Onto day two of EGX. Despite our press passes we still queued up with the ‘civvies’ to get into the arena as the staff there didn’t really seem to care when we asked them where we should queue. A little bit frustrating as this meant that our dash to The Division wasn’t as quick as we had liked. But that’s where we headed first trying to avoid a 3 hour queue…
Tom Clancy’s: The Division
For the demo you get to enter the Darkzone with two other players accompanying you each player has there own special abilities such as a revive ability, special seeker mines or a deploy-able turret.
The Darkzone is the PVP area for The Division, it also holds some of the best and rarest loot in the game. There were two other teams of three that also went in to the area. The objective is to find some rare loot and get yourself extracted.
There are also AI characters in the Darkzone, this means you can either team up with another group and work together to take down the AI and secure extraction for all of you. Or you can take on everyone and potentially get out with all the good loot. the problem is, is as soon as you start shooting other players you’re marked as ‘rouge’ which alerts other players that you aren’t to be trusted and chances are they will start to come after you.
Wills Thoughts
The Division is one of my most anticipated games and has been for a long time. Needless to say I was pretty hyped to get to play it. I was playing as the class with the seeker mine – a mine that you can drop and it will automatically track a target and take them out. You also have a primary and secondary weapon, mine were an assault rifle and shotgun.
What I liked was that we had someone talking to us the whole time (through headsets) letting us know what to do and what the controls were etc…It was really helpful and let us get to grips with the game quickly.
Essentially the game relies on cover based shooting a lot, and requires team work to spot, flank and take down targets. Taking on the AI was pretty routine. But once we reached the centre on the map – where the other teams were, things got really hectic really fast. It was brilliant.
I loved my time on The Division, I just wish we’d got to see something a little different as this was basically the same gameplay we’ve already seen. Thankfully for me the game lived up to the hype though. There was a lot of talk about whether the graphics had been downgraded, but they looked amazing. The gameplay also played out much like we’d seen in some of the more scripted demos – which was good.
Although we ended up losing out and not getting extracted it was still a hell of a lot of fun and I can see this being the type of game I could sink hours in to.
Murrs Thoughts
The Division, A surprise announcement from Ubisoft at E3 years and years ago (exaggeration) is almost upon us. It’s been on the radar for so long that my hype levels for it have been up and down with different feelings towards it. So it was great to finally play the game.
We rushed straight to The Division booth first thing in the morning on Friday. We thought we had made good time and got there ahead of the traffic, but we still ended up with a nice one hour and twenty minute wait. However we’d much rather take that over three hours.
As Will mentioned when we got to sit down with it, we had a Ubisoft staff member in on our game giving us instructions, telling us our class types and specialties and what our objective was. This was a great touch as the 15 minute demo didn’t feel wasted trying to get to grips with stuff. You had all the knowledge there and could enjoy the time with the demo, a good idea especially when you factor in how long you’re queuing for this game.
My class specialty was able to drop mini turrets into battle to cover us or just take out enemies ahead of us. My first use of it I threw it behind a truck. The instructor guy on our side laughed and mocked my precision turret positioning….alright pal chill out, I’ve only been on the game a minute. Anyway once we’d cleared the area and moved towards the centre extraction area that’s when shit got real. I managed to deploy the turret into a better position this time and made use of my grenades effectively. As a unit we did stick together pretty well, our medic that was the 3rd player on our team didn’t get to heal us often as he was taken out a fair few times.
What I enjoyed about this demo, is that it played exactly as the demo’s you’ve seen at E3. I genuinely expected it to be bullshit. The E3 demo your watching one guy with his team, and can hear in on his microphone the team conversations and tactics. You know the “Hey behind you” or “enemies approaching group up” etc. This actually happened in the demo. Maybe it was the instructor guy getting involved too, but it was pretty great hearing Will ask where we were, and screaming at the medic to get to me as I was hit. Also particularly funny when myself and Will were ready to approach Darkzone but we needed all 3 team members to do this, and our 3rd member the medic was down the other end of the street trying to get out that way. The collective laughs and spurring him to get back to us was pretty hilarious. All round it was a great experience and its rejuvenated my hype levels for the game.
One thing that I’m now aware of is that I need a better headset with microphone before this game comes out.
Need for Speed
We were originally queuing in the ‘main’ queue for this, but after about 20 minutes it has barely moved. We decided to leave it for later on. We then strolled through the PlayStation area and noticed that there were four screens with Need for Speed on – there was no real queue. We got on it within 10 minutes.
Wills Thoughts
I like Need for Speed, but I wasn’t as hyped for it as Murr, I still wanted to try it of course. First up was tuning your car. I didn’t really do much at this stage, just whacked on a body kit and new exhaust and played around with the colour palette. Really I just wanted to see what was available for customisation.
When the actual demo kicked off we (4 of us) started off with a checkpoint race, which I won because I’m clearly awesome.
Once I’d won the race and the adulation of my now millions (probably) of fans, I went about cruising around checking out what else was available. Usually I’m pretty terrible when I first pick up a driving game – it can take me a while to get used to it, but with NFS I picked it up really quickly. I was drifting around, doing doughtnuts in the street, basically just putting on a show for my watching fans.
I took part in couple more events like some time trials, and a few other checkpoint races. All in all I really liked the game, which has annoyed me because it’s now another one I need to add to the list of games I want… Can someone lend me £50?
Murrs Thoughts
This was one of the games I was anticipating the most at EGX. Honestly I was incredibly hyped for this game. When we were queuing up for it at the proper Need For Speed booth I was in awe staring at the Nissan GTR that was brought in to ‘spruce’ their display area up. Gorgeous looking car. However the queue for this game hardly moved in the 20 minutes we were there. They had clearly under estimated the popularity of this game and had no where near enough booths set up for it. Especially considering the demo was about 15 minutes or so.
First up I watched the guy before me attempt to do his car up. He clearly wasn’t sure with what he was doing. I’d previously watched the custom modification trailer that was released so knew what to do with sprucing the cars up. When our time finally came I opted to pick my real car in the game. The Toyota GT86. As I knew what to do with modding it up, I went to town building the car up to what I’d love my own car to look like if I had the funds. I felt legit as I was customizing the number plate to read ‘MURR’, giving it a new paint job, adding wheel arches. The car looked legit.
Once our time had expired to do our cars up it was onto the 10 minute game play demo. You were in an open world and had to drive to events and trigger them by pressing R1.
This is where things fell apart. I may have had the best looking car out of the 4 racers that were in this demo, but good god was I driving it badly. But never the less I loved this demo. The drifting round corners just sliding the back of the car out and missing walls and lamp posts by centimeters was absolutely amazing. I loved that I felt so in control of the car on corners. As the demo ticked on the the feel of the car, the steering, the breaking all clicked and I was actually making it look like I knew how to play the game properly. I opted to do a drift circuit which is as it sounds, you have to do x laps of a track and earn a score from drifting. I didn’t win this, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Maybe I enjoyed it so much is the car itself is specifically built for drifting. Perhaps had I selected another car I’d have not enjoyed it so much. But I was always going to pick my car.
I’ve been wanting a Need For Speed Underground 3 for years. Every year when EA announced another NFS game and it wasn’t Underground 3 I was disappointed. While this title doesn’t feature the Underground 3 name, It’s definitely the successor to the Underground series I’ve been craving. I was always going to buy this game even if I hadn’t got to play it at EGX, but with the 15 minutes I had with it, the excitement for it to release is now huge. It’s a strong statement to say but this is genuinely one of, if not my most anticipated game for winter 2015. Which when you read it, A Need for Speed title being the game I’m most excited for sounds ridiculous. But that’s how much I enjoyed it.
Mario Smash Tennis – Wills Thoughts
I’m not much of a Nintendo fan, I’m going to put that out there right away. It’s not that I don’t like them, it’s just that most of there games don’t appeal to me. Sure some of them are good fun to play in groups, but that’s a rarity for me. But seeing as there was no real queue to play Mario Smash Tennis, I jumped right on and took Bowser on, mano e mano.
So what to say about a Mario tennis game? Well you play tennis, which is fun, and Mario and all his friends are there too, which is cool. It was super easy to pick up. Just press A when the ball is near you…. I don’t think I pressed any other buttons. You can do charge shots too by holding A down for longer. That was it really. It’s what I would expect from a tennis game with Mario in it – easy to pick up, fun to play, nice and colourful and with a lot of Mario charm. I’m sure Nintendo fans will enjoy playing it.
The Escapists Walking Dead – Wills Thoughts
I’ve seen the Escapists knocking around quite a lot but have never played it. I get the gist of it and the premise looks fun. Now we have a Walking Dead version of it. I was able to play through the first chapter of it which followed the shows opening quite closely – having to escape the hospital. It was a lot of fun, and the visuals have a lot of charm about them. I liked the crafting system that lets you create weapons and other tools with things you find in the environment.
I would’ve liked a little more time on it really, because when I tried another chapter I had no idea what I was doing. I was just running around dodging zombies following way points – I was a little lost, and that’s the problem with some demos, is it isn’t clear what to do.
It’s just released on Xbox One though, and I’m pretty tempted to pick it up.
Iron Fish – Murrs Thoughts
While Will was on The Escapists: Walking Dead, I wondered over the the booth opposite and sat down at a free setup for a game called Iron Fish. I’d never heard of this game before. Truth be told I only played it to pass time as Will had got pretty involved in Escapists.
Iron Fish is deep sea thriller in which you are tasked with exploring the wonders at the bottom of the oceans. I started off in a submarine and got to grips with the controllers fairly quickly. The atmosphere of the game was done very well as the depths of the ocean get darker the further you go down. The feeling of claustrophobia certainly kicks in. Once I’d navigated to my destination in the submarine I then left it to swim around. From here I wasn’t exactly sure what had to be done. But by this point Will had finished on Walking Dead and I called it quits on the game from there. An odd experience that passed time, and certainly hit the nail on the head in terms of creating a dark deep ocean atmosphere.
Vermintide – Wills Thoughts
Damn this game was awesome! Think Left 4 Dead but set in the realm of Warhammer and you’ve got Vermintide. I had no idea what to expect when I jumped on, I just started hacking anything in my path and had a blast from start to finish.
I played as the Waywatcher, Kerillian. She has a bow and two short swords at her disposal.
The objective was to make your way through the level to get to a belltower with three other players and alert the city guards of an attack – at least I think it was that, I was too busy chopping off heads and sticking rats with arrows to care about anything else.
I’ve now got a beta key and plan on playing as much as I can of it before it’s release.
Add that to the list of games…
Murrs Thoughts
Not too much to say from me, but I watched Will play this and thought it looked awesome. It looks really gray and grotty but that’s exactly the atmosphere that’s needed. The world looks so much fun to get to grips with. We posted the reveal of it a while back, but not had much more information on it. Seeing it in action was really great. I was especially happy to hear that it’s coming to PS4 too so I can get involved with it.
Gangbeasts
Gang Beasts is a local multiplayer party game with surly gelatinous characters, brutal mêlée fight sequences, and absurdly hazardous environments.
Wills Thoughts
This game is pure entertainment. 8 players wailing on each other until only one remains. the ragdoll style physics of the game just make it hilarious. There was always a big crowd around this one and everyone was loving it. One of my highlights from the whole show.
Murrs Thoughts
I echo exactly what Will said. Unbelievably funny game. I had a quick blast on it and could not stop laughing. Neither could the other 7 guys playing it with me or the people viewing it. Hilarious to watch and play. An unexpected treat and one I’ll pick up when it finally finds it way onto PS4 (which has been announced).
We got a little camera footage too.
Cup Head
Murrs Thoughts
So your probably quite aware that Will and I have our allegiances to consoles. But sometimes there are video games that you just sit back and have to agree look incredible. Cup Head is one of those games. I am insanely jealous that this is only on XboxOne currently (or PC but I have a terrible PC). It was set up in the ID@Xbox section that was unfortunately rather small. There was a queue to get into the section but it was all purely to play this game. And rightfully so. It looks simply gorgeous in motion. Actually feels like you’re playing a cartoon. It was also pretty difficult too. We tried one level where we had to attack and kill and giant potato that spat smaller potatoes at us. With him vanquished we then had to fight a giant 3 eyed carrot. Yes it sounds nuts but it was absolutely incredible fun. We died on the carrot level, so we cheekily exited that level and selected another. This time we were in planes and fighting a giant bird that was laying eggs in our direction trying to get us. Another tough level which we failed at. Only a short amount of time on it, but overall very impressed with it.
The Flame in the Flood – Wills Thoughts
I’ve pointed this game out before in our Ones to Watch. So was pretty eager to get a go on it.
The idea of the game is to survive in the wilderness by exploring a procedural river. You can stop off at various points to search for items or make camp.
As with a lot of demos, you don’t get long and sometimes get thrown in without really knowing what’s going on. Unfortunately this was the case with The Flame in the Flood. I was a bit lost. But I powered on regardless and I have to say, despite not knowing what was going on I still enjoyed it – until a wolf attacked me.
I would really like to see more of this game, and I’m still very much interested in it, I just don’t think it was the right kind of game to show off in 5 minutes.
Forza 6 & The Elite Controller
Murrs Thoughts
Okay so after appreciating Cup Head on XboxOne we then headed to the Forza 6 stand. This area wasn’t busy at all. One of the perks to playing Forza here is that we also got to grips with the new Xbox One Elite controller.
Right… once again this is tough to type but one word…WOW. It took me a couple of seconds to figure out which “flappy pedal” on the bottom of the controller was gear shift up and down, but once I got it, boy did I get it. It felt absolutely amazing to change gears with this control method. And surprisingly, I was good at it, and I mean damn good. On the first race once I clicked with the gear shifts I worked through the field to win the race. I wouldn’t say comfortably, but in the words of Dominic Torretto, “Winning’s winning”. I was really enjoying my time with this, so much so that I started another race when I’m pretty sure I wasn’t meant to. The guy in the Forza section didn’t seem to care. Will came back round and mentioned how he wasn’t that great at the game. I then showed him how to race and on this race won comfortably enough to lap the majority of the racers on track.
I hate to admit it, and I hated telling Will, but this controller and Forza combination really really impressed me. Cup Head, Forza and Elite Controller so far were all massive positives in my eyes for Xbox.
Wills Thoughts
Forza 6 looks amazing, but I suck at it, really, really badly.
Now that’s out of the way I can talk about the controller. I was planning on getting one anyway. But getting hands on has just solidified that need for this controller. it feels so good in your hands, it feels robust and likes it has a really good build quality. The detachable paddles on the bottom can be programmed to do basically what ever you want – via an app that will launch with it’s release. You can switch thumb-sticks in the blink of an eye. It’s all held on by magnets, but you wouldn’t know it as it all feels very secure. In a nutshell the controller is a beaut!
Murr also confessed to me that he was looking at prices of Xbox Ones! I think I’m winning our on going battle to sway one another.
Hitman Press Show – Murrs Thoughts
As we were leaving the press area we noticed that there was a demonstration of the new Hitman game coming out starting in 20 minutes. So with no ideas on what games we wanted to play next we just queued up for the Hitman presentation.
Visually the demo was very impressive. The creator explained that the places in the game we’d be visiting were based off real world locations, but they’d fabricated them slightly so you won’t see real places from Paris or Italy in the game, just areas that might look familiar. The demo that we saw tasked Agent 47 assassinating a fashion designer at a mansion in Paris. You’re invited to the party so can just walk straight in. From here it’s up to you how to go about taking the target out. On this demo the player wandered around the guests listening on conversations involving the target to gain intel on the schedule for the evening.
We were then shown the array of weapons we could take to the mission ranging from silenced gun to samurai sword, a fire-axe, sniper rifles etc. So plenty of variety to the game. We’re then shown how we can take the target out via different methods depending on costumes we might acquire like becoming bar staff and poisoning the target or sneaking into the loft and tampering with the lights hanging above the cat walk. It looked very impressive. Here’s hoping this game does play as good as this demo made it look.
Elite Dangerous Developer session Wills Thoughts
I’ve been a huge fan of Elite since its release and as soon as the session was announced I knew it was one I needed to go to, especially with it centring around Horizons, the upcoming DLC that will allow planetary landings amongst some other things.
I’d hoped we might get some sneaky footage of it all in action, but that wasn’t to be.
What we did get though was David Braben and two others from the development team.
It was great to hear from the team and get to hear how passionate they are about creating a game that the fans will love. We also got some tasty information about what to expect from the game over the next few months, including, multicrew ships, smaller ships that can be stored in larger ones, commander creator and a few other bits.
It was amazing. What was also amazing was the diversity of the ages of the audience. Elite has been around since the 80’s and it’s great to see that there are still people who played back then still wanting to play it now.
Mirrors Edge Catalyst
We hadn’t planned on playing this mainly because the queue was huge and we’re also not that in to the Mirrors Edge series. We stopped by just to take a look at some of the others playing and to our surprise one of the staff asked us if we wanted to play it – they then let us skip the entire queue to play the next round. Press pass privileges I guess! Did we feel a little guilty? Yes. Would you have done the same thing though? Yes!
Wills Thoughts
I just don’t know what it is about this game, but I just can’t like it. Sure the visuals are amazing, but there is just something about it I don’t really like and I have no idea what it is.
During the demo you got to try out a time trial course, ‘tagging’ a sign – which involves climbing and jumping around, and a delivery mission where you have to drop off a package and beat up people on the way.
It just doesn’t do it for me. However, the gameplay is nice and smooth, the free running works well and as I said it looks stunning. But I won’t be adding to my list.
Murrs Thoughts
Yup as Will mentioned our first taste of press pass privilege was cutting the queue to play this much to the hate of the guys behind us. The queue for this was also ridiculously long with not enough screens setup. Another example of not prepared enough for the large crowds.
Again Will shares my exact thoughts about the game. Visually you can’t deny it looks stunning. But I just didn’t enjoy the demo. Maybe the control layout didn’t click with me? The jump or up button had to be pressed prior to making jumps or for climbing, It should have meant that Faith is ready for the next move in her free running, but for some reason for me It would always make Faith jump therefore ruining my string of running and climbing. I’m not too upset over it as I won’t be buying it. It was just incredibly cool to cut the queue.
We also got the chance to meet up with Ben and Kim from 1001up. It was really good to finally get to meet some fellow bloggers. I know that we’ve now popped up in a video of theirs. See if you can spot us!
Wow, that was a long post. But we did a lot of stuff and wanted to share it all with you! Day 3 coming soon.
Murr & Will
