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Eurogamer Expo 2011: Day 2 Part 1 | PSNStores

Eurogamer Expo 2011: Day 2 Part 1

Posted by on September 23rd, 2011 | 0 Comments | Tags: ,

Ok, so I’m exhausted. I’ve spent the better part of 11 hours roaming a large and hectic room, with a sea of unfamiliar faces providing no solace. Personally, I blame Inversion, the awful third person shooter from Namco Bandai, but I’ll get to that later.

I started off my day with a hands on with a couple of vita titles, which I covered in a previous post. Suffice to say, I’m thoroughly smitten with Sony’s new handheld, and I’m certainly planning on going back a couple more times in the next few days to try out a couple other games, if the cards allow me. No, I’m serious there. Game allocation is done through picking a card.

Moving swiftly onwards, I found myself at the Hello Games booth, checking out Joe Danger: The Movie. Speaking with two members of the development team, I must have learnt everything there is to know about the ludicrously ambitious sequel. Firstly, I learnt that Joe Danger: The Movie is completely insane. I did a backflip whilst on skis into a missile silo, thus disarming it, and then proceeded to land on a snowmobile and speed away, dodging incoming grenades. If that alone perked your ears right up, you’re going to love how much this game throws at you at any one time. Dodging saw blades in a mine kart was a particular highlight of my time with the game. Secondly? I learnt that Hello Games is completely insane. They’re trying to add smiley faces to every conceivable object, and that isn’t a joke. Even the collectible stars in the game are grinning. The chaps over there really are adding as much as they possibly can to the game, and I even heard the word “hoverboard” thrown around more than once. Of course, the second time was with a hint of surprise that the word had been said in the first place. Even though Joe Danger: The Movie looks remarkably complete, it still has a ways to go. The level structure isn’t done, there are still a lot of elements from the first game that haven’t been changed yet, such as the menus, and it all feels very fluid at the moment, like something could change at any time. This of course extends to the platform announcements. Joe Danger: The Movie doesn’t have a publisher yet, but they are certainly open to anything. According to Hello Games’ programmer and studio mouthpiece Sean Murray, I was “the worst person to have look at the game”, owing to the fact that I noticed that they were demoing on PCs with 360 pads, but with references to the XMB and the L1 and R1 buttons dotted around. It really was surreal.

After that, I made my way over to Battlefield 3, and played a portion of the Operation Guillotine level recently showcased in a trailer. It was an interesting experience. Battlefield 3 isn’t Call Of Duty. This may sound strange, but hear me out. CoD is the Michael Bay of single player campaigns, with explosions aplenty, and some cheesy dialogue to go along with it. Battlefield 3 is Tony Scott, with moments of high action tied together with slower, more downbeat sections. For every breach, there’s a moment where all you do is run down a hill, marveling at your surroundings. Goodness me, what surroundings they are. Battlefield 3 is certainly one of the better looking games on the expo floor, even if it doesn’t assault you with prettiness as some of the other games on display did. Wonderful lighting and animations are everywhere, with the attention to detail being nothing short of astounding. The thing about Battlefield 3 that makes writing about it so tricky is that you know what it is, and anything I say is really just snuff for your box. It’s there to keep you comfortable in your own thoughts. Going from all out war to all out gore, let’s talk about House Of The Dead: Overkill.

Have you played a House Of The Dead game? It’s like that, but really dumb. It isn’t bad, in fact, it’s fantastic, and an excellent move game. It is, however, gloriously stupid. Zombies explode into showers of gore, swear words get dropped like beats on a dance floor, and it’s all gussied up in a grind house exterior that makes it look like the strangest b movie you’ve ever seen. I played it with the Move Sharpshooter, and cocking my gun to reload felt so natural, like having an arcade in your home.

Little did I know, my day was going to take a couple of stranger turns yet…