Welcome back campers to Part 2 of the PC Gamer Weekender round-up, a look at some of what was shown during the event which took place in East London a couple of weeks ago. This time we’re having a look as some more of the games presented along with some of the technology on show too, along with some final meh mehs about whether or not the PC Gamer Weekender was worth going to.

THE ORCHID NEBULA

Great Scott Marty! We have to go back to the past or the present with a right mouse click!

This was actually a surprising game to be covering and is based on a group of student’s work while studying game design and they were actually very good in explaining some of the design choices that went into the game. The best I can describe this at the moment, is another one of those walking simulators where somehow you’re stuck in an abandoned high-tech laboratory.

Everything around you is pretty much all b*llocksed, probably because someone forgot to get that last packet of screws from the DIY shop and now it’s all fallen to pieces. But for some reason, you seem to have one power: the ability to jump in time between the present and the past, when the laboratory was in a better state before it all went to s*it.

You also got a lovely robot buddy who was telling you all about what needed fixing and so it progressed as you solved a couple of puzzles to then exit the demo level. Because this was an early demo, there wasn’t a lot of detail in the place and some design aspects could do with improvements to keep the immersion, but hell it was running well and I wanted to keep going to the end.

This showed some good promise and I look forward to how they’re going to expand things out, especially where some of the inspiration came when the developer of the Stanley Parable came to speak to the class of student some time before. You can find out more about the game at https://www.facebook.com/TheOrchidNebula/

CRAZY TAXI (And almost everything else SEGA had ever released)

Err…..What year is this?

I’m not kidding. I played Crazy Taxi for a good half an hour and enjoyed the hell out of it. Perhaps I best explain further before you wonder what the hell is going on….

Sega had a massive showing at the PC Gamer Weekender with a hell of a lot of their back catalogue as well as the upcoming Total War: Warhammer game and some of this was really surprising. Why would Sega of all people be coming to a show like this with pretty much everything they had for people to play is a slight mystery.

Well, they had everything aside from Sonic: Lost World, the Super Mario Galaxy wannabe, which at first was only on WI:U, but now is out on the PC platform too. Surely this would have been good to show considering it was only recently released?Especially when some of their older titles like Typing of the Dead: Overkill has some trouble with Windows 10, sometimes even failing to work at all and this was on show.

Perhaps it ties to Sega’s recent financial woes or maybe they wanted to show they were fully behind the show and intended to make a big impression with PC gamers for a change. But either way, the range of titles they had was quite impressive and it was a joy to play some of the older titles that I had never even considered picking up during steam sales or otherwise because they were quite old and probably wouldn’t work.

But I have to confess, I spent a good couple of hours in the Sega area where classics such as the Mega Drive Collection, Alien: Isolation, Typing of the Dead: Overkill and even Valkyria Chronicles were a joy to play on the show floor. Sonic All Stars Racing as well was a good time with split screen action working really well on the show PCs with two Xbox 360 joypads connected.

And this was the real pièce de résistance; Sega even went a step further in providing a free steam code for a random game after you tried one of the games on show too, even handing on occasion some of the tried and tested energy drink vomit that apparently we all like to guzzle at such events. But…. we may have gone a bit too far when it came to “acquiring” game codes….

Ok….so we went back more than once….. Thanks Sega! And sorry for probably making it worse for you financially!

So on this occasion, with the ridiculous haul of goodies, the time allowed to just enjoy the games and the Sega promotional staff just being great to talk with, I actually have to hand it to Sega Europe on this occasion for doing a good job. They sold themselves well despite not having that much new to actually show people. That may well be their stumbling block for visitors if they return next time as it’s likely the PC Gamer Weekender would be bigger and likely have more vendors attending with their wares to push onto the general public.

JULIAN GOLLOP

Stay tuned, I’ll be calling the bingo numbers shortly….

Just after the HITMAN presentation, there was another surprise in that the original creator of what we’ve come to love / hate / shout at the screen how the hell did he miss from point blank range-a-thon, XCOM.

Julian Gollop came onto the small stage to talk about the history of the XCOM franchise, what he and the others in the team at the time had to do to make the game what it was, the problems and some of the realities of what took place during the early game’s development before the series died on it’s arse for a good deal of time.

That of course, before Firaxis and 2K games brought it back from the dead with complete gusto and excellent mechanics. While difficult at times to really hear what Julian had to say due to the poor audio set-up in the area we were all in, it was still fascinating to hear from the guy who designed and created a lot of what we’ve come to take for granted today when it comes to destroying aliens one turn at a time. He even praised Firaxis with what they’ve done with XCOM since they got hold of the rights to the franchise, even if there were some things of course he didn’t like.

As for the future of XCOM, we can only wait and see what happens next, especially as XCOM 2 supports modding out of the box and the community have had a lot of fun already adding new content. But then again Julian’s company have just announced he’s throwing his hat back into the ring then proper with a new turn based shooter game. One can only wonder if there’s even better to come.

PC HARDWARE PORN

I’m detecting abnormal erection levels Captain!

Oh dear god yes.

Perhaps this is the worst part of the whole Weekender (aside from some of the real crap they had on the show floor) and that’s mainly down to the fact that a few vendors were on hand to show what truly awesome PCs you could have if you were willing to p*ss away £11000 or so. The gaming desk above had the PC built directly into with a custom cooling option all nicely laid out which was gorgeous to look at. What’s worse, it was driving no less than three massive 27in monitors which made for a very very weird experience when playing the first person shooter they had on as a demo.

While I couldn’t see the point of such of thing for FPS, anything with driving or flying around in space, would be leaving you weak at the knees and ready to donate any spare organs you had in return for the cash to buy such a set-up.

But bloody hell, £11,000? I thought we were going back into an economic downturn or should I leave reality firmly at the door?

Is it wrong to stare at Lara Croft when she’s in 4K?

It wasn’t much better when wandering over to the NVIDIA area where they had a few PCs ready running Rise of the Tomb Raider, in 4K. Oh yeah, 4k gaming was a real thing and they were more than happy to show this off. Running at fairly high levels of detail, the PC was running at around 35 FPS smoothly with no real hint of slowdown or otherwise on a lovely £750 quid monitor. It’s not fair dammit!

One of the really surprising and welcome additions to such a show like this was with ASUS.

They were running various classes throughout the two days, such as “How to build a PC” and “What to look for in a motherboard”. While perhaps is the type of subjects which will send most people into a coma, it was a wonderful opportunity to allow people to put together their own kit and try things out rather than just spend lots of money and then make a mistake, leaving them with basically large paperweights. If you don’t do it that often, it great to have a chance to practise before you do it yourself.

UMBRELLA CORPS

Really?

Not everything was peaches and cream at the PC Gamer Weekender and one example of a game we didn’t want was Umbrella Corps by Capcom, who had also Street Fighter 5 on show once again. It seems that Capcom really want to revisit the shooting fun within Resident Evil, once again bringing out a multiplayer third person shooter set in various locations within the Resident Evil Universe, with one notable location being the village from the beginning of Resident Evil 4. Just with a lot more guns.

It has to be said that without a doubt, it was one of the more confusing and backwards games on show (more than that really crap Counter Terrorism Unit game which I had to be nice to the developer about before whispering dear god no….) and with good reason. Not one person among any of us who were playing had an idea of what we were supposed to be doing or why at different times.

It turned out this was a fault of the build and the Capcom reps had printed out what you were meant to do. It was also weird that at various times the zombies completely ignored you, but the reason why only became clear when you engaged the other team. Shoot out the backpack and magically the zombies then see the person you just shot and then they are boned.

Why two teams from Umbrella (the evil company in the Resident Evil series responsible for everything) would be battling each other, I have no idea. But in terms of the game itself, the shooting was poor, getting round the levels was a pain in the ass and the glitches were hilarious. While of course it’s easy to mock a work in progress, to see a zombie basically keep walking into a closed door while you just stood there, pretty much told you to walk away.

AND FINALLY…

But after all was said and done, what was the PC Gamer Weekender like?

There were definitely some real good points to it such as the variety of things on show given it was the first go, and the talks were a nice balance if only there were more. I suspect because of this being the first year, that they were a bit limited in what they were going to be able to show, and that is probably why there was a hell of a lot of older games on show there. It was great to try and play them such as within the Sega area without any restrictions on time which doesn’t happen that often at these shows, but maybe some more new games would be grand. After all, that is the big pull for events like EGX.

I would also try and get rid of some of the shovelware which showed up too as a lot of the indie games there were one-hit wonders and in the case of a game called Counter Terrorism Unit, just god awful. That being said, I have to commend the fact we weren’t ever rushed to finish a demo or move onto something else and that really does allow for a better idea of what a product is going to be like. Of course queues occurred for the most popular titles on show but they weren’t too long and you didn’t have to rush to get from one thing to the next.

The panels and talks were all great, being horribly let down by poor audio set-up and perhaps a dedicated area away from the crowd is really what’s needed. There was a sense as well that they didn’t have enough set-up time for everything as a lot of things were still being put together on the Saturday, only to then be shown properly the next day. However, just to be shown what some hardware can actually do properly is a real bonus if we, the public are to spend the ridiculous amounts of money that we do on this type of hobby. It’s a rare thing in this day and age and that alone can make this worthwhile.

So overall, more positives than negatives to take away from the PC Gamer Weekender and I can only look forward to see what next year would bring.

Most of the photos here taken by Rebecca Freir