Geekly Review #100

100 Geekly Reviews! What better way to spend it than talking about EGX in Birmingham. We spent 3 days in total there and had an amazing time playing some of the best upcoming games. We will go in to more detail about the games that we played later in the week, for now we will just give a quick round up of the weekend along with the other geekly goings on.

At EGX we got to play quite a lot of games, a lot of shooter games actually – the show seemed to be dominated by them this year. My picks for the best were Tom Clancy’s: The Division and Halo 5: Guardians (which we got interviewed by Xbox about after playing)

In The Division I got to head in to the Darkzone – as we’ve already seen from older demos of the game. I’m glad to say that the game lived up to my hype. It was intense, needed teamwork, looked amazing and played really well. The only hitch I noticed was a slight frame rate issues when watching a few others play, but when I got on it, I didn’t notice any issues.

For Halo 5 Guardians, I got to sample the new multiplayer mode Warzone. It’s a 12 vs 12 mode that also has AI characters too. You basically have to work your way around the map capturing objectives. You can also focus on eliminating the tougher AI targets which will grant you extra points towards unlocking weapons with your REQ points.

The game seemed extremely polished. It ran really smoothly and looked amazing too. I can’t really fault it. I know some people don’t like that it has moved more towards a run and gun style and has the ADS style aiming. But personally I quite like it.

Needless to say I’m now hugely hyped for both of these games. Thankfully I don’t have to wait too long for Halo!

We decided to take our consoles with us to EGX so that on the evenings we could just sit down relax and play some games.

I also got hands on time with Need For Speed, Star Wars Battlefront, Mirrors Edge Catalyst, Homefront The Revolution and a shed load of indie games. As I said, we will be covering them in more depth later in the week, so stayed tuned for that.

This year we also got a chance to meet a couple of other bloggers, we met Ben and Kim from 1001up – who we’ve spoken to a lot before, so it was great to finally get to meet them. We also met up with What Rhino Said.

I’ve been getting back in to the Witcher 3 lately and played some more of it over the weekend. I honestly have  no idea how much longer I have left on it, but my list of quests is huge, so I’m thinking it’s quite a while. I’m level 20 now, which also says to me that I have a long way to go. I really need to get it completed before Fallout 4 comes along as I know as soon as that drops and other game will just gather dust.

I was also lucky enough to get beta access to Rainbow 6: Siege. The Beta consists of Terrorist Hunt and the Attack & Defend game modes. I’m not entirely sure how many maps are available but I’ve only seen 3. I’ve really enjoyed playing the beta, it really does need teamwork for you to succeed regularly.  I’m not sure if I actually want to buy it though. With the game being only multiplayer I’m just not sure if it will have enough on offer to keep me interested for long enough. Maybe if it was a little cheaper I would consider getting it.

-Will

As Will has mentioned above, We spent 3 days at EGX in Birmingham and it was pretty damned awesome. There will be plenty of content to come out over the week with regards to EGX so limiting the amount of EGX info in this weeks Geekly Review and just doing as we normally do and focus on the Geekly activities we took part in.

On the Thursday we had the opportunity to meet up with the guys from Esdevium Games. We sat down and spent around 3 hours playing various board games with them. Quite a different experience at EGX but a really enjoyable afternoon. We also got to meet up with other bloggers we’ve been following throughout the weekend too. Friday we met up with Ben and Kim from 1001up and on Saturday we spotted WhatRhinoSaid while queuing to see Yoshida Q&A session.

It was also pretty cool to get interviewed by Microsoft staff after playing Halo 5 to give our thoughts. Here’s hoping we feature on their site. And the press pass privileges being put to the max by being allowed to queue jump to the front to play Mirrors Edge.

Back at the hotel we had all our consoles set up for the evenings. The staff at the hotel questioned if we were going out and about? Of course we aren’t we’re here to game. I ended up finally getting into Destiny after being given a free copy of it from a work friend. No DLC just vanilla Destiny. I don’t have PS+ currently due to financial restrictions, but I still got to play a fair whack of the campaign. Unfortunately it’s addictive which is something I didn’t want to happen. So looks like I’m suckered in to Destiny.

So EGX was an epic weekend away. When back home it felt as if I’d been on a stag do with all the walking and waiting. Only 2 pints consumed at EGX so it was definitely the liters of free energy drink I’d been consuming that had me feeling like this, not booze.

Well, maybe for our 2nd press pass we can get to GamesCom 2016, here’s hoping.

– Murr