Eurogamer Expo 2012

Eurogamer Expo will soon be upon us (as of writing this less than 20 hours to go). I will be attending tomorrow and hope to take a bunch of photos and video.

Anyone from GB looking to go? I was hoping to go on Saturday but I completely forgot about the event and all the tickets were sold out.

Only a few tickets are left for either tomorrow or Friday after noon: http://www.eurogamer.net/expo/tickets

A list of games is also available here as well as info on developer talks (which will also be available online) and Gamesindustry Fair: http://www.eurogamer.net/expo/whats-on

UPDATE: Pictures are now available here: http://sdrv.ms/Q5wza8 They're not particularly great. Lighting was fairly shit and I'm not one for using a flash.

If you're going at some point over the next few days I advise lining up early for ZombiU (took me an hour at 5PM and was one of the last let through), Revengance, and BlOps 2.
 
mod edit:

GiantBomb Eurogamer Expo 2012 Meet Up!

Me [ Matt] and @Sweep will probably end up in a pub anyway so let's make a event out of it! Having done some pub-recon today I suggest we congregate at The Blackbird after the show has ended and chat it up. I know this is a bit last minute but it will be good times!

I'm there Saturday. Press pass, bitches!

@GunslingerPanda: Darn you. I will def have to go to that Kojima thing now just to spite you unless you don't like him or something :P

Hmmm, tempted to go Friday as well. There looks like there's so much stuff that I might not even be able to see in a single day.

Do you have to bring you own track suit pants or will you be provided some at the gate?

Got a ticket for tomorrow and will be at the Kojima talk, really looking forward to it! I wonder if he will just show off stuff from TGS and the Ground Zeroes reveal or if we'll get something new.

I'm going! Fri, Sat and Sunday. Went last year and it was FUCKING RAD. Well looking forward to checking out Dishonoured, Sim City and... shit loads of others.

I might also have a Fri, a Sat and a Sun ticket for sale if anyone's interested? One ticket for each day (except Thursday).

@mrcraggle said:

@GunslingerPanda: Darn you. I will def have to go to that Kojima thing now just to spite you unless you don't like him or something :P

Hmmm, tempted to go Friday as well. There looks like there's so much stuff that I might not even be able to see in a single day.

Actually I'm in the reverse situation to you: I really wanted to go to the Kojima thing but they didn't have any tickets left :(

I'll be there tomorrow.

I have a press pass for tomorrow and Friday, but thanks to a seminar I can't go on Fri. Totally excited about Kojima though, hoping to bump into him at some point and get Subsistence signed.

Going sunday too with my girlfriend (who is actually interested in games), though I haven't told her that yet, so hopefully she won't read this!

Regardless, I will be representing with a GB shirt of some kind, or maybe the Tested blockheads tee, so come and say hi if you see me!

@liquidmatt: I too will be repping in my GB Lincoln Force shirt.

For anyone that went last year, how was it in terms of crowds and moving around?

@mrcraggle said:

@liquidmatt: I too will be repping in my GB Lincoln Force shirt.

For anyone that went last year, how was it in terms of crowds and moving around?

Crowds were fine last year. The only thing's that we really queued for were Skyrim, Arkham City and Battlefield 3 multiplayer. There were MASSIVE queues for The Old Republic too, but we didn't bother. Everything else was really civilised, you'd just wait behind everyone and jump onto a controller when one was free. I imagine the Wii U booth will be heavy with queues (the Vita one was last year). I guess they'll be giving demos with a person helping you instead of just leaving you to it.

EDIT - Oh, and moving around was no problem. It's a massive space and the amount of people there doesn't fill it. It's nothing like the ComicCon/PAX horror stories you here. It's really civilised and easy.

@bibamatt said:

@mrcraggle said:

@liquidmatt: I too will be repping in my GB Lincoln Force shirt.

For anyone that went last year, how was it in terms of crowds and moving around?

Crowds were fine last year. The only thing's that we really queued for were Skyrim, Arkham City and Battlefield 3 multiplayer. There were MASSIVE queues for The Old Republic too, but we didn't bother. Everything else was really civilised, you'd just wait behind everyone and jump onto a controller when one was free. I imagine the Wii U booth will be heavy with queues (the Vita one was last year). I guess they'll be giving demos with a person helping you instead of just leaving you to it.

EDIT - Oh, and moving around was no problem. It's a massive space and the amount of people there doesn't fill it. It's nothing like the ComicCon/PAX horror stories you here. It's really civilised and easy.

Thanks for letting me know. Looking forward to it. I'll probably just put my photos up on my Skydrive account for people to see and any vids I take will go up on Youtube. Only problem is that I don't have an external mic for my camera and the on camera mic is pretty rubbish and only records in mono.

Well it was absolutely horrible. Had to queue (45 mins) to get in and then queue (15 mins) to get a wrist band. Then had to queue (5 mins) to get into the over 18 section and had to queue (25 mins) to play on a game. Then had to queue (20 mins) to get into Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear 25th anniversary presentation but turned out we were led to a waiting area where we had to queue (1 hour 5 minutes) to get into the presentation. The presentation was an hour of Kojima answering lame ass questions pre-submitted by some shit blog/website and a showing of the ground zeroes trailer we all saw weeks ago. Very very disappointed.

Also; why were there girls walking around in skimpy bikini type things? Never got the point of booth babes.

And it also turns out I fucking hate nerds.

Got out of there asap and went to a bar and got wasted. Utter shit and really gutted about the whole experience.

Had fun, played pretty much everything without having to Q once.

@Wong_Fei_Hung: Glad you had a good experience! Me and my friend were so hacked off. Did you go later in the day? We were there from around 11:15 and we literally could not get on any game the whole time we were on the show floor!!!!

@Sarge506 said:

@Wong_Fei_Hung: Glad you had a good experience! Me and my friend were so hacked off. Did you go later in the day? We were there from around 11:15 and we literally could not get on any game the whole time we were on the show floor!!!!

No, I was 11 - 7. We had no problem getting in or playing games, in fact we got our red bands while waiting in the Q outside, some people were going around scanning barcodes. I had played everything I wanted to by 6pm.

@Sarge506 said:

Well it was absolutely horrible. Had to queue (45 mins) to get in and then queue (15 mins) to get a wrist band. Then had to queue (5 mins) to get into the over 18 section and had to queue (25 mins) to play on a game. Then had to queue (20 mins) to get into Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear 25th anniversary presentation but turned out we were led to a waiting area where we had to queue (1 hour 5 minutes) to get into the presentation. The presentation was an hour of Kojima answering lame ass questions pre-submitted by some shit blog/website and a showing of the ground zeroes trailer we all saw weeks ago. Very very disappointed.

Also; why were there girls walking around in skimpy bikini type things? Never got the point of booth babes.

And it also turns out I fucking hate nerds.

Got out of there asap and went to a bar and got wasted. Utter shit and really gutted about the whole experience.

Oh man, sounds like you had a pretty bad experience. My ticket was from 2 - 7 and I had no problems getting in or going through through 18+. I didn't actually end up playing any games as I'm going again on Sat thanks to bibamatt so I thought I'd just spend today looking around, taking photos and video. I don't get the women not wearing much at all with QR codes on their butts which means you'd have to stop them and scan it which is just plain creepy. I'm gonna compile my thoughts and update again soon.

As press and a first timer with a fellow press friend, was pretty decent.

Took an hour queuing to get in, stood behind a load of weed-smoking guys who were discussing how awesome Black Ops II was going to be, which was kinda lame.

But once we were in, bolted to the MGS Rising demo and whizzed through it with my worries dismissed, and was rewarded with a kinda cool hologrammy poster. Also the queue then grew massively which was nice to avoid.

Spent the next few hours bobbing between games that I wasn't definitely going to buy (although played Hitman to get a bobblehead, and was totally sold on Absolution).

As press, interviewed a few small time developers which was real good fun as amateur writers who had never interviewed anyone before.

Happened to mention we were interviewing somebody to the Air Buccaneers guy when he asked why we were leaving after such a short time, which lead him to then give us both a free copy of the game, which my five minutes with were pretty fun - although I blew up my own teammate figuring out the controls.

Farcry 3, having hated Farcry 2, looked kinda cool when my Farcry-loving friend played through it, though the guy obviously trying to advertise the game going 'the graphics are FUCKING SICK BRO' was a bit off putting. Tomb Raider, as someone who isn't too fussed, was cool, but reminded me ironically of Uncharted. Were the originals so similar?

Gutted to miss Kojima as we arrived half an hour before but found that it was already filled, but we did catch the Day Z guy who was really interesting, and has convinced me to go back to Day Z after I sucked hard at it during the months I played.

Overall, had good fun, which was largely due to having a whale of a time interviewing people with press passes.

It also reminded me how much I hate 1) People who go around like 'BLACK OPS IS SO BRO, BRO' and 'EXPLOSIONS ARE SICK' etc. 2) The women used to advertise games, who are aimed at the worst stereotypes of game-playing males 3) Really obsessive game-playing guys (some may say, hardcore nerds) who refuse to get off games and play the demo multiple times while everyone else waits.

Also why are the seats so close to the TV sets? The graphics look like shit no matter how good the game if you're only a few inches away, and my retinas began to sting after the first few games.

Man, this post is long.

@liquidmatt: Not too long at all, really informative. How did you find the experience for your first time pressing?

Some of the stuff I found to be a bit pandering to gamers. Women not wearing much because hey nerds don't get this close to attractive women in real life situations. Gamers and anime fans are the same venn diagram as those who love Fire Pro Wrestling and avatars. Cosplayerz.

@mrcraggle: I enjoyed the press side much more than the 'oh hey look games' side that was going on. But to be totally honest I hate the stereotyped Big-Bang-Theory-popularised view of gamers as over-excitable children who whoop at violence and sex, and I saw a lot of that in the queues as I was waiting. Also the e-sports section with the commentator and thumping dance music reminded me exactly why I dislike nearly all e-sports.

There was certainly a lot of pandering to gamers. As you said, the half-dressed girls in bikinis posing with sweating men clutching Crysis T-shirts was more creepy and sad more than anything. I don't know whether big events like this will ever escape the shadow of generalisation, and going by a lot of the crowd, it's very disheartening to see that most people just embrace it like it's not at all embarrassing to be dressed in a pseudo-dominatrix leather costume to advertise Carmaggedeon.

TL;DR; I have opinions, a lot of opinions.

@liquidmatt: I think the expo weirdly really brought out my cynical side that deep down, I hate a lot of this shit that you spoke off. I agree there was a certain BBT to it all (and I hate that show yet people don't get why). I was more dishearted going around and being so uninterested in so many of these major games most of which were shooters. I really like watching things like EVO and playing fighting games from time to time but I hated it at Eurogamer. It was completely overbearing and a complete disservice to Ni No Kuni which was lumped opposite Tekken and that game is gorgeous. Would've been much better placed next to Unfinished Swan.

@mrcraggle: I am generally extremely cynical, but I have to admit for as much as I loved a lot of it, there was a lot of shit. The shooters (dismissing games involving shooting such as Hitman etc.) were standard affair in their sameyness, though the Black Ops II area full of shouting wankers was particularly irritating. Fighting game streams have interested me in the past but the commentator as far as I could hear was just yelling things like 'OOOOOOH WHAT A KICK' seemingly for the purpose of giving the audience something to cheer at other than decent gameplay.

I agree with Ni No Kuni, it took me forever to find but once I found it I was so glad I got to play it, I was totally sold. Also thought it was a shame that The Walking Dead 'area' was two machines in a generic Xbox stand, next to four-six rows of Halo 4. Really summed up the state of games, I guess.

And I suppose the biggest crime was that in the Metal Gear 25th Anniversary Zone near the Retro Arcade, they had the original Metal Gear, but no Metal Gear 2 and instead had the non-canon Snake's Revenge. That is true heresy!

I was there today and will be there for the next 3. Really great seeing some users and overall the convention was pretty solid. Came away feeling VERY jazzed about Metal Gear Rising and was also rather surprised by how much fun I had with Playstation: All Stars and Rayman Legends on Wii U.

Oh and I liked Tokyo Jungle way waaaay more than I expected, which is to say I thought I would like it for the novelty but I actually really liked it. I want to seriously play that at some point. I also got 17,000+ on my second run (picture on my Twitter as I am on my phone) which I challenge ya'll to try and best! Hope to see some more duders tomorrow and let's all try and meet up and pub it on Saturday.

Ok here's my impressions, I first needed to go through my pics as it's kind of a blur in places(keep in mind, these are all hands off impressions):

I arrived at just after 2pm and easily walked in and collected my wrist band and then was asked about my headphones from someone working there. I actually said I was happy with them but I'm interested in those new Sony Pulse headphones to which she said she hated everything Sony :P

I started out by just by wandering around the hall to see what there was and quickly found myself watching people dancing in the Kinect/dance area so I just started filming this guy dressed up as Ezio dancing away to Rock Lobster I believe was playing. From there I continued to film more people looking like idiots in some form playing Kinect.

After walking away from that area I walked into the Sony section where I ended up finding the game that topped all other games: TOKYO JUNGLE. This game has fucking poms in it, instasold although from my previous track record with things involving poms, it will more than likely disappoint. I actually quite liked the Sony booth. It felt very well organised and I liked being bathed in the blue lights. Nearby was also Unfinished Swan which actually looks really cool. I've heard it being spoken about on the Bombcast but it really took me to see it, to really get it. I also checked out the new PS3 which is pretty ugly compared to the Slim but it's so small although probably still being than the Wii U but more on that later.

I was checking out MoH and wanted to take a pic of the set up with the background and the screens but then I was approached and was told no pictures as it was an unreleased game (yes so were most of the games there yet no one else said a thing) but when he walked away, I took some anyway but the game looks pretty bad from a graphical standpoint but to be expected with Frostbite 2 on consoles. I was really excited to see the new Sims but it just demos so fucking badly. No one had any idea what they were doing. I saw one player just making roads that looped into other roads. I found that a bit of a problem with a few games that don't really demo well such as Hitman (lots of people just running around shooting) and Dishonored where a lot of players seemed puzzle by some of the mechanics and would just brute force their way through the demo.

One game I didn't really have much interest in and have actually ignored is XCOM: Enemy Unknown but I was really impressed by what they showed and even some of the extra effort they put in. There were a few custom built controllers that looked like sit down arcade cabinets with joysticks and special buttons. The gameplay looked really interesting and will definitely seek out to play it when I return on Saturday.

The 18+ section should be renamed to queues because that's all I saw and I had no idea what most of them were for at first until I realised people were just straight up pumped for Revengance. This section was pretty much the big AAA games that were coming out this year with the likes of Far Cry 3, Gears of War, Aliens, Assassin's Creed III, BlOps 2 and a bunch of other stuff. The line for BlOps 2 was crazy. At one point it was outside the section just to get in and play the same game yet there's a video playing outside where the devs are harping on about how different it is then contradicting that saying players love Zombies mode. I will admit though that there was very cool looking set up where all of these screens were in a large circle to look like a warroom.

I did circle the hall a number of times and some of the more impressive stuff came from the far back left corner so if you're planning to visit, check it out. There were some really interesting games such as Strike Suit Zero, Prison Architect and a few others but their names escape me. Check out the indie booth too that's also nearby. There was a game there that had a really cool art style, similar to that of the Mad Men intro where your character had to jump and avoid lasers and trap doors.

The last thing I went to check out was ZombiU which at first, I had no idea I was queuing for :S I spent an hour waiting only to not really be told what the controls were, the screen was overly dark and died in a couple of minutes (I think it took longer to load than I played) and then after I died I was told to move on. While waiting in line though I did get to meet fellow GB member Matt (Pascual) which was cool to meet someone from GB that I've actually spoken to and I'm looking forward to meeting more on Saturday.

Here is a link to the photos I took today but I'm going to edit my videos into a little highlight reel after Saturday: http://sdrv.ms/Q5wza8

I couldn't do two days straight, one was ample for me.

@Wong_Fei_Hung: When I was speaking with Matt he said he was going to be there for 4 days which I def couldn't do. I felt a little bored at times but I'm interested in going again and getting some hands on time.

DAMNIT! Why do I always forget about these things. ='[ I don't suppose there is anything else like this happening this year worth going to?

@mrcraggle:

Honestly, the very thought of having to go for that long scares me, I would find that almost torturous. I love all game genres, but there's no way in hell I could imagine doing that. I got my fill by playing all the games I wanted to play, and getting a load of info from reps, when games new to me took my eye.

Going to be going on Sunday, had a good time last year, although I spent a lot of time in the retro zone as there wasn't really much I wanted to play.

Hoping this time will be different, more games that I actually want to try, Dishonoured, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Dust 514, Forza Horizon, Grid 2, Metal Gear Rising, Natural Selection 2, Rocksmith, The Cave, Tokyo Jungle, and of course the WiiU. Going to try and make sure that I actually play these games before I get lost in the retro zone again.

Anyone know if the Oculus Rift is going to be there with Doom 3 BFG?

@Wong_Fei_Hung: If I go again I might leave it until a bit later in the day perhaps! I dread to think what it must be like on Saturdays when school's out!

@mrcraggle: Yeah, it was a bit creepy. My buddy was convinved they were strippers..!

As I was walking around, I saw this green screen set up so please feel free to edit it :P

I was going to make a new thread for this but here seems like a good place.

GiantBomb Eurogamer Expo 2012 Meet Up!

Me and @Sweep will probably end up in a pub anyway so let's make a event out of it! Having done some pub-recon today I suggest we congregate at The Blackbird after the show has ended and chat it up. I know this is a bit last minute but it will be good times!

@Matt: Maybe Sweeps or one of the mods can edit this thread the reflect your post.

I will be there tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing all you GB users (and hopefully some great games too).

Just got back from going today. (:

It was fun, I played pretty much all the games, Dishonored and Far Cry 3 really stood out.

I didn't get to play Black Ops 2, one of the main reasons I went, but I went to the conference thingy mabob and shouted things at David Vonderhaar, shook hands with Syndicate but he released the grip before I could strike him, and got checked for ID about 50 times.

EDIT: I also did star jumps behind a gamespot reporter lady, thinking "YEAH, GIANTBOMB BITCHES" I then realised this wasn't the way a duder should act played some crazy good prison builder thing. It was just being silly but I felt really bad about it, I keep getting all sad these days.

FUCK YEAH GIANT BOMB MEETUP EUROGAMER 2012 LET'S FUCKING DO THIS

I will be the one turning up at about 3 in the afternoon. Hungover.

Also, this is being stickied, because fuck you.

I will be on twitter if anyone wants to come drink with us give me a shout: @want2BinsideU

Just got home. Was Dishonoured just not there? Couldn't find it at all, and I walked around the damn place like twice.

Star of the Show: XCOM. Geezusfucknutssogood

Oh, who was the duder in the OG rollercoaster Whiskey Media t shirt. Saw you while I was queueing for Revengeance. There was some annoying twat behind me who wouldn't shut up, so seeing you cheered me up!

@GunslingerPanda said:

Just got home. Was Dishonoured just not there? Couldn't find it at all, and I walked around the damn place like twice.

Star of the Show: XCOM. Geezusfucknutssogood

Oh, who was the duder in the OG rollercoaster Whiskey Media t shirt. Saw you while I was queueing for Revengeance. There was some annoying twat behind me who wouldn't shut up, so seeing you cheered me up!

You couldn't miss it, unless you didn't enter the Over 18 section. It was on the widest aisle.

I only got home at 10 thanks to crappy public transport. I didn't even go to the meet up (was there one? Couldn't find anyone at the pub)

Actually got to play a few games today starting with Metal Gear Rising. A very interesting game. I was pretty terrible at it but once I got the hang of it I really got into it and found it very enjoyable but not good enough to get 1 of those 3D posters. I just couldn't get my head around parry as it is also your main attack but you're forced to get good at it if you want to complete that segment and continue where you fight the tiger-cat thing with the chain saw table. In the segment before I found just unfairly brutal at time. I got hit by 2 rockets which stacked damage then stepped on by those leg robot things. I like Platinum Games but this game is probably lost on me. I only played some of Metal Gear Solid 1 and 4 so I have no idea what any of this stuff is.

I got to play a bunch of Tokyo Jungle and that game is just straight up awesome. I managed to make my way to level 14 before dying at the claws of a lion but I only died due to my own cockiness. It barely had any health left but then it hit me super hard when I thought I had it on the ropes. Quite a few people were gathered around and oddly intrigued and confused by what they were seeing.

The rest of my day comprised of trying to play as many games as possible but the biggest waste of fucking time hands down goes to Tomb Raider. It's a demo that mostly plays itself and doesn't last very long at that if you skip the cutscenes like I did. I even got Lara to do the Jesus pose and to Tebow. I did pretty poorly at both Dishonored and Hitman so it's really hard to say anything about those games other than one of the people working there told me that the build was really old at this point (looked like the E3 demo to me) and that the PC version was very sharp. The game really gives me a Bioshock vibe, maybe too much. Hitman I tried to play legit but with people watching over my shoulder and with all of the noise, I didn't feel like I could really play the game how I would by scoping the area out for awhile then striking and making it so that no one saw. I also read the button prompts wrong a couple of times so instead of stunning, I ended up killing people. I also checked out DMC which I thought was actually pretty cool. The controls need some tighten up but it's much more fluid than the fighting of Enslaved. The art style is really nice (reminds me a bit of Alice) and I like the idea of this shape shifting world trying to kill you.

One of the weirdest games at the show to me was oddly enough, Lost Planet 3. If anyone here had played the first 2, this is something completely different and I had no idea what they're going for. After seeing that Dead Space 3 now has an icey planet, this seems extra weird as it does seem to be aping this most creepy atmosphere in part of the demo where you walk through an empty area that has these face hugger like enemies. There are also first person mech sections now and it feels very clunky and slow but whether or not this will change later in the game I'm unsure of but the demo was crazy long which I guess is a good thing. I actually liked the original game for just being the way it was but now it's something completely different and lacking in personality and its own identity as it seems like a mismash of Red Faction:Guerrilla, Dead Space, Gears of War(character design) and some mech game.

Probably the highlight of my day was getting too involved with Need 4 Speed. There was a competition of sorts going on similar to Top Gear where there was a board and you had to beat the race in a certain time with the highest being just over 52 seconds and I made it into 7th place for the day with a time of just over 54 seconds. Was extremely close as there were around 4 guys all competing with each other and were there doing this practically all day (I was there for maybe an hour swapping out every few races).

@mrcraggle: @GunslingerPanda: @Taborlin: @mracoon: @Matt: @Sarge506: @Geurge: @rmanthorp:

Official EuroGamer Expo 2012 Survey

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=jVQzwTq9erohBA7DBIB1Og_3d_3d

@Wong_Fei_Hung: Already had one from them in my email. Nothing quite as British as filling out a form!

I went on Thursday. Played a few games, not much though since the queues were horrendous. Got an early access pass to the Company of Heroes 2 beta, that was pretty sweet. Highlight of the show for me was going to the Total War: Rome II Developer Session because holyfuckshitgoodgod that game looks MAGNIFICENT. It's really quite phenomenal, and the crazy thing is they still have about a year of development left.

@Wong_Fei_Hung: Cheers duder but I got an email with the survey the other day and I got another email today with a code for 30 days of PS+ which was pretty sweet.