Seniath’s Blog

Late Entry is Late

October 3, 2008 at 1:03 pm (Gaming, IRL)

As previously mentioned, yesterday on Saturday I went down to Coventry to the PC Gamer Showdown to play some new games and meet some new people. And while there was less of the former than was expected, I still had a great time. This was the first time I’d met anyone off the internets, and it wasn’t at all unnerving. Though I guess it helps that I’ve actually spoken to these guys before (via the medium of Xbox Live), so I already had an idea of what to expect.

On the surface, the event itself was a little underwhelming; While Left4Dead & Far Cry 2 where playable, Dawn of War 2 was awol, and Dead Space & Mirror’s Edge were there in console form. However, to play some new games wasn’t the reason I went. It was more just for the experience, and what an experience was had. First though, the games.

I found Left4Dead enjoyable, but I’m still not excited about it. I only got to sample the first stage of No Mercy (twice), which is rather short and devoid of tough bosses. It was still good fun, and will be even more so in a more apt environment (i.e. with proper communication and  persistance). Watching it in play whilst queuing, it’s clear to see the Director AI at work; the sequences of frantic action intersperced with timely (and just as tense) lulls. But don’t pay much attention to me, Steve has written a much more indepth write up over on his blog.

Far Cry 2 was pretty and clever, but rather brown. Plus it was running on frankly demonic machines (no natural PC could pump out so much power), so I can only imagine how pathetic it’d look on my archaic rig. I guess I’ll pick it up when I’m in need of a very good single-player FPS. However, I can live without one at the moment.

As for Dead Space.. well. Yes. It was good. All my hopes have been justified, and frankly I’m now more excited than I was before I’d played it. I wont say much else here, instead I’ll save it for the review I’ll inevitably write. Only three weeks till it hits the shelves (though, with it being released in the US on the 10th, it’ll probably show up on the tubes soon enough).

Elsewhere, much hijinks was had. Dan managed to acquire a staff wrist band, and proceeded to spend the afternoon abusing it by… asking the LG stand to turn the volume down and scoring some tea. We’re getting old. A vast army of foam Darwinians was formed, which provided plenty of entertainment, though Dan had to go and sully it all by invoking Rule 34. We also met plenty of Future people; John and Kieron from RPS came over and chatted to us (Kieron even taught us the secret RPS handshake – so secret that not even John knew it). Also spoke to Ross (Atherton, PCG Editor), Tim (Edwards, Dep. Editor) and Graham (Smith, staff writer) about various game related things. What struck us most was how lovely and friendly they all were; John even kindly gave me some paracetamol.

I hope it was enough of a success to justify doing it again next year, perhaps with a bit more on the expo side (something that will no doubt happen as the event becomes more established). There’s also talk of meeting up for some of the London Games Week, which would be very fun indeed.