Friday 30 September 2011

An excursion into the Eurogamer Expo Part 2

On the second day of the Eurogamer Expo I decided to try to avoid just looking at the games I had already seen. I also went to see two developer talks, one about the future of the Witcher 2 and one about Batman: Arkham City. After finding the Arkham City demo disappointing on the first day it was great to see more footage and hear the developers talk about the game and it definately reaffirmed my faith that this is going to be one of the best games of the year. They showed some of the free roaming aspects of the game as well as one of the Riddle puzzle rooms and some of the challenge room. Everything they showed was great and fit perfectly into the Batman universe.
Arkham City looks bigger than Arkham Asylum in every way.

The Witcher 2 is probably my favorite game of this year so far so it was good to see that the company is continuing to support the game so comprehensively after it's release with tons of free content. Though the speakers talked quite a lot about the Xbox release of the game, which as a PC gamer myself wasn't too applicable, they did say that neither system will have exclusive content; which is great news. Patch 2.0 should be out by now, go check it out!
The Witcher 2 is getting loads of free extra content.

After queuing for about forty five minute some friends and I managed to play a multiplayer game of Battlefield 3 which was just awesome. This game looks amazing; it's on a totally different level to the previous CODs. I've not played much of the previous Battlefield games before but it seems like the controls have been tightened up quite a lot to be more in line with other popular online shooters. Unfortunately the game in the demo was only a 16 person level so it didn't give a great idea of what the scale of the final game will feel like with 64 player levels.
Battlefield 3 looks breath taking.

I enjoy hard games so I was glad to see that there was a Dark Souls demo at the Expo. True to form the demo was ridiculous, at the start you could choose from two paths; one had a dragon blocking a narrow bridge and the had a giant armored boar. It was great to see that the developers didn't try to trick players into thinking that the final game might be easier than Demon's souls. Speaking of Demon's Souls this game looks to be everything you would expect from it's spiritual successor. It's out very soon and I am very eager to try it. Prepare to die a lot.
The armored boar is difficult to kill in Dark Souls.

Binary Domain is a console, squad based, shooter that is going to be released early next year. I've heard it described as a mix of Mass Effect, Gears of War and iRobot and if that translates into a cohesive game that sounds amazing. However from what I saw of the demo it seemed very generic and unoriginal. I think that if there are some light RPG elements in the game as well as a compelling story then that could save this game from obscurity. The demo involved shooting your way through grunts in back alleys towards a giant mech boss. You fight as a member of a three man squad with your usual weapons such as an assault rifle or a shotgun.
Binary Domain has potential but I wasn't too impressed by what I saw.

That concludes the games and sessions I saw at the show. I didn't manage to play all the major games I wanted to see such as Mass Effect 3 and Guild Wars 2; which I am looking forwards to seeing in the future. I advise anyone interesting in video games to check out the Eurogamer Expo next year.

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