12 Games For Christmas 2009 - Game #1

Here we go, my annual "Game of the Year" posts. Always look forward to doing these, as it allows me to look back on the year that was and analyze what games were truly exemplary in a year full of fantastic purchases for just about anyone. Should also mention that everything here is stuff that I've played, so I can't wax lyrical on anything that I haven't sampled (i.e Borderlands, for instance). 

And here we go...

1. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3)

The Playstation 3 has been a joke of a console since before it even launched. I'm sure I don't need to bring up the $599, Ridge Racer and Giant Enemy Crab memes to remind anyone of that. And hell, for close to a year, there was very little reason for anyone to actually own one. But ever since then - the system's slowly been getting better and better, and the line up of exclusive  software has been arguably the best of the generation so far. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is a further example of that, and may very well be easily the best game released all year.

Uncharted 2 does many, many things right. It has some of the best characterization you'll see in any game, and while the story and characters can fall into stereotypes and cliches, that's the point - it's meant to be reminiscent of those pulp serials that helped inspire the Indiana Jones series of films, and really, is that a bad thing? When the game shifts to a cutscene, you're interested and excited to see what's going to happen next, and not only because the story, but also because of the visuals - Uncharted 2 is easily one of the best looking games you'll see on any console. It's no wonder why Sony went with the cringe inducing "it looks like a movie" ad campaign.

The gameplay has also seen some improvement. The difficulty now works better so that if you're playing on harder difficulties, it's still relatively manageable throughout the whole game, compared to the original, where it proved to be more of a pain than anything else. The gun combat has also been improved so that enemies don't take a ludicrous amount of damage to kill, but still doesn't feel right, compared to similar games like Gears of War 2, which has that whole cover based shooter thing down pat.

One are also worth commenting on is the improved stealth gameplay and multiplayer. Despite being initially thought as being terrible additions, they prove to be some of the best handled aspects of the game - the stealth isn't a required opiton to play the game, but it becomes incredibly useful later. The multiplayer is also one of the most fun games you'll experience on the Playstation Network, thanks to the fact that everything you can do in the single player you can do in the multiplayer, so jumping and climbing plays just as much of a role as taking cover or precisely shooting. It breaks the trend of fantastic single player games having unnecessary and often pointless multiplayer.

All in all, Uncharted 2 is easily one of the best games of the year, providing an excellent single player with a well thoughtout and fun multiplayer component. Looks absolutely stunning and matches that aurally to boot. And the best part? There's very little to actually complain about. Good news to everyone who doesn't own a PS3 - you now have your reason to pick one up.

The eGames 2009 Wrap.

From October 30^th to the 1^st of November 2009, Melbourne was once again home to the IDEF Expo, featuring the fourth annual eGames Expo. As always, the Level 3 crew was there to help cover the show and expand our reach to newer audiences. However, this year saw some massive changes to the show – the biggest for us anyway was that we had our own booth for the first time – which proved to be a much more effective HQ for us than in previous years, and helped get the word out about the show in a big way. Hell, hearing Jason talk about that he signed his first autographs for fans was quite a surprise.

So what of the show? Let’s talk about specific moments:

A Nice Change of Scenery

The biggest change to the show came in a change of venue. Instead of taking place at the Melbourne Exhibition Center in Docklands (and right opposite the Crown Casino), the show was relocated to the Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton, which was right opposite the Melbourne Museum and IMAX theater. And for added value, it was a short walk to Lygon Street, home to some awesome Italian restaurants.

The new exhibition space proved to be quite the interesting change in atmosphere, where instead of being dominated by a dull grey and otherwise uninteresting area, we were surrounded by an older and much more visually interesting environment. There were paintings all over the roof of the building, which made it so much better to look at than before.

The front of the Exhibition Building (taken from here) 

As well as that, the larger space also made the show much easier to traverse. Last year, when the Digital Lifestyle Show was introduced, there wasn't much of a clear division between the two shows, and it wasn’t exactly clear where one show ended and the other one began. Here, there was a clear division, which made traversal just that little bit easier.

The only real disappointment in the use of the space came in the fact that it wasn’t all used. There’s a second level to the Exhibition Building which, with the exception of a ‘Develop Theater’ and a media center, wasn’t used. But I’ll get to that later on.

Though while it was a great change of scenery, there were several reasons as to why it proved to also not be a terrific location…

Pressure Cooking

The weekend that eGames was taking place at had an average temperature of around 25-30 degrees as the maximum temperature. Now, while the Royal Exhibition Building is a great looking building, it’s also listed as a heritage building. That means that no matter what, it cannot be touched in any specific way – and needs to be preserved for future generations. This also means that there’s no air conditioning.

Now, I’m not too sure what the attendance figures were, but you’d have to factor in that both parts of the IDEF show were quite populated on the day, being a weekend and what not. But good lord, despite the heat, people still came. Also didn’t help that there were a lot of powerful lights set up around the show.

Though this was thankfully alleviated by the rampant abuse of the media lounge water fridge. Thankfully, someone thought ahead and prepared a LOT of water bottles and kept them nice and cool, and proved to be a popular spot for those who could get into there. As for everyone else? Well, I'm amazed as to how they managed to survive.

Can I Hear Myself?

One of the absolute stupidest moments of the entire show came in the organization of the main stage sound. Put it this way, where the main stage is, to the left of that is the eGames Masters stuff, and to the north of it is some more competitive gaming. Both have commentary, and both are LOUDER than the main stage. And it also helps that the main stage mics? Not particularly reliable. I was on the stage once for two of the days (Saturday was to help take part in an episode of the Lobby, Sunday was for a podcast with some of the people from Thumbpad), and it was hard to hear the people actually speaking. Turns out I wasn’t the only one who thought that.      

From what I understand, the original plan was to make the competitive gaming stuff be on the second level of the building to keep it away from the main stage, but the organizers couldn’t get it approved. Though despite this, it's an absolute shame that it was really quite difficult to do stuff on the main stage.  

Level 3 and Thumbpad do a podcast (from L-R: me, Anna, Jason, Mick, Megan, Jamie and Shane)

This also extended to our booth. We were right opposite the Monash University gaming tournament (the booth was originally setup to play host to the Monash High School gaming tournament, but the space was kindly given to us by IT head Andrew Owen), and once the games of Halo decided to kick in, did we lose any chance of hearing anything from our booth – sounds of explosions and gunfire were common place. Again, no disrespect, but bloody hell it was loud.

Just WHAT were you guys giving away?

Probably the biggest exhibitor booth at the show was easily Ubisoft’s, with some extremely impressive showings – such as Assassins Creed II, James Camerons Avatar (both in regular and 3D editions – the latter of which is impressive), the new Shaun White game, Rabbids Go Home and Splinter Cell Conviction (which was unplayable, unfortunately). To the side of their main booth, there was also Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and another game that I cannot recall at this point in time.

Ubi were great for giveaways as not only did they have a LOT of Avatar and Assassins Creed posters to give away, but also plenty of DVD’s with trailers for upcoming games. The posters made for great decoration for the booth, and we had plenty of people dumping the DVD’s at our booth. On the Saturday in particular, after lunch time, came one of the most insane things I’ve ever seen.

During this time, there was a large line of people at the Ubi booth, but we hadn’t any idea what it was for. Especially when you consider the line itself was just obscene. We’re talking close to 30, maybe even more people in line. The million dollar question was just what exactly were Ubisoft giving away at their booth that caused such a huge line.

Initially, we ruled out the posters, because it’s not like they had any real value, but as we started to film interviews with reps from Madman and 2K Games (whom were bordering on the Ubi booth), I started to notice that people were being handed somewhat more valuable things, such as copies of Tom Clancy’s Endwar (don’t ask what version, it was a tin case – but given the way it was shaped, either a PC or 360 version), and even some 360 Faceplates.

I’m still a little unsure on what exactly was given away, because everything I heard was heard via hearsay more than anything else.

Booth Organization Extraordinaire

As I mentioned in the intro, Level 3 had its very first booth at the show, making us the second media long term media outlet to have our own dedicated booth at the show (Australian Gamer being the first). Unlike with the media coverage, this is where I spent most of my time organizing it and ensuring that people came to the booth to talk all about Level 3.

The first day proved to be an unmitigated disaster for a large portion of it. We had only two things setup that day – a TV with episodes of the show running, and a Dreamcast with Street Fighter III – 3^rd Strike running all day. Since Jason and most of the cast/crew were either absent or elsewhere, we had very few people coming to discuss the show, and we were known as “the booth that the Dreamcast and Street Fighter at”. After I had left, I was told that it improved some, since Jason had actually returned and there was some discussion of the show actually happening.

The Level 3 crew, manning the booth all weekend!

The second and third days improved exponentially. Mainly because we had a really interesting competition going on; this also doubled as an excuse to get others to create content for us. Put simply, we had a green screen setup at the booth, with a camera. We’d get people to come to the booth and do a review for us. They could review any game they wanted, provided that they didn’t curse and that the review lasted no more than three minutes long. The catch was that not only would they win a game should they make a top three, but the best three reviews would be featured during Christmas time. We got over 10 of these, which were great, got a great representation, from some of the Swingamers people, to randoms, to forumites. We had even asked Yug from Australian Gamer to do some reviewing for us, which would’ve been awesome if he had gone ahead with it.

The Greatest Thing Ever?

Taking place on Halloween weekend, and given the fact that it’s a gaming expo, you would expect there to be some form of cosplay, or people dressing up in some spectacular fashion. And for the most part, I was very disappointed in this regard, because there wasn’t much there. Sure, there were a few awesome examples (such as a Midna, a Yuna, an Eva with a box, and a Meryl), but only one really takes the cake. And for good reason.

On the Saturday, there were a couple of dudes dressed up as Knights. I don’t think they were from any particular game or whatever, but they were in the full armoured suits and everything. In itself, it was a pretty cool feat, made even more awesome by the fact that these dudes were doing it on an absurdly hot day. And yet, that still isn’t the most awesome thing about this weekend.

Ubisoft had a Wii game on display known as “Just Dance” (ironically, the Lady Gaga track of the same name isn’t present), it proved to be quite popular, with people dancing all weekend to it. Towards the end of the Saturday, we were let known that the two Knights were actually playing this dancing game, and low and behold, they were.

I have video of the knights dancing to MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This”, as well as Blur’s “Girls & Boys”, and it remains one of the greatest things that I have ever seen in my life; to see two dudes in full plate mail waving a Wii-mote and just dancing like an absolute tool. It’s amazing. Utterly, utterly amazing.

 

What Could Have Been Improved?

While eGames 2009 was a good show, it could have been a much better show. The biggest thing missing was a lack of big exhibitors from last year – namely Sony, Nintendo and EA. Granted, Sony probably would not have had a lot to show that was particularly new (aside from EyePet and the new Ratchet game) and the same case could’ve been made for Nintendo. Then again, Microsoft were only there to show off Forza Motorsport 3, a game that had only come out the week before the expo had begun, and arguably their second biggest game for the holidays, so make your own reasoning.

Megapowers collide! Yug from Australian Gamer, Jason and I talk business.

The other thing that was needed was more content on the main stage. Sure, while there was a lot of Rock Band, eGaming and stuff from the webshow “The Lobby”; gone were most of the other interesting show panels. Sure, there were things there from EA Melbourne (whom are an offshoot of Dead Space/Dante’s Inferno developers Visceral Games), and a few other developer things, but that’s it – there was nothing else, which proved to be a huge disappointment.

Personally speaking, my biggest disappointment was my ‘attempt’ to interview Ubisoft. I write attempt in that way because it never happened. Ubisoft PR blew me off the day we were meant to do the interview, citing that they prefer to let the developers of the products talk about them. Okay fine, understandable, yet tell me that next time before I ask you to do an interview THE DAY BEFORE, and BEFORE you commit to it.

Otherwise, it was a decent show. Could have been improved, but then again, what show can’t? Thanks to everyone that made it possible for the show to exist, and thanks to everyone that stopped by. Made from a great weekend, and let’s try do it again next year, kay?

Oh, and before I forget…

WE ARE THE SHOW!