| Eurogamer Expo - Event Preview |
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It's not so often you'll get to watch and play all of your favourite games in one room for £5, and to be honest, it was the first time Eurogamer had done anything like this; so not surprisingly you know things are going to get a bit 'crazy', and even more so when games such as Gears of War 2, Mirror's Edge and Street Fighter 5 are on show and ready for you to play.
The 'Expo' was hosted by Eurogamer and Eurogamer's sister site Gameindustry.biz, who was hosting the career fair at the same time. The event took place at the 'Old Truman Brewery' near the centre of London. It was quite out of the way but in an ideal spot, as the place did seem like a huge and unused old brewery, funnily enough. It all took part in the one building, which consisted of two floors and an outdoors area. The downstairs catered for the Eurogamer Expo, which was large but contained, and the upstairs featured the more organised developers and ambitious employees for the careers fair. The outside had two Ubisoft specific tent areas, which ran the games found in the Expo, but in the lovely cold weather... barely worth mentioning. I couldn't help myself but stick to the ground floor for the majority of the time, and I think being scared of short falls and bad weather might be a bad excuse for this.
As everyone else had the same phobia as I did, the 'Expo' started off fairly calmly, but by midday it was heaving with people and the largest groups would be found around the Call of Duty: World at War booth, the Gears of War 2 booths and the Street Fighter 4 booths. I was lucky enough to manage to watch the majority of games on show, but the games I had gotten to experience more closely are the ones I'll be giving you a quick insight about in this article. Red Faction: Guerrilla, Resident Evil 5 and Street Fighter 4.
RED FACTION: GUERRILLA
With the quite predictably popular booths of the afternoon being Gears of War 2 and Mirror's Edge, you also had the predictably unpopular booths around them, which were also of less attention to the staff, as they only setup around 2 – 3 setups of these games. One of the unpopular games of the day happened to be a game I got to experience the most, Red Faction: Guerrilla.
A primary factor of why this game is so overlooked at the moment is because no one seems to know what it is, I understand if you mention 'Red Faction' to any regular gamer they would most likely think of the original FPS, Mines on Mars situated game on the Playstation 2, things have changed somewhat from then and the designs have taken a few turnarounds in its life as a series. Red Faction: Guerrilla happens to be the 3rd title, it's on Mars but has strangely chosen the 3rd person perspective.
With the doubts at the back of my mind, and wondering if this game was as bad as I had guessed, I gave the game a go, but to my disbelief I was quite impressed. I concluded after my playtime that Red Faction Guerrilla might just be one of the most underrated games of the year. Gamers are perhaps put off I think by this new and transformed game is the 3rd person view, however, the view seemed to work very well with the heavily destructible and interactive environments. The controls felt intuitive, swinging your hammer actually had a sense of weight to it, and actually seeing it being swung added to that experience. Another impressive feature - understandably, and expected coming from this series - is the destructibility, and how things just fall apart. You'll be able to fire a weapon or hit a certain part of a building, and the part you'd hit would dynamically break off. Physics are also very apparent and realistic to destructible objects, you hit a key foundation off part of a building or bridge and it may collapse and crush you. I don't think this feature has been driven home enough, as it's been such a popular interest in the past.
Landscapes are vast in this game, there seems like there will be a lot of places to go, however due to lack of sound I had no idea of what I was doing, so judging what you were able to do was particularly hard.
You're able to get in a number of vehicles in Red Faction, and the use of these aren't just for the general landscape traversing, but creating traps and mobile weapons. As soon as I got in the nearest truck I couldn't help but drive into a building and watch it crumble around me. I can see this game being the GTA of Mars.
Red Faction: Guerrilla is going to be on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC and will be coming to your system early next year. It's developed by Saints Row 1 & 2 developers Volition, and is being published by THQ.
RESIDENT EVIL 5
The last time I saw the sights of Resident Evil was from the edge of my seat during the E3'08 conference which now seems like ages ago, they managed to show us some great looking co-op footage of a level in Africa, and although I only got to experience the luxuries from a tiny 640x480 live streamer, it still looked really good. This time around though, I got to see it in the flesh, and it was even better... yes, it was necessary.
It was quite surprising that this game wasn't as popular as some of the other titles at the event, definitely similar ones such as Left 4 Dead, which I was certain wouldn't have been well known. But, I can say that is a good thing as it gave me a chance to have a long look at it - unfortunately, not a long play.
The level featured in the demo seemed to be the same demonstrated at E3, it was in a small town in an African desert and there were a lot of brain eating zombies. The first thing that struck me about this game were the visuals, from afar they looked very atmospheric at E3, but up close they looked technically revolutionary. As far as graphical finesse goes, I will admit that this game was the best looking game I saw at the Eurogamer Expo, yes, even better than Far Cry 2 at least on a close up and personal scale. The fact that this was all rendering real time on the 360, with next to no visible slowdown was even more impressive.
Witnessing the playthrough of the game looked sturdy enough, without being able to comment on the controls, the character movements tended to act fairly stiff and you seemed a bit restricted in movement. I'm not too sure if this was deliberate, or just part of the early build, but it definitely didn't look like the zombie equivalent of Mirror's Edge. Taking in other features, I managed to pick up upon the interface - or should I say, lack of interface - everything that you brought up on screen seemed to be initiated by a button press, or upon interaction with an object. I suppose this is a very common aim for developers nowadays, avoiding screen clutter, but it works even better for this game as it means there's more eye candy to drool upon.
With little playthrough experience with the previous titles in the series, Resident Evil 5 looks to be very story driven and reliant on restricted path lines, basically pretty much trial and error gameplay. Many alcoves which lead to dead ends, and places to find items, which is fine for an atmospheric and 'cinematic' driven game.
From what I saw, Resident Evil 5 looks to be a very 'pretty' and very solid 3rd person survival horror, and for someone who hasn't played the previous titles then this might be a good place to start.
Resident Evil 5 will be coming to Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 March next year and is being developed and published by Capcom.
STREET FIGHTER 4
Street Fighter games have been well known for their cel shaded, over the top, bold and colourful graphics and characters, and it's very rare to have a developer bring a classic into the modern gaming world and have it work. From the quick experience I garnered from this title it's definitely heading in the right direction of obtaining a nostalgic plus reminiscent fan-base.
Street Fighter IV's direction is 3D this time round, but Capcom have tried to be as original as possible with it by making the entire graphics engine cel shaded, and it's turned out pretty well. Not only are the characters fully 3D, but so are the environments around them, there's a depth of perception but you're stuck to a 2D plane, which I think is what the majority of the fans wished for.
I had only played Street Fighter and Street Fighter II, and that was a good few years ago now, but this game brought back some fond memories. From what I can tell this game is going to be based upon the classics of Street Fighter II as much as possible, but implementing some of the more appreciated features from Street Fighter III. All the characters I saw were familiar from the originals, Ryu, Honda and Blanka of course returning, but there are a few additional characters to the series and they will have their own unique styles and character influences, another thing Street Fighter is typically famous for.
Except from being visually impressive and looking 'modernised', the 3D engine didn't seem to add much to the gameplay experience, but there was one thing it did do and that was zoom in on 'Ultra Combo' attacks making them even more impressive and upstanding to watch.
It was a tad too short of a 'watch through' to give this game a clear judgment, but what I am near certain of is that true Street Fighter fans are going to love this one.
Street Fighter IV is coming to Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC and is TBA. Is is also being developed and published by Capcom.
All in all the Eurogamer event was decent enough, despite the weather and lack of space for playing the games amongst the many gamers crammed around the more anticipated games. I wonder if Eurogamer will expand if they continue the event each year.
Posted By: Lee Burton
Date: 2008-11-06
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