The Eurogamer Expo was stuffed full of games but, due to Ross and I conducting and running between awesome interviews for you guys to read (including three top guys from Media Molecule, and one quarter of indie new kids Hello Games), we only actually played a tiny fraction of them. We would’ve come back for the second day but, not only were our passes only valid for the one day, one of us had travelled to the big smoke from Scotland and another from Wiltshire – so it was a bit of a walk.
Over the coming days, you can expect interviews relevant to LittleBigPlanet, LittleBigPlanet PSP, Joe Danger, Avatar, and Blue Toad Murder Files. We’ll also have in depth hands – on previews of games including (but not limited to) Aliens vs Predator, Joe Danger, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and God of War III. Just to give you a little taster of what we saw however, I will here talk a little about the PSP Lounge.
‘Lounge’ is just the word for it. Separated from the train station – style café by several square feet and your imagination, it was full of sofas, beanbags, and interesting cushions. I saw one chap collapsed on a beanbag with no interest in the developers or games around him whatsoever; perhaps he was a fanboy of some kind, and had become overcome by seeing real women for the first time. Most likely the young ladies in the skintight Nvidia outfits on the ground floor (their mothers must be so proud).
Anyways, the lounge was full of PSP Goats – sorry, Gos – dotted hither and tither. Some of them weren’t working, though whether this was due to technical hiccups or simple lack of battery power was unclear. Some of them were hooked up to power cables around a table, and some could be carried around in futuristic looking PSP branded globes the size of footballs. I like to think this was because Sony are huge fans of fifties science fiction; but it was probably more to stop kids shoving the dinky devices in their smelly pockets and making a run for it.
That guy in the middle is holding a GO behind that globe...right?
“You could play this in maths and you’d never know!” squeaked one young teen excitedly, holding a Go in his hands. With grammar like that, I imagine he’s already got a habit of playing games in English classes.
I played – though only briefly – the PSP version of Fat Princess, subtitled A Fistful Of Cake. On – screen text didn’t fit into the text box at all, and it froze on me within five minutes of playing; but it was presumably fairly early code, as debug options were available. Graphics were impressively close to the PS3 original, and gameplay seemed to be nigh on identical. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on whether you’ve already got the big screen version. Single player story consists of 15 missions but, again like the original, it seems that they are all nothing more than thinly veiled training exercises for the multiplayer. Incidentally I wasn’t able to try out the multiplayer; nobody else in the room seemed to be playing it for ad hoc, and nobody else in the world seemed to be playing it for wi fi.
Ross tried out LittleBigPlanet PSP, which he’ll be talking about elsewhere soon. Arguably the highest profile PSP game available to play, surprisingly few Gos were loaded with it. This despite the fact that the only devs in the room apart from Media Molecule were from Studio Cambridge, who made the game.
King Arthur had great trouble getting the attention of his knights.
Now, I can’t discuss the PSP lounge without mentioning the LittleBigPlanet goodie bags. Lovely people from Media Molecule were there, but for one day only (the day we went – lucky us!). They had exactly 100 goodie bags to give out, but these only went to the LBP faithful. Having shown our interest in the LBP team’s presence at the expo via e mail, we were sent an e mail in return detailing how to get hold of one of the bags. We had to draw an LBP or Media Molecule related picture of anything and any quality, then hand it to either James or Tom at the expo with a sly wink whilst saying the secret word ‘playgachef’.
When Ross – who you will remember is our resident artist – handed his picture over, the response was “Wow, that’s awesome! What’s your PSN ID?”
Yup, a top Media Molecule bod asked our very own Ross for his PSN ID.
When I handed my picture over however, Tom Kiss’s reaction was to laugh for ten seconds straight before finally saying “Well, I like the tail.”
A little piece of me died inside.
The important thing is that I got one of the bags, and a t shirt. I even got to choose which size I wanted (most likely out of sympathy), rather than having to put up with the ‘medium’ that seemed to be the standard for every other t shirt given out across the show.
Finally, an open invitation to make me look stupid: Where’s the ‘Home’ button on the Go? I spent a full sixty seconds looking, and couldn’t find one…
Comments