It’s been a long time since I wrote about anything topical or otherwise here at oohsometimes, but for once the journalistic hat gets put on.

The 31st of October not only brought all freaks of nature for all Hallow’s eve for gathering chocolate, drinking too much and dressing only slightly worse than they do normally, it was the time of year for another Eurogamer expo in London, where companies from around the globe showcase their upcoming wares for the months ahead.

On the back of the successful first year, they moved to a bigger venue, and allowed even more happy go lucky people to enjoy the wonders of events only really enjoyed by those willing to travel to PAX or Quakecon in the US.

Just like last year, the place was stuffed to the gills with XBOX 360s, Playstations, Wiis (which looks strange to write down as a plural) and even some PCs on the main floor, which was a change from last year in itself. The poor old PC has taken a real bashing of late in terms of gaming creditability and it was good to see some games being showcased on the platform even if there weren’t many.

There was a good showing from most companies, all competing for your hard earned pound, more than ever right now, even though we’re all told the recession is all but a faint memory. Ubisoft, Valve and EA had some strong titles on show, with some of the best being described below;

Left 4 Dead 2

We saw some screenshots of the Hard Raid campaign during a talk being given by Valve’s Chet Faliszek (yes, a real bloke who works for em! OOOOOOOOHH!!), one of the highlight’s of the Saturday afternoon to be sure.

It was pretty sweet as he was explaining why they did some of the things they did with the game, what decisions they made for the player experience while monitoring people’s play over at Valve using their own in-house system which records the players themselves as well as their actual gameplay. Sometimes it’s only events like this, where you get to hear from the developers first hand do you understand what they do.

During the Left 4 Dead 2 QA part of the discussion, I waded in asking about a little zombie factory where you can practice your skills in Versus in the game as you could Single Player the campaigns but not the zombies. Chet responded and this will be quoting from the Eurogamer site now, that “they thought about that and considered a practice area, and they’re looking at it”

After the presentation, Chet was around the Left 4 Dead play area where lots of podcasting people (ah, that takes me back to August last year…) were waiting to pounce on him, which was a shame as we had a chat about various things too;

Here’s the gist of it:

There is no Left for Dead 3 coming next year, the release for the sequel apparently just worked out it was a year after this time round. Hmm, wonder if something else will be out instead?

He really didn’t want to talk about the children of the Valve forums moaning about the PC demo being late by a day, which is more than fair enough from a PR point of view and besides what could you possibly say about the matter? People are people as they say.

I even suggested a mode where the survivors from both games go at each other along with the zombie horde as not all of time can escape to safety at the end.

Apparently that had been on the table in a mode called “Only room for one” where only one of you get to escape and it’s just a matter of time before you all turn on each other, but they didn’t want Human on Human killing in this. He did however say nothing is 100% off the table. (If said mode does turns up now, I’ll be smug for about 5 minutes….)

Valve is a really neat place to work at, it’s also the place he’s actually stayed at the longest in terms of employment so that must say something itself. I couldn’t get over the fact everyone was their own boss and got to contribute what they wanted. The fact it seems to work too, well, bugger me, maybe others should do the same eh?

Brink

Now, Brink was a game I had not heard of at all, until the expo, and to be honest I only went because of their previous record of various Quake and Wolfenstein games actually being fun to play. I lost track of how many hours I lost to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory in clan play or just having a laugh at some eight year old’s expense.

So I wasn’t sure what to expect from the session to be honest. What I did see wasn’t that bad (which I know sounds worse than it should be, but bear with me on this) and you got a glimpse of something while familiar, was looking to be unique in certain ways.

Brink from what I saw from the presentation was a sci-fi world where two lots of people lived on a isloated island city thing and got jolly angry at each other. They shot at each other doing lots of moves that fat people can only dream of, and oh my god, there was something that wasn’t supposed to be there. Dun Dun DUHHHHHH!

OK so based on that, you’d think “All hands were lost at sea. Bring out the Kazoo of grief.” But unfortunately for the cynic in me, that is not the case. Granted it is a FPS in the true sense of the world, but like some other efforts it does provide more than the standard run, gun and cry affair that a lot of FPSes are now.

You can co-op with other players while earning experience points depending on an selectable objective you change at will during the game by using command posts dotted around, and even change class to achieve objectives as well.

A simple little addition, long missing is Leaning round corners to shoot. Thank god someone finally remembered to put that one cover feature back, long forgotten since people who had never touched a mouse and keyboard starting getting upset.

One thing which got a great big cheer was the fact that dedicated servers was in the package as standard, something PC gamers got annoyed about (I got annoyed about the price to be fair) with Modern Warfare 2.

Splash Damage CEO Paul Wedgwood said I suck for asking a difficult question. The question was; what was there to make this stand out from all the other FPSes out there who were doing the same thing. Bit of a bastard question sure, but let’s be fair it’s a good one. The game did look good to be fair but in a lot of ways it wasn’t different to anything before.

For more, visit: http://www.brinkthegame.com/

Splinter Cell: Conviction

A surprise was seeing the Splinter Cell: Conviction E3 demo in the afternoon and it was just a couple of Ubisoft guys who came along and showed it off, it seems a hell of a lot better than the original demo back at E3.

Basically all the stuff you saw in the E3 demo happened but they actually showed it wasn’t auto pilot at all, something which was a complaint after people saw the original demo before.

The demo included how you use the crowd as a way of hiding from the bad guys, with everyone running away from you, you run with the crowd, the bad guys go in the opposite direction to investigate, easy opening to sneak in.

They showed some different ways of working the same scenario as much as they could with the same level triggers in place for the purpose of the demo, and tried to put down fears that might have been in place before.

I know it’s pretty much been highlighted with the text so far but honestly, it was amazing the difference just someone else showing something like Splinter Cell could actually be, and now it appears the game really is really worth waiting till February next year.

Assasin’s Creed 2

Of course one of the big pullers at the expo was the fact that Assassin’s creed 2 was on the floor, and despite many people including myself was losing badly with the PS3 controls and also we were playing the Tokyo Game Show code, which had a nice bug where it looked like you started floating through the air at the point you’re meant to assassinate the villain type guy, then your arms would flap before you fell back to the ground, it was a good indication of how the final game will play out when it comes out later this month Xbox and PS3 (PC is next year…..grrr….).

Everyone pretty much knows now the story of Oxo or whatever his name is, and the fact that Assassin’s Creed 2 covers his life as well allowing you once more to view the world from Desmond, the guy from the first game who was forced to relive his ancestor’s life for some naughty people’s aims, so we won’t recover that particular ground, if you want to read the story aspect, Google is your friend.

The demo at the expo was centred around your character being told about a naughty fellow who may be connected to the happenings going on so far, and you set off across town via a variety of methods not too dissimilar to the first game, except you can swim, take a gondola and the auto-pilot has been taken away from the climbing up walls part too.

You were able to hire people to help you out, and the best part was to hire ladies of the evening to “distract” guards while you sneak your way past. Once there you got the set-up with the bad guys while you still move about, setting yourself up for the kill.

All being well, you get the guy and the whole world fades out while we see a very familiar scene from the first game where the dead guy still manages to read War and Peace out loud before snuffing it, and that was pretty much the demo.

It was sad that this would be the only way to actually trial the game without buying as there would be no demo to the general public, just as before but at least the expo provided an opportunity to play before you pay.

Other Games

Alien Vs. Predator was on show as a multi player affair on the PS3 (actually a lot of games were on the PS3, less than the Xbox come to think of it), while looking good, there was practically no difference to the modes of previous games, the alien still seems to be the easiest to kill, with the Predator being top dog, human close second. When will they learn to balance better?

I had the opportunity to play Uncharted 2: Something Something for the first time, having heard some good things about it, and to be play the PS3 exclusive was a hoot, with some terrific set-pieces and despite my ongoing problems with controllers instead of Mice and Keyboards, it wasn’t bad. Now if only I had £400 free….if only I had any money…..why am I poor?

The new Mario game for 4 players on the Wii; only one thing to say. It was f**king annoying!

Star Trek Online was shown on the PC platform and it was an offline affair, some predetermined missions which weren’t that varied so maybe it may not be fully representative of the final experience, but to be honest, I’ve actually now had my fill of the MOO games like World of Warcraft etc, therefore it wouldn’t be something to revisit until perhaps the next expansion.

Mass Effect 2 was on the floor, but god damn, you had to look hard to find in the basement, along with naughty fighting games, FIFA 2387255723 and some Hard Rain game that looked like it was one step away from being shown on ITV4.

And it was the same as what has been shown before, next to no content, the gameplay was almost exactly the same and if it wasn’t for the fact it said Mass Effect 2, you wouldn’t know the difference at all. Seems to be one to not get overly excited about, and perhaps was the reason why it was hidden away.

Beatles: Rock Band was set-up in the basement and all through the day you could destroy all the classics on stage;

Oh dear.

As for the expo itself, it was better than last year in some respects, the venue bigger, the snacks mildly cheaper, the location was a big plus as you could walk outside and take in the wonderful view of the riverside. Just the sheer number of games to try though was staggering, with even smaller dev teams showing off their wares in the indie section, where some unique ideas were to be seen, with the small hope that platforms like Steam, XBLA or the Playstation network will welcome and promote some of their efforts. You could have had a go at the PSPgo systems if you wanted, but let’s be fair; Why bother? Oh and pick up lots of free t-shirts as I managed to do so, just wandering around!

There was however one though really wrong which I hadn’t thought possible and despite it’s insignificance, it must be raised. I felt at times like a fish out of water. Seriously, in the land of social lepers, I was the one who made the elephant man look sexy.

It was mainly down to the smug Eurogamer volunteer staff (at least I hope they were volunteers) they had guarding various places who, for some reason, maybe they were never hugged enough as children, all had something crammed up their arrogant backsides, because if you even acknowledge their existence, you are made to feel like you fell out of a dog’s bottom.

But alas, as always in life you must forget about such “arse buckets” because in all honesty, if you actually want to trail anything, talk to the people in the industry, understand why and how things are done, it’s pretty obvious for the mere mortals of the gaming world, the Eurogamer Expo seems to be one of the premier events in the UK. Here’s to next year chaps!