Eurogamer Review

My review of Eurogamer Expo.

Most of the 2 days was spent queuing and playing either Shooters or Racers for some reason. Anyway a little flavour of both:

Shooters

Titanfall - Excellent fun, played the whole of the short session with a grin on my face. I wasn't too fussed about this, which was strange as it sounded like the kind of game that I would like...and it was. Basically you start the match as a Pilot (basically a foot soldier) and at various points of the match you can call down your own Titan (the big Mech's!!). Playing as the Mech isn't too powerful either and the game seems to have great versatility. Plays very smoothly and is very fast paced as you would expect from the guys behind COD

COD: Ghosts - For some reason I decided to queue for an hour to play on this and it was a total waste of my time. In a nutshell, its like any other COD you have played before, just with shinier graphics.

Battlefield 4 - Well I think it was 4, it seems a hell of a lot like 3 to be honest, only difference was that the Multiplayer match was 16 v 16. Even though the match had more players, it still felt like I was running around not seeing many people. I think I ended with a k/d of around 5/8, which after 10 minutes or so would suggest I was sitting in a corner scratching my balls. All in all a little disappointing

Killzone: Shadow Fall - Having never have played any of the previous Killzone games (apart from Liberation on PSP/Vita) I didn't really know what to expect. The game looked incredibly good and most of the gameplay seemed smooth, but the shooting mechanics seemed really twitchy. Really undecided on my view of this one.

Wolfenstein - I put this on normal difficulty, and it was hard. It looked nice and played well but the difficulty curve seemed quite high. On the whole it wasn't too bad, just nothing specific to write home about.

Blacklight: Retribution - Jumped on this as I had a spare ticket after playing KZ Shadow Fall. Liked what I played although it didn't really do anything different to the multitudes of FPS's out there.

Killzone Mercenary - I decided to jump on the latest KZ game for the Vita, and if it wasn't for an inverted axis control set up I would have been hugely impressed. It felt very impressive for a handheld game and the graphics were excellent. If I didn't have such a backlog of games I would definitely be looking to pick this up.

My pick: Titanfall - easily the most enjoyable game over the 2 days.

Racers

Drive Club - The game was still in Alpha code and at times you could tell. It was difficult to get a good view on this, although I like the little challenges that popped up throughout the lap, like drifting so much around a particular corner, or driving at a certain speed over a straight section. Nice little touches but remain unconvinced at the game.

Forza 5 - Yet again I remain disappointed at the latest Forza game. I was completely unimpressed at the Forza 4 demos and this has done nothing to convince me that the new game is an improvement. It was completely underwhelming and the feedback on the Triggers I thought was awful, completely destroying any concentration when braking into a corner.

Gran Turismo 6 - One word. Crap. Really wasn't impressed the cars felt as if they were floating around the track. The game looks impressive from a graphical point of view, but apart from that nothing else to write home about

Need for Speed: The Rivals - Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 anyone?? Honestly played, looked and felt like Hot Pursuit. There were some good things in here but after getting my hopes up on Hot Pursuit from an EG Expo a few years ago, then being disappointed when it came out, I wont be getting my hopes up for this one.

My pick: Drive Club - probably the best of a bad bunch in my opinion

Other Games

Resogun - As well as Drive Club, this is a day 1 game for PS+ subscribers. A spiritual successor to the Super Stardust Games released previously, this was a pretty frantic dual stick shooter.

Dying Light - I liked this (and got a free T-Shirt ), felt quite a bit like Dead Island. If you like running around hacking zombies to death then this will be right up your street.

Batman Arkham Origins Blackgate - Interestingly this is 2D side scrolling platformer, with Arkham Asylum style combat. Not sure what to make of it to be honest, it looked good but the controls seemed really slow and unresponsive.

Ryse - Really didn't know what to expect of this MS exclusive and I must say that I enjoyed it. I haven't read too much about it, but the short session was co-op, whereby you and another play as Gladiators dropped into an area to fight off hordes of barbarians. It was a little hack and slash but I quite enjoy those types of games, so this one gets a thumbs up from me.

World of Tanks - Bloody awful, and beats COD Ghosts into the worst game that I played over the 2 days. Awful controls, seemed really slow, I know it is supposed to be, they are tanks after all, but it just seemed really sluggish. Gave up after a couple of minutes lol


X1 vs. PS4

Both will undoubtedly be great consoles, with some really good exclusives. However purely on aesthetics the PS4 wins hands down. The X1 is just a brick and really fecking ugly. The PS4 looks a lot more refined in my opinion. Not exactly the type of thing people will buy a console for, but that's my 2 pence worth

X1 Controller vs. Dualshock 4

The 360 controller was overwhelming better than Dualshock 3 in my opinion, however the DS4 is a huge improvement over its predecessor. The analogue sticks curve inwards which gives greater control and the triggers are a 100% improvement. They actually allow you to play shooters now lol!. The X1 controller felt a little more of the same, although I felt the triggers weren't quite as good, but that may have come from my Forza 5 experience. The DS4 wins on this one for me though, all the changes over DS3 have made a huge improvement.


Summary

The Expo was ok, but queue management was horrendous, worse than previous years with probably an average waiting time of around 1 hour to play any of the bigger games. Worse queue was Titanfall which was around 1.30 to 1.45!

They expanded the Indie & Retro gaming sections and overall the event was larger than previous years with the over 18's section expanding onto the first floor.

The X1 and PS4 areas were handled very differently. Everything PS4 was enclosed off, with a queue to get into the section and 2 tokens to play 2 different games. The games that were playable were different on each token, so you couldn't play KZ Shadow Fall and Drive Club on the same trip into the area, which was a little frustrating, but understandable.

The X1 area however was a complete mess. It wasn't 'fenced' off like the PS4 area, but some of the games were effectively behind closed doors. The queue management here was awful and as the games were so close together at times it wasn't clear what queue was for what game.

Game of the weekend was Titanfall, thoroughly enjoyable and if it weren't coming to PC then it could be a reason for me to swing a pre-order from PS4 to X1.

Best game of the weekend - Titanfall
Worst game of the weekend - World of Tanks
Most surprising - Ryse

Thanks for the review. Were there many indie games available to play? And is Resogun the only indie game available to purchase on release day of PS4?

There was a whole section on Indie games, seemed like there was quite a few to play, although most of my time was spent standing in queues so didn't get too much time to spend in that area

Resogun will be free for PS+ subscribers on day 1, along with Drive Club. I'm pretty sure the PS4 console will come with a sub so you should be able to play the full game straight away (providing you are looking to get the console on release!)