SO,
On Saturday the 4th of October (AEST), a handful of my mates and I headed to the 2014 EB Games Expo in my city, Sydney. If you don't know what the EB Games Expo is: It's pretty much a mini-E3 with presentations, shows and demos of both released and unreleased games. Anyways, I managed to do heaps this year - far more than I ever have. The queues were short and we just experienced more things overall.
*APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE FOR THE TERRIBLE CAMERA QUALITY, FRIEND HAD TO USE HIS POTATO PHONE*
I'll begin with the people I met there. Apart from the really nice staff, and other awesome gamers, I got to meet some pretty cool celebrities.
I got a fist-bump and very brief conversation with TheFloppyRagdoll (Battlefield YouTuber)
Also got to see a live show by the Good Game crew! (An Australian game review show that I love)
I also had some on-the-move interview with this small YouTuber which was fun. Will link the video here once I see that he's uploaded it.
So in chronological order, we went straight to Battlefield Hardline. I wasn't all that keen since I played the potato out of the beta, but my friends all very much love Battlefield. On walking in, we were given a short debrief and then walked into the gaming room. On my way in I spotted TheFloppyRagdoll and decided to go in for the fist bump. We played the new high-speed chase mode 'Hotwire' - it was meh. Wasn't the best game mode to show off the full fun of Hardline, but my mates seemed to enjoy it. On our way out, we got a free BF: Hardline poster.
We then moved across to the Ubisoft booth, where I saw one of my old friends handing out posters.
So naturally, I asked him for all 5 posters (Farcry 4, The Crew, AC: Unity, AC: Rogue and The Division) and received all 5 posters completely free.
If I recall correctly, we then marched our way to the Ubisoft conference/presentation, where we had a break for an hour and watched as Ubisoft CMs presented their games: Farcry 4, The Crew, Assassin's Creed: Unity and The Division. Didn't learn much about Farcry 4, but it does look amazing. The Crew has a HUGE map, and I mean HUGE. It maps the whole of North America into an open-world landscape. Absolutely unbelievable. AC:U was pretty much what was expected. The Division is a game I've always kept an eye out for, and it did not let me down. We were given a live gameplay demo during the night cycle (yes, there's a dynamic day/night and weather system), where the players had to take down a small hostile group known as 'The Cleaners'. The Division is extremely pretty on Xbox One - although I did notice a slight FPS drop when there were huge amounts of particle effects and flames everywhere. The UI is super neat and awesome as I thought it would be.
Next, one of my friends and I moved on to go play some Halo 2 Anniversary (Because the others were off to obsess over already-released games like Battlefield 3, War Thunder and World of Tanks ).
Shockingly, there was absolutely zero queue. They literally invited us to walk straight in and start playing. I was taken to some 'VIP Area' to play against the staff because they were impressed with my Halo gear (mostly the helmet). I won and scored myself an MCC Shirt. Halo 2 Anniversary felt amazing - with a solid 1080p and 60fps. I haven't played Halo in ages, let alone Halo 2, yet I felt right at home as soon as I grabbed the controller. It's an impressive looking game indeed.
Next up was Advanced Warfare I believe. Now, for a Call of Duty game it was pretty impressive. Gunplay is very responsive and tight as usual - however the gameplay felt far more movement and height based. There's an unbelievable amount of verticality - with your ability to boost yourself in all directions with your exoskeleton. The weapons are awesome with their near-future science fiction feel; my personal favourite being a shotgun that fires devastating blasts of air I think? Like in every CoD game, there's heaps to customise in terms of weapons choices and these are all original weapons too - some with very radical attachments.
So although it may sound like a relatively quick and bland day, it felt like the most fulfilling convention I've been to. Got to meet so many people and do so many things - it was amazing. To finish the night, we enjoyed a full hours and a half of hilarious entertainment with the live Good Game show. To conclude this thread, here's a couple more pictures:
A picture with some extremely gorgeous booth babes:
Another with a truly amazing Alien cosplay:
If you have any questions, feel free to ask below!