Just got back.
Disappointing lack of freebies. The best stuff was in the Careers fair upstairs. Got a couple of Lionhead yoyos and some mugs and some other small random crap.
Anyway the games (in no order):
Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts: Bit underwhelming tbh, Liked the graphical style, but it didn't scream buy me at full price, maybe for 20 quidish. May download XBL demo and try for longer.
Resistance 2: Single player level was quite good, graphics much better than the 1st one, Buying this, but more based on the co-op from the Beta. Hard to judge the single player from a random level.
Mirrors Edge - MIND BLOWING!! These were all setup on PS3s with 50 inch Bravias. I can see what people mean about motion sickness now as the Hudless design and FPS view on a large screen really makes you think you must move when the character on screen turns/jumps/climbs. Only 1 level and I sort of knew how to make it through after watching a few people. I stopped to beat down the police officers which is quite fun as the whole thing is really in your face (Feels very natural and more satisfying than FPS games that have Melee attacks etc).
Resi 5 - Awesome!! Played this a couple of times, This and Killzone 2 had best graphics of any game at the show by a country mile tbh. It was only setup as single player so the AI is your partner. The zombies look awesome upclose, camera was a bit annoying. Real time weapon switching worked well. Shooting and slashing was fast, didn't feel slow or sluggish as I feared, compared to previous games you really feel like you are surrounded by enemies (kind of like in Dead Rising).
Race Pro - disappointing. Looked to be 30fps or slower to me which really feels dated and slow. Graphics were about Forza 2 level, but the cars didn't have the sheen that PGR4 did. Also plays really slowly (I know it is a sim). And there was this weird 2 player mode where midrace you swap who drives. Not a big Sim racing fan so maybe one for hardcore fans.
Killzone 2 - Mind Blowing. The whole game had "Pre Beta code" plastered on it. The graphics in this form were better than anything on the market today tbh. Guns felt good, zoom works really well and has a huge amount of detail. Tiem was very limited on this. They had it setup with some 5.1 dolby speakers and you could hear some amazing directional effects. The animations when you shot people seemed different every single time (based on where you shoot).
Street Fighter HD Remix: I played this a lot. A few guys form some gaming beat-em-up website (neoempire) had a 360 set up for themselves which they were filming vids from. They bought their 360 arcade sticks and let the odd person play them. The game is everyting from the arcade with amazing graphics, no slowdown (Hard to believe I played this 15 yrs ago in Arcades!!). This was the final build with all characters so played quite a few different ones. No input lag, sprites look amazing and the redrawn animations are great. They have tweaked a few characters here and there which will take some getting used to
Must mention they also had this on other 360s with normal controllers. They have definitely slackened the timings as you can pull of moves a bit better than SF2 on XBLA (using D-Pad). Still pretty crappy to play though tbh, and most people played with the joystick crew instead.
SFIV: 6 arcade cabinets with 1 vs 1 winner stays on (1 screen per person). This was awesome. The queue was a bit annoying so only had about 4 goes. Annoying this arcade machine is not in any UK arcades. Played the 360 version as well, looks the same more or less to the arcade version, arcade version seemed a bit faster but not sure on what settings were used. Sadly they haven't tweaked the controls for this (yet). ON HD remix you can pull of fireballs and dragon punches, using same controller on SFIV was not so easy. Still the game plays amazingly, worryingly some people have mastered it already!!! Graphics were really really good, although I expected the console version to look better as I am sure 360/PS3 are more powerful than the Arcade units.
Motorstorm 2: Played split screen. Graphics better than the 1st one, this game comes into it's own online I guess, the single player has never grabbed me much, the person I raced was rubbish (picked a bike and I picked a 4X4). still not 100% if I will get this.
LittleBigPlanet: Wow, played some of the actual single player levels and they are HUUUUUGGGGGGEEEE. Also a made a point of getting the lady to show me the create mode. Compared to the Beta there was a lot more items, stickers etc (so much so scrolling could be annoying unless you use the Heart function). The bosses were quite good, a bit on the easy side tbh. Knowing how the level editor works some of the levels I played must have taken ours if not days to create!
Gears 2: Only watched this, didn't play. It was set up as 4 vs 4. Graphics marginally better than the 1st one, but from 1 map hard to tell. Annoying the co-op wasn't available. Buying this.
Smackdown vs Raw 2009: This was on a huge 50 inch screen as well. Facial stuff is spot on for the wrestlers I recognised, not as big a wrestling fan these days so didn't bother playing it, but what I saw looked nice.
GTI Club +: 60fps, very nice backgrounds, amazing for a downloadable game. Played in 2 player and it really seemed to capture the feel of playing the old version in arcades well. More people playing this than RacePro and Motorstorm.
Bionic Commando: Underwhelming. The swinging in the air seemed quite slow (slower than spiderman 3 for instance). Felt like Halo style mavity. It is pretty awesome grabbing cars and enemies and flinging them with your arm, camera didn't cause any problems for me.
Fable 2: I have this game already, but just wanted to mention some of the people who made the game were there in the Lionhead booth and I got a few tips and answers to annoying questions that I did not want to use FAQs etc to find
That's all. played other games, but they were just stuff you can already buy and get demos for on Live etc, the above is the list I mainly went to play.
rp2000
