Eurogamer Expo Highlights - The Rest

So it has been a while since my last update, and while I have some rather major news to share, I promised to finish my coverage of the Eurogamer expo first so here goes for that; the other article will have to wait a little longer.

While for me the biggest hit of the Eurogamer expo were the people I met, there were of course the games too! The variety of electronic entertainment on hand was startling, and I have to say I love the policy of Eurogamer where a studio may only showcase their product if customers can actually play it, an important distinction over simply showing off a cinematic trailer or worse just a concept. The games then, were for most of the attendees the most important element, and there was certainly no lack of choice of what to try, though some were near impossible to play because of the outstanding queues leading up to them. Thankfully, I tried most of the games I was interested in early on, knowing from Rezzed that it would really get busy over the weekend.

Now, Eurogamer is big, really big and I do not have the space here to comment on each and every game, so instead I will bring up what were for me, the three highlights. Being primarily a PC gamer, I will concentrate mostly on those and it is here that we start with Company of Heroes II. Ever since it was announced that it was in development, I have been looking forward to having the chance to give it a go, and I was pleased to see it amply represented at Eurogamer. Thankfully it lived up to expectations; a definite sequel to the first (great) game, with upgrades such as the impact of the weather which had such a great impact to the Eastern Front. I even got a T-shirt out of it, though I am not sure just how my American father likes me wandering around with a hammer and sickle on my shirt! Still it is worth remembering that this game seeks to commemorate the many men and women who gave their lives on these far less appreciated battlefields, regardless of ideology.

I think this is actually one of the most important aspects to many of the games that I enjoy; that they are not simply a mindless action-fest (though those are fun), but rather they strive for something deeper. Some try to instil a sense of leadership or provide soft skills such as in Football Manager, while others give a historic overview. My current love of history was not brought through reeling off dates in dry history lessons, but through the little clips that really made Age of Empires alive, or the snippets of colonial background offered in Colonisation. That said, I am well aware that history is often added after the core game play, Sid Meier (Civilisation / Colonisation / Pirates) famously stated that they wrote implemented the history that fit the setting. As such I am not asking games to become the new educational tool, but instead that they can make the user interested enough in a subject to delve more into it themselves. Europa Universalis covers the Reformation very well for instance, and since then I have begun to read up about it because it was an interesting period of history which is only touched on (if at all) in schools.

Next up was Farcry III, which I had high hopes for having been an avid fan of both the previous titles. I am pleased that it is taking a similar route as Farcry 2, with a large open map that basically invites you to just come in and play. There is some deeper gameplay to it, for instance collecting items and craftables, plus fighting the hostile bandit faction to clear bases for friendly native fighters to move in. I don’t yet know much about how all this works together (I spent far too much time just crashing cars into trees, running from tigers and paragliding around the island), but I have a feeling that it will deliver something special.

Finally was a game which surprised me; Assassins Creed. I’ve spent a little time on the very first game, but not enough to call myself properly attached or even a fan but what I saw of Assassins Creed III was really very cool. Now, it has to be said I have a soft spot for the Colonial era which the game is set in, however it was the detail which went into the demo that I especially appreciated. Basically it was showing off the naval combat element (I know, naval combat in a stealth assassination game! Firing a broadside is hardly the epitome of sneakiness!) but what I saw looked like really good fun. Starting out, you hug the coast in the bright sunshine of the Caribbean, but as you venture out to sea the storm clouds come in as fast as the enemy warships. Now normally this would sound extremely cliché, but actually they pulled the transition off really nicely so that you probably wouldn’t even notice until you lobbed a volley of chain shot into the increasingly sizable waves instead of your enemies’ hull.

The last (but by no means least) paragraph goes for a very honourable mention to the Indie Games Meetup organised by Zero Dependency and others. This was an event for small developers like myself to essentially get together and swap stories, and meet with other people including industry professionals and journalists. It was a really cool experience actually, being able to speak about things that we are passionate about with others who share the same interests. At this event we were allowed to bring along laptops / tablets, etc in order to showcase what we were working on, and Vinland received quite a bit of interest, and I actually ran out of fliers to give to people. 

Image courtesy of; http://www.eurogamer.net/expo/