Eurogamer Expo 2010

So, today marks my last day on annual leave. I can honestly say that I've spent the bulk of my time off doing absolutely nothing. I had planned to either work on some video production (still got my EF video to edit), fully tidy my flat (only partially did this and it needs to be done as I've another flat inspection next week) or do some web dev. However, I mostly had some very lazy days, long lie-ins and much game playing or movie watching. Today was an exception as I went to London for the Eurogamer Expo with arakinuk and lazerus101 :)

The venue had moved to Earl's Court (not the main hall) and as such was a lot larger than last year. However I did kinda feel there were around the same number of games on offer to play. I pretty much played everything I had intended to play other than the Kinect games. They had Kinect Adventures, Kinect Sports, Joy Ride and Dance Central on display, none of which really excited me but it would have been nice to see how the system responds. I can wait to make my decision on Kinect after it's out I imagine.

The full list of games I played are as follows:

• Brink


• Crysis 2


• Fallout: New Vegas


• Hunted: Demon's Forge


• Kirby's Epic Yarn


• Little Big Planet 2


• Marvel Vs Capcom 3


• Motorstorm Apocalypse


• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit


• Saw II


• Vanquish


• and some random Indie Games

I didn't have a go on The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword which was also there as there was a long queue for it due to them only having 2 demo pods behind a veil and to be honest, if you've played one Zelda game, you've played them all. I did however get into the Deus Ex: Human Revolution developer session which to be fair I didn't know much about however I was very impressed with the game. So much that I'm almost definitely going to be putting it on my to buy list.

Of the games I did play, I'm going to be getting the new Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit for sure as Criterion, the people behind Burnout, have taken a tired old franchise and made it fun again. I also want to get Marvel vs Capcom 3 even though fighting games aren't normally my thing. It's just as great as the original game I had on the Dreamcast. Lots of fun and lots of madness! Finally, I'll probably also get Fallout: New Vegas. It's pretty much more of the same as Fallout 3 but in a new location. There's some variations in terms of gameplay but the original was so good, more of the same isn't a bad thing.

There seemed to be a lot of hype surrounding Brink tho I personally didn't know anything about it. Potentially because I mentally kept on confusing it for Braid... So there was a massive queue for Brink and I figured I should see what the hype's all about and joined it. The queue moved painfully slowly as they were taking on 2 groups of 8 at a time as it was a multiplayer demo. When I got to play the game, it felt like a team based FPS in the Borderlands world (just without the stylised visuals). I'm not convinced on it yet as I found it remarkably easy to die. I'm sure there's a knack to it that I wasn't able to pick up in the 15min demo I played.

To summarise, it was another fun expo and I'll be sure to do it all again next year :) Was just a shame there weren't more freebies! Get down there if you can, they still have buy on the door afternoon tickets (3pm entry, 7pm close) available and it's on until Sunday.