Wow, I've neglected this blog. I originally started writing this post way back in August just after Gamescom, but never got around to proofreading and publishing it...

https://twitter.com/mrwonko/status/237827003418558464

Hotline Miami was probably my favorite game. I've played it for hours (certainly over one, anyway) and had a lot of fun, while also being able to chat with the artist working on it, who's also occasionally visible in the video above. The guy playing is Rami Ismail of Vlambeer, an Indie Team whose other member, Jan Willem Nijman, came up with the idea for the 7 day FPS.

I've also played Far Cry 3, which I was pretty underwhelmed by - maybe the controls where strange (possibly had mouse acceleration?) or it's that we got to play a level already previously shown? Either way I'm not looking forward to it all that much anymore.

Then there's Hitman: Absolution. Not much to say about that - I apparently did everything right in order to be able to kill the target silently and unseen, which was just as well since I wouldn't have had enough time to try anything else anyway - I didn't even make it to the extraction zone after the assassination. Possibly because I looked at the options before playing - seems solid enough, with lots of graphics settings. But I think this, like its predecessors, is a game you have to spend some time to get into - and I'm not done with any of the Hitman previous games so far, despite having them all. Unless you run around shooting people, but that's not how it's supposed to be played.

I got to play a couple of rounds of Street Fighter X Tekken against someone much better than me. I had hardly heard of that before, seemed nice enough, but only just having purchased Super Street Fighter 4 I'll stick to that for now.

While I was looking forward to Dishonored, and it played well enough, it lacked the part where I was blown away. There's really nothing wrong with it that I could point to - maybe I'm just getting to old? Well, I wasn't going to purchase that any time near release due to its multitude of pre-order bonuses anyway. Also, Bethesda's swag got worse. In 2010 I got a nice New Vegas shirt for watching a Rage demo, this year they had an ugly giant bag which is more like a billboard.

While Capcom also lacked swag, they at least had no less than 3 games for you to play. I don't really like their decision to have a single queue and then rotate the players through the games, but I suppose it saved space. Choosing Chris' campaign in the Resident Evil 6 demo (since having only played Resi 5 he was the only one of the available character I knew) I was presented with a fairly standard shooter instead of the horror game Resident Evil to my knowledge once was. Well, I guess if you make it to the 5th sequel your game is eventually pretty mainstream (or niche, but that's not the case here). When it was my turn to try Lost Planet 3, I didn't even bother, instead returning to the game that was the reason I had stood in line in the first place to try its other demo level, since someone had apparently left prematurely: DMC - Devil May Cry. Because it's just what I had hoped for, discounting the new Dante I already knew about. But at least they got the gameplay right, from what I played. It controls somewhat different from the previous games, amongst others due to the inability to focus enemies, but that doesn't make it any worse. No, it's apparently still a very nice hack'n'slay, and there's far too few of those on PC. So I'm really looking forward to this. Let's hope we get a good PC port.

So no noteworthy swag? Actually there was, but let's elaborate: Hotline Miami and other Indie games shared the Steam Booth. Steam booth? Shouldn't Valve be there? No, there was in fact not a single Valve employee, and I would've loved to talk to them. But at least there were two women handing out Steam keys. So I did get Ys: The Oath at Felghana (which was actually on my Steam wishlist - I almost bought it in the Summer Sale but then decided Ys: Origin would suffice for a while), Resonance, AI War: Fleet Command, Wings of Prey and Star Ruler for free. Not complaining here.

Then there was the Endless Space community event. I was hoping for some nice chats, and got that and more: One of the game's developer's CEOs, a Ubisoft employee, me and my friend talked quite a lot. One of the things I learned: Beyond Good & Evil 2 is not actively being developed at the moment, but hasn't been killed off yet: "They're thinking about it [(BG&E2)]." I also got a Swag-bag containing, besides a shirt and a poster, a Steam key for the game - which I actually did not have before, I just went to the meetup because it sounded nice. And it was.. A successful evening.

Comments

Write a comment