot busier what with kids being off school etc. I'll definitely be going on Thursday and Friday next year, a lot of people I spoke to had gone on Thursday and got in to see the most popular stuff, The Division, Star Wars etc pretty quickly on Thursday morning.
We did the same thing and got round the stuff we thought would be busiest first thing Friday, excluding The Division, which was a 4 hour queue and we just skipped. My friend insisted on queuing to see the MP Star Wars stuff on Saturday and spent 4 1/2 hours waiting but to be honest it's not something I'm interest in buying so I left him to it and went off to see the other things I fancied.
It wasn't all positive though and there were a couple of negatives
- I found the way they had organised the VR stuff i.e. by appointment, was pretty disappointing, I didn't see any mention of it until we arrived at the booths, didn't get any emails about it and didn't see it mentioned on Twitter. Might have missed it of course or maybe I should have checked GAF beforehand. My friend did manage to play the Playstation VR after someone hadn't turned up but he thought it was like a bad version of the Occulus Rift we tried last year. All in all I'm not really fussed about any of them, I tried EVE Valkyrie last year and it was pretty good but yet to see anything from any of them (Occulus, HTC, Morpheus) which screams must buy. Kind of hard to raise awareness about your products when only a few dozen out of thousands at an event get to see them, no screens to watch people playing them either.
- The Developer Sessions weren't as good as last year but that was probably because there wasn't anything on from anyone I was interested in seeing so that's half the battle.
- As I mentioned previously queues for some of the AAA titles were too long with no cards up saying an expected wait time, The Division, Star Wars, AC Syndicate, Halo etc. I think in a large part this was down to the developers not bringing enough units with them so that's down to them I guess. The longest queue I was in was about an hour for Tomb Raider and out of all the stuff I wanted to see there was only the The Division which I didn't.
I did manage to get round all of the following though
Star Wars Battlefront (30 minute queue) - Played the co-op wave based mode and it was alright, looked ok but feels like a dumbed down version of BF4 and I don't have any faith in DICE delivering a stable online experience so it's not something I'll be picking up.
Homefront (40 minute queue) - Looked like an Alpha build running on Xbox 360 but was still pretty impressed with it. There were a couple of bugs, again Alpha, but the gunplay was nice and solid, gadgets and crafting was pretty cool and the open map seems interesting, I'll be keeping an eye on it.
Warhammer Total War (5 minute queue) - Only the Battle Map was playable rather than the Strategy Map too but looks good. Think they've done a good job recreating the units from the universe, played nice and smoothly and again another one I'll be keeping an eye on.
Rise of the Tomb Raider (70 minute queue) - Looks like a good follow on from last years game which I really enjoyed. Graphics were nice, controlled well and puzzles were pretty good. Will be looking at getting it when it comes out on PC.
Deus Ex (10 minute queue) - Demonstration video from Square Enix with one of their team talking through the video. Again an alpha build but looks like something else I will be picking up. 100% passive game play is possible and there seems to be plenty of new abilities and ways to play with an interesting story.
Hitman (15 minute queue) - Again bit a of a demo video much like Deus Ex so another one I might look at getting.
Rainbow Six Siege (40 minute queue) - Don't think this will be pulling up any trees when it comes to CS GO etc but enjoyed playing it. Plenty of scope for teamwork, tactical gameplay and the shooting through all the cover adds a nice element. They had some teams playing competitions live with a casting team for the queue to watch which I thought was a good idea and would have liked some of the other games to do the same.
Also managed to get round all the stuff on the Indy Booths and Leftfield collections.
Warhammer Vermintide - Really enjoyed playing this and probably the best thing I played. Like Left for Dead but focussed on smashing Skaven in the head with a hammer rather than guns. Co-Op game and the beta is on at the moment.
Riot Civil Unrest - Think this uses a similar engine to Project Zomboid but looks like it could be a fun little game to pick up and go back to. You control a team of Police and deploy them to break up riots, clues in the title really.
Eden Star - Kinda like futuristic Minecraft in full 3D and first person. You use an gravity glove to strip resources from rocks, trees etc and then craft items, bases, weapons. Day Night cycle where it's pretty safe to explore during the day and hostile creatures make things more difficult at night. You can use the glove as a weapon too and throwing creatures into the sky to fall to their death didn't really get old.
Red Solstice - Top down RTS similar to how Baldur's Gate would look but set on Mars with a team of soldiers fighting aliens. There was a tactical mode to slow down time and deploy your team with levelling up to unlock abilities, weapons etc.
Also got round all the merchandise stands which were similar to last year, good selection of stuff and the prices weren't too bad. Nvidia, Asus and some of the uk computer shops all had stands with discounts and you were able to order stuff for delivery.
Careers fair was interesting too. Talked to a couple of universities and staff from Creative Assembly who all seemed really nice.
Seemed like there was a lot more cosplay this time round too including one guy wearing life size Space Marine Power Armour which looked ridiculous.
All in all enjoyed it more than I did last year and will definitely be going again, especially if it isn't in London.