EGX – Queuing Simulator 2015

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]urning up to the National Exhibition Centre at 9.30 on the first day of EGX, the UK’s biggest gaming exhibition, I thought it would only be the hardcore fans and some particularly zealous press that would be arriving before me. Unfortunately, I was wrong, and by the time I arrived, there was only just enough time to take my place right at the back of a sea of enthusiastic gamers.
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This was my first time at any kind of gaming exhibition, and even at the beginning of the 4-day event, it was pretty overwhelming. After stumbling around in awe of the scale of everything, I started my EGX experience properly with Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, the upcoming instalment set in Victorian London. The segment that we got to play involved a short mission in which you took Evie, one of two brother/sister protagonists, into the Tower of London to take out a Templar. Syndicate has a few new features, namely the arrival of a grappling hook/zip-wire combo, and a slightly more Hitman-style way of slowly developing an approach to your target, but at its heart, it’s still just another Assassin’s Creed game.

Deciding to avoid games that had already been released to try to avoid queuing for something I already knew I liked, I had to force myself to bypass Mad Max and Metal Gear Solid V. Even though it wasn’t even 11am by the time I left Assassin’s Creed, the queue for the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront was already reported to be three hours long, so I steered clear. Bypassing some of the bigger games proved to be a pretty good idea though, as it brought me to the end of the hall devoted to indie games.

By 11am, the queue for upcoming Star Wars Battlefront was already reported to be three hours long, so I steered clear

The three indie sections actually ended up being my favourite places to be; minimal queues, more choice of games, and the chance to actually engage with developers. While you might be waiting 40 minutes or more to play a popular new release elsewhere in the exhibition, here you could play through three or four demos in the same amount of time. Popular multiplayer games like SpeedRunners and Gang Beasts proved popular, but there was a lot more on offer. My first port of call was Enter the Gungeon, a top-down rogue-like dungeon-crawler, where you face off against murderous anthropomorhpic bullets. It’s brilliantly animated, and even though the demo didn’t let me get very far, gameplay was wonderfully challenging.

Other indie hits included Poncho, an 8-bit style platformer in which you guide an adorable poncho-wearing robot through a variety of beautifully-drawn levels, by switching between different levels with the 2D environment; Eugenics, an early build of an eventually much larger game in which you build your ideal society through manipulating the genes of your citizens; Induction, a time-travel based puzzle game; and Party Hard, a pseudo-stealth game in which you have to pick off all the guests at a late-night party. The reduced scale of the indie areas meant that I wasn’t getting the simulated, crowd-pleasing spiel that the Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft stands were pumping out, and I could actually get a lot more out of the games.

Assassin’s Creed Syndicate tries hard, but doesn’t really break the mould.

My personal highlight of the indie booths was Creative Rift, which offered me my first chance to try out virtual reality. This was the longest I had to wait to play any of the indie games, but it was definitely worth it. From watching other people play while I was queuing, Creative Rift didn’t seem particularly impressive – it looks like a classic late nineties dungeon crawler, with pre-determined pathing and monsters who can only attack or move in straight lines. As soon as you put the headset on, however, all that goes out the window, and it’s amazing to see the impact that a technology still basically in its infancy can have. It takes a while to get used to – I was more than a little unsteady on my feet, but the freedom VR offers even a game as simple as Creative Rift is truly astounding.

Moving away from the Indie games, there was one game in particular I felt I had to check out, so I headed down to the other end of the hall towards Just Cause 3. I opted for the more chaotic ‘Destruction Frenzy’, rather than Free Roam, which didn’t show off as much of the game as I might have liked, but still gave an idea of the size and freedom that JC3 has to offer, and at this point it definitely feels like a good improvement on its predecessor.

By this point, I’d been on the go for about nine hours, so I decided to call it a day. While I’d gone expecting it to be busy, standing in queues by yourself gets dull quickly, and with so many companies trying so hard to shove their presence down your throats (looking at you, Nintendo), it can be hard to maintain the wide-eyed enthusiasm you walk in with. And if you’re not prepared to stand in queues for hours, there’s not actually all that much to do – a lot of floor space was taken up by big company’s stages, and while there are obviously games to play, and it’s cool to get a first look, there’s not really enough to comfortably fill two days, let alone four.
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