Early 2017!
Thanks, looking forward to it!
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EGX (Eurogamer Expo) 2016 - Longer Queues Than Disneyworld
- Thread starter Spookie
- Start date
Thanks, looking forward to it!
It was my fourth year and as usual I did a fair amount of queuing! Totally shocked at the complete absence of a MS (and Nintendo) stand, seemed like Sony had gone all out this year judging by the sheer amounts of posters around the place. Got my slot for PSVR on Friday and got to choose Driveclub, really enjoyed it maybe a bit pixelated in places (but I think the headset needed tweaking a little) but really found it immersive. Friend had his slot on Saturday and was treated totally differently, had to queue couldn't pick the game he wanted and got Battlezone which we'd already played (and loved got the headset sorted this time). Luckily he got the bloke I had in the booth the day before who was cool and he got to play something else! Also got to play Tethered which isn't a game I would normally even consider and seriously got hooked! Some of the guys are ex-Evo and we're really into the game and explaining all the facets of it. Played Yooka laylee nice platformer with a sly sense of humor! Not impressed with having to book for Horizon that was just stupid and the queues need to sort them out! Not sure if I'm going next year will have to see if the finances can take it!
Early 2017!
just remember to include my multiplayer snake orgy mode in the season pass
Jacknapes
Member
Few small issues with this years event, they let in Super Pass'rs 20 minutes earlier than the Early Entry ticket holders. Both apparantly have a 10am let you in to the event slot, so by the time a few friends had got in, i was in and had played something.
Otherwise, it was an ok show. Did give Snake Pass a go, that was a lot of fun. Felt familiar, yet new at the same time. It's got my curiosity that's for sure.
Dishonored 2. Had 2 goes on this, 1 on Thursday and one on Saturday (i had a pass from Eurogamer that let me jump the queue for 1 play). I enjoyed the game immensely, went to the developer session on Thursday and enjoyed looking at the art designs for the game.
Overall, Thursday was the better day. Got a lot in that day, including Gears, Titanfall 2, Battlefield 1, Hitman and Rise of the Tomb Raider. Think i did 9 games that day, luckily waited until 4pm or so to go on Battlefield and Titanfall as the queue had gone right down. Queues on this day were really no more than 20-30 minutes due to the lower attendees.
South Park: The Fractured But Whole. Interesting game, more interesting was that Noculus Rift they had. Used my early access on Friday to have a bash, even at 10:05am there was a 1 hour 30 minute queue.
Couldn't get on Horizon: Zero Dawn as i wasn't aware it was pre-booked reservation slots only. Tried each day, by the time i got to try and book a slot, they were gone.
A big highlight was the Little Nightmares booth alone. They had the characters interacting with the audience, including "locking" someone dressed up as a character from COD. The game itself is interesting, something i'll be looking out for in the future.
Had a long chat with one of the developers of The Fall, whom was by part 2.
Queue's as a whole this year, much improved. If you avoided the likes of Call of Duty that is. Even the Gran Turismo queue was moving quick, 35 minutes and i was playing the demo. Longest queue was 1 hr 30 (South Park), shorted was Hitman (5 minutes)
Otherwise, it was an ok show. Did give Snake Pass a go, that was a lot of fun. Felt familiar, yet new at the same time. It's got my curiosity that's for sure.
Dishonored 2. Had 2 goes on this, 1 on Thursday and one on Saturday (i had a pass from Eurogamer that let me jump the queue for 1 play). I enjoyed the game immensely, went to the developer session on Thursday and enjoyed looking at the art designs for the game.
Overall, Thursday was the better day. Got a lot in that day, including Gears, Titanfall 2, Battlefield 1, Hitman and Rise of the Tomb Raider. Think i did 9 games that day, luckily waited until 4pm or so to go on Battlefield and Titanfall as the queue had gone right down. Queues on this day were really no more than 20-30 minutes due to the lower attendees.
South Park: The Fractured But Whole. Interesting game, more interesting was that Noculus Rift they had. Used my early access on Friday to have a bash, even at 10:05am there was a 1 hour 30 minute queue.
Couldn't get on Horizon: Zero Dawn as i wasn't aware it was pre-booked reservation slots only. Tried each day, by the time i got to try and book a slot, they were gone.
A big highlight was the Little Nightmares booth alone. They had the characters interacting with the audience, including "locking" someone dressed up as a character from COD. The game itself is interesting, something i'll be looking out for in the future.
Had a long chat with one of the developers of The Fall, whom was by part 2.
Queue's as a whole this year, much improved. If you avoided the likes of Call of Duty that is. Even the Gran Turismo queue was moving quick, 35 minutes and i was playing the demo. Longest queue was 1 hr 30 (South Park), shorted was Hitman (5 minutes)
Messofanego
Banned
The Fall part 2 Unbound (PC Gamer did a video on the whole demo) - I had NO IDEA this was on the showfloor! I walked past it and thought, hold on is that The Fall? But why are you playing as a robot butler who still serves a house with dead guests? Very Norman Bates. And a mansion setting? But that's the original character from the first game. Then I look up and see that it's part 2. They're doing some quite ambitious stuff. I didn't see any combat, it felt an English mystery thriller but with sci-fi trappings. The dialogue was great and hilarious. The Fall was bloody excellent, so I can't wait for this.
Polyphonia - NFTS joint. First time trying the HTC Vive actually. Was pretty cool to alter these floating spheres in the sky, like twisting them with the left stick to change their shape and right stick to alter their colour. Wasn't much of an objective, just mess around with objects. Asteroids would fly past and you reach out to break them apart. The controllers become drumming sticks that you can use on a bunch of circles that acts as a xylophone, although not quite 1:1 accurate. Still, cool to see indie VR games.
Dead Cells - Wasn't much for this to stand out against so many other metroidvanias, but looked really colourful and played well enough. Although I really hated that the common enemies just jump at you from a distance and if you don't have a shield, you'll get hit as you can't block. Although I just remembered you can roll, so I could give it another go. It had procedural generation, which is seen as a bad word these days, but didn't see that much penalty.
Klang - Yup, I suck at rhythm games! Really good animations, though. A side-scroller where enemies come from various angles and you have to hit in time to deflect them back. Was quite challenging.
Aaliyah - Made by British Asian women. Very much a student game (a NFTS joint) where the art style is amateur with drawings and cut outs but there was a charm to it like the awkward sizes of some characters relative to others. The grounded reality of the game and the art style reminded me of Jack King-Spooner's work (Blues For Mittvandia, Beeswing, Dujanah). You're playing as a British South Asian woman and it's chronicling her life at various points. At one stage, you're working at the supermarket and just scan grocery items but there's a funny glitch where if you keep on clicking on the items, they keep on growing in size and you can overwhelm the screen (the dev knew it was a glitch)
There's stuff about abuse, married life, racial insensitivity, but it's funny on top of all that. I've had a friend who is called Aaliyah, and yeah most people of colour have experienced the name thing where co-workers convert the ethnic name to something more mainstream to easily remember It's mostly dialogue-based, and the item cursor is an apple. Jameela Khan, the dev, explained that there's more to it with different metaphors based around the image above. Had a good chat with her, and we both geeked over A Light In Chorus having both seen it a couple of years ago at EGX Uncanny Valerie - Another NFTS joint. This was easily the funniest game I played at the show! The dialogue is witty, with some pretty good voice acting. You play as a woman who's decided to get a robot servant and has foolishly decided to put the personality of her ex-girlfriend into it. It's a 3D tablet game and you can shift the perspective by flipping around the house to find out where the servant messed up. Finally a game where you have to deal with incompetent robots and how abrasive they can be if they're given a personality heh.
A Light In Chorus (video) - I played this 2 years ago at EGX 2014 and was floored by the dot light installation art style. Now one of the most stunning looking games in the past few years is back. All the devs were there (2 - Eliott and Matt + 1 composer), they recently got funding by UK Games Fund. Now they have focused on a sci-fi theme around Voyager, whilst before it was more of a tech showcase. Even if it's sci-fi, there's plenty of surreal wonder! Underwater turns into a forest or into street lights. There's more of a game now. At one point you're underwater, and you can click on the geysers that form rings. One cool visual moment is when you can make out that you've landed on a planet and dust across the plains is going by, it looks cooler than it sounds in text. You start off in space and go towards a dot that becomes a satellite. The audiovisual presentation is absolutely amazing. You press the Shift button to go into the vision mode and figure out sources of special light to collect to fill out a circle. The Shift transitions are insanely gorgeous, I was just going
They're still working on marketing the game, not much footage out there so I took a bit by myself in the video above.
They're using positional audio, so they can do some pretty cool things. I have been promised that the infamous deer from the previous showing will still be in the final game somewhere
I'm gonna say A Light In Chorus was my game of the show.
Loved your post. Very informative.
I've read great things about the PSVR headset, but I'm still a bit scared. I'm afraid, I'll play with it a couple of days, then let it collect dust, like some older devices(eye toy, and psmove).
Messofanego
Banned
I told them in the feedback, to keep the indies at the front and centre like they did this time. And keep the giveaway and loud stages away from them
I told them in the feedback, to keep the indies at the front and centre like they did this time. And keep the giveaway and loud stages away from them
I said much the same - I complained that the loud Twitch and tourney stages were spaced out so that you had to listen to the shrill youtubers shrieking over each other no matter where you were and that it would be better if they had their own area.
I also complained about all the gaming tat stores taking over & the lack of effort in themed displays (Little Nightmares and the Chocobo Ranch being the obvious exceptions!)
I've been going to EGX since 2010 and I REALLY don't want it to keep going south. Hopefully next year, for EGX X, they'll improve things.
I mean, Nintendo should be back as the NX will be out, Microsoft should be there in a big way with Scorpio either announced properly, or more likely, actually out.
Hopefully they can entice Paradox to support the show in a bigger way, as that would really fill out the PC side of things, and maybe some kind of support from Valve.
Would also have been nice to have more board games there, as it seemed pretty reduced this year.
Triggerhappytel
Member
I'm surprised MS weren't there, considering they've got two or three big games out before Christmas, and this is (to my knowledge?) the only notable games expo in the UK.
The Fall part 2 Unbound (PC Gamer did a video on the whole demo) - I had NO IDEA this was on the showfloor! I walked past it and thought, hold on is that The Fall? But why are you playing as a robot butler who still serves a house with dead guests? Very Norman Bates. And a mansion setting? But that's the original character from the first game. Then I look up and see that it's part 2. They're doing some quite ambitious stuff. I didn't see any combat, it felt an English mystery thriller but with sci-fi trappings. The dialogue was great and hilarious. The Fall was bloody excellent, so I can't wait for this.
I loved the first game, so I'm definitely looking forward to this. Glad to hear they're doing something different with it, although I would have been happy with more of the same as the first game was just enough to keep me wanting more.
Messofanego
Banned
I missed the Little Nightmares booth but it looked awesome from the outside.
The Horizon Zero Dawn pre-booking thing to play the demo was enough to lose interest. At least I got to play one AAA game, Dishonored 2, which was awesome! Couldn't get enough of this ability
I missed the Little Nightmares booth but it looked awesome from the outside.
The Horizon Zero Dawn pre-booking thing to play the demo was enough to lose interest. At least I got to play one AAA game, Dishonored 2, which was awesome! Couldn't get enough of this ability
The situation with PS VR and especially Horizon was inexcusable. Really annoyed me.
I didn't want to queue for Dishonored 2 because I loved the first one so much that I know I'm getting it - I don't need any convincing! Glad to hear you enjoyed it though
I ended up queuing for Titanfall 2, CoD and Battlefield because the friend I went with is a FPS nutter. Surprised by how good Titanfall and CoD were, but I was a bit disappointed with Battlefield - or maybe just disappointed that I'm still no good at it.
Triggerhappytel
Member
Did the system not work well? Pre-booking slots doesn't seem like a bad idea to me - you can do other stuff and just focus on showing up in time for your allocated time.
AHA-Lambda
Member
I can only speak from my experience last year as I didn't attend this year's event, but it was a total shit show back then. Loads of people hated it and I can't believe they brought it back and even doubled down on it by now keeping AAA titles behind it. Bloody awful idea.
Honestly, does any other games convention do this?? I've never heard stories of Gamescom or Pax doing this, and they're bigger than EGX.
Anyway, what happened last year certainly was you had to book online in advance to get hands on with the PSVR and Vive, and even then it was a lottery drawing (I managed to get a PSVR slot but not a Vive slot). If that failed you could go up to the booth and see if they had any free slots or cancellations (which they never did, and I still hold a grudge against the rude arsehole at the HTC booth last year). Also on top of this, was the fact that this booking system was horribly communicated to those attending - I found out about it on gaf, Eurogamer nor EGX had even mentioned this anywhere. It was shameful.
Now from the sounds of this thread (unless I'm missing something), they've done away with the online booking stuff. but now you had to run for the appointment check in desk first thing. This doesn't sound much better though cos even then you'd still need to be one of the first people inside the venue cos there are simply not enough slots available for a hall serving thousands of people.
Rough math from figures earlier in the thread:
The hall is open for 8 hours I believe?
The Horizon demo was a half hour long, so that's 16 bookings per day, and they only take like what was it 16 people per booking?
So that's about 250 people per day that can get to play Horizon out of the multiple thousands attending.
It's a bad system. Any other game you can play as long as you're patient enough. It's even more egregious in my eyes given how there were barely any AAA titles beyond this fall at the show anyway.
I'd have flipped my nut if I was there and saw that Horizon was an appointment only demo given how bad it was last year, and once again EGX's website does not mention that it's by appointment only.
This is a prime example of why (in my eyes and some others I see) this show has really went downhill compared to the previous years when it was in London, the organisation is a mess now and they certainly never used to do this shit.
Out of curiosity, how would this number increase without the bookings? It's still the same number of stations, and same amount of time per demo. Appointment or not, 250 sounds about like the most that are getting in each day.
Messofanego
Banned
Yeah, the worst is it wasn't communicated anywhere that you had to pre-book to play Horizon. The only consolation was that there was B-roll playing on a TV in the Playstation section where you could just sit on the couch and watch an old demo play. Then again, I'm not exactly that hyped for the game, seems pretty familiar other than cool character designs so I wasn't fussed about missing to play it.
AHA-Lambda
Member
Ok, yeah that's fair actually, I can see your point, but why have the stupid appointment system in place then at all?
You're not then artificially limiting the people that can play it to the die hards who manage to get to the front of the queue to the venue each day.
Haha I dunno man, I see implementing a system where I can just stroll up to my appointment 5 minutes beforehand and walk into playing the game as a good thing. I don't exactly cherish the time of wasting two hours in a queue when I could be playing games. It might not be a perfect system, but it makes for a better organized and less cluttered booth.
I think it's only really fair for the massive games, where standing in line all day doesn't necessarily guarantee you access. For the smaller titles, an appointment system would be overkill. but I'm willing to bet that a healthy chunk of the people at EGX would play Horizon if they could, so I don't begrudge them trying to organize it.
AHA-Lambda
Member
But I think you can say that about every AAA game there though, but instead those titles provide loads of stations and just let you queue. Unless you're joining a 3 hour+ queue half way through the day basically anyone who wants to see something can see it as long as they wait. And while it's nice to just stroll up 5 mins before you walk in to play Horizon, you're forgetting the queuing you'll need to do in order to be one of the first at the appointment desk; those slots are gone in rapid time, you basically need to be a die hard queuer in the first place to get into the venue first just to see the game at all.
Again, does any other convention do this? It seems grossly unfair to me; you're basically only letting the first couple hundred people who are first through the door into see the game throughout the whole day.
Plus this appointment system wasn't even mentioned anywhere, what if you were attending the show and Horizon was the game you were most excited to see above all others? It wouldn't necessarily ruin the event for you but it could put a serious downer on it for you because of a bad idea coupled with poor communication.
The big issue is that it wasn't mentioned anywhere and you had to get in first thing and book it.
I arrived just after 11 and it was fully booked, so really it's only early entry people that had a chance to get a booking in, and only those that went straight to the Horizon queue, so if you didn't know about it before, you had no chance.
It just came off as trying to make it seem exclusive and amazing, but all it did was seem really arrogant
It's not a convention thing, it's a Sony thing. I'm sure they did the same thing at Gamescom and PAX for Horizon.
AHA-Lambda
Member
Right ok, wasn't aware of that, thought it was just an EGX thing considering last year it was done for PSVR and Vive.
Still think it's stupid as all hell, as you're just rewarding lucky diehards who paid the same as everyone else.
Messofanego
Banned
Forgot to say, Yooka-Laylee impressed. I had never played the Banjo and Kazooie game, so I have no nostalgia. Love all the advanced moves, like the chameleon's charged tail jump. Responsive controls. Expressive animations. Big world and great draw distance. Fun to glide over the whole place. The only thing is the enemies are pushovers and I didn't find a use for the stomp attack but it's not a big problem for a tutorial-y demo. Definitely will get it when it releases.