And so it came to pass, that the Eurogamer 2010 show was at the court of Earl over the weekend, and once more, the march for providing a dribbling crowd with a taste of wares to come over the next year had begun, in one case, more than a year, given that Gears of War 3 had been postponed at this point till Christmas 2011.

Though the majority of games were already out or going to be out for the run-up for Christmas, such as Fallout New Vegas, Dead Space 2, Brink, Fable 3 and a whole raft of others.

This year, given the success of the past two years, an even bigger venue was chosen and also the event was spread over three days this time as opposed to just one, which gave rise to the fact that most of the presentations you would want to see, you would more than likely miss out on, except for the biggest one of all, RAGE being the biggest crowd puller seeing as Id Software haven’t produced anything for something, let alone a new title altogether.

Let’s briefly go through a few like we did last year and mock them all to hell;

Gears of War 3

Yes, the game that’s now not due till Christmas 2011 was being shown, with all potential customers playing the “beast” mode which is shooting the opposite teams. Again. Due to the wonderful console controls, which given that they are exactly the same as the previous two games, the whole third person aiming and hiding thing, I was unable to fully get to grips with the different classes given the time for the demo, at least this time you get to play the “bad” guy bugs from the previous two games as a team fighting the naughty humans for a change.

In fact you do wonder why it just keeps going and going, surely both sides would call a timeout and go for pizza.

There was one very very very interesting fact to note here; Behind the big plasma screens were all keyboards and mice, and it does seem to really suggest that Gears of War 3 was in fact running all on Windows PCs, which is a slight kick in the teeth at this time, given that the game is being released for Xbox 360 only at present.

LIES!!

Playstation Move

Why Sony? Why?

Just explain why your new fangled controllers designed to win over casual gamers from the Nintendo Wii looks like a dildo?

The games being shown were designed to illustrate the different titles now available, from the highly coveted Heavy Rain adventure game, to the new movie type game, The Shoot where it seems the best way to describe the game style is “House of the Dead in a kiddo friendly format”. Whatever films they would be making, they seem to be spending all the budgets on cardboard cutouts instead of real actors, just like Hollywood is doing right now.

You can also box and basically do everything that you could do on the Wii. It’s just an additional gimmick that really did fail to come alive with anyone who happened to play it. Microsoft also had the demo of their Kinnock thingy, where you’re the controller and all that. It was just as cringeworthy as the original videos with those sickening happy people going alright at everything. Basically the people who play the Kinetic games, are people who you want to cut over and over again.

Dead Space 2

The demo on display was the single player portion that was on display over at E3, and once again you are playing the same guy you were from the first game, in the same type of suit, and now there are more naughty things all trying to see what your insides look like without using a MRI machine. A lot of it was still the set piece situations from the first game, where random people pop out of walls etc, except given the horror of watching your ammo to ensure you only used as you needed to survive.

Perhaps it was just for the demo, but this time it was more of a straight forward shooter due to the endless ammo and more of running around than before. Some of the set-ups were grand exercises in scaring the shit out of you, and I suspect there are far more to come. The multiplayer aspect will be the more interesting part of the game, and that I do look forward to seeing soon.

Other Stuff to mention

Other highlights worth mentioning;

Fallout New Vegas was dull. Your character moved like he was attached to a zimmerframe, and some of the scopes blocked the view of the bad people shooting you. That small playtest was enough to put me off buying the game as quickly as I would have done, given Fallout 3, though maybe it’s because I don’t understand the Xbox Controls.

Brink was playable, and looked not really different to normal team based stuff. Wish I could tell you more, but the queues were just so long that I swear a woman gave birth during the wait. She started in the queue 10 months ago.

Crysis 2 was being “showcased” on grand PCs. Except it was the Xbox code. Next time, please actually change the prompts to not say Press Y to use. And also ensure that the demo doesn’t break at important points as well.

Gran Turismo 56 was on show. Looks crap. Plays crap too, judging from the amount of swearing that was going on.

It must also be noted that the show was not as good as last year. It was actually better being on just one day and also in the smaller venue as then everything you wanted to see was on the one day, as it stood, even getting into the good sessions for seeing developer demos was nigh on impossible, plus the Job market section they normally have was far smaller than last year, perhaps a sign of the economy in the UK.

Perhaps the other side of the coin is that last year, there were a huge number of titles that you wanted to see, whereas this year, it was more of the same in some cases, like Assassin’s Creed 2 Motherhood. The PC had a bigger presence too, and this year, it seemed to be toned down. Also, seeing 3D tech for the first time for gaming, not worth it. It actually puts you off playing more when a grenade goes off right in your eyes.

Maybe next year will return to form, and perhaps the titles coming from the major players will have something more? Also, Valve, you were missed. You really did make last year’s show great and this, well, it lacked presence. Join us next time, where we learn how to shave a monkey while it’s asleep.