The Eurogamer Expo 2010 Earls Court London! Part 1 Hour 1! (and a bit,lol)

SUFFUR's picture
Submitted by SUFFUR on Wed, 10/06/2010 - 16:28

First of I would like to thank Tom Champion, Rupert Loman and Johnny Minkley and the rest of the hard working people at Eurogamer for putting on the show, it has been my second one and the new Venue is nice and big, though I did enjoy last years one with the walking into rooms, up and down to find different treasures, this years one was more open plan, space to que or look over someone shoulder etc.

 

As usual I traveled up by train and stayed with numpty and TipseyP, and got on various trains to get to the event. It has been a long time since I had been to Earls Court at least 20 to 30 years, came up with my Nan, to see some toy show and a Furnitue show, nope i don't know the dates but was an adaventure, is all I can say for those days. I do remember seeing a new ActionMan toy i wanted if that helps, lol.
 
So I arrive on the front side of Earls Court, have a Ciggy and look to were I gotta go, which is around to the left, I'm armed with my press passes and I have seen the general Public que which is long but seem happy for a wet day (and the way theat Earls Court is disigned they were mostly dry), all awaiting excitedly for the gaming heaven that awaits them. I say hi to some security guys and get confrimation of directions and get to the big glass doors that will allow me to see Need For Speed:Hot Pursuit, and this new Gadget Kinect.
 
I have learned over the years that I wanna talk about the show and what I wanna see first, then go on about the other stuff that people are really intersted in like Gow3, Bullet Storm, Fable 3 AC3:Brother hood, Fallout Vegas, MOH and other games. In truth anything I cover here will be on the EuroGamer Expo 2010 web site and will have video and interviews that will far out class anything I gotta say about games there, though as a burnoutaholic, NFS:HP is the main ingredient to you my readers, I even saw Kev gave it the two thumbs fresh, so whatever I write will be gravy, to already a great meal of a game and show,lol.
 
So I go to the desk, there are two on each side to the escalator to gaming heaven, got me my White Hospital Wrist Band with Euro Gamer Expo press written on it, and ride up the moving stairs to the London's Gaming Mecca Show, giving nods and smiles to the security and Blue T-shirted Expo staff, some i saw last year and some new ones, all happy to make sure i have a good time and get to see what I wanna see thats on the program.
 
On this trip a lot more disabled people here, which is  good thing with Special Effect in the house, these people make/create controllers for people that can't use convential ones, hell I even have problems with convential ones, the PS3 one is too small and Xbox don't do enough to make lefty happen in the games or other developers for that matter, not that they are bad controllers or bad developers. But Special Effect do controllers, for eye movement, head movement, giant street fighter joy stick controllers to use for driving games, and just large punch pads so at least you can have a go at driving one way or another. Ok so the basis for testing is driving games, but it's a start to bring games to a disabled audience.
 
With Kinect sitting in the distance you would think this type of tech would be intalled for Kinect, though news say it's not cost effective to get all that in there, which I can understand, but if it did, a lot of good could come from it. The People at the Special Effect area were awesume and they could do with any help you can give them, from donations to just helping them test. I know I enjoyed just racing with my eyes, i wasn't great but i can move my head which can be a hindrence, to that part of the tech demo.
 
So My first port of call is Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. There are 8 demo pods with the game running a multiplayer demo, via Lan or Live (not to sure), with Eurogamer tags. 4 on one side of the 'booth wall' and 4 on the other. I assume so cops are on on side and racers on the other. I kept seeing Roadsters Revenge in little titles on the screen but I could be wrong it may have been Roadsters 'something else or even the name of a track (tracks/routes) did have names' but nice touch either way for a Burnout 2 Point of Impact Fan! (er, That's Me,lol).
I'm watching over someones shoulder and EA helpers are about saying hi and offering help and making sure people stick to the game rather than playing around with the menu system etc. Pictures and video stuff can't be taken either, though there is a lot of video footage on Youtube, from this event and others.
 
So you pick a side via the Blue X Button/Blue Skittle to you old school XBoxer's out there, then from there, I got a cop on my first go, didn't have a choice as i was taking over from someone who walked away thinking they crashed out, as you get 3 to 4 crashes/ takeout's before ya deaded. I didn't do well, I think I may have owned one guy, but I drove really badly trying to take shortcut at the wrong time, learning to drift and brake, and changing the view from behind the car to bumper cam. And not finding the look back button which in Iain said later was on one of the sticks. As far as I could tell there were 4 view options, Behind car, Above the car, Bonnet cam and Bumper cam(FPV). I scrolled through them to find what I was comfortable with. Bumper cam to start but as a cop it can be easier with Behind car view, the tracks looked great, nice and wide, long draw distance, lots of detail, which on my first go was distracting, like oh yellow Cheverons Eh!, dust and dirt, pretty cars and omg oncoming, crash, lol. Anyhew I did ok on my first go but since was not sure where i was going or really doing I felt it was ok to just gain first Go experience.
 
But since it was early I was allowed to stay on and pick being a racer to get a good feel for it, by that time Iain Angus was about and I had a chance to introduce myself as a Burnoutaholc, lol. He also told me Tommy was about too. No Craig saddly and i was loaded with questions to ask him since he was the main guy behind this game but since he was not there i couldn't, lol.
 
So going by the first thing I said use X to pick a side, I chose racer. The next option is pick a car, now i'm not a real car guy, but with cops after you it needs to be fast or strong, so went for the Ford GT type muscle car, and I think I went for red, but there were other colour options (no decent black for that car, lol), I just did not realise at that time, i could be so selective, I'm also talking to EA people and also being spoken to by Iain, so a bit distracted, what, lol.
 
So after some loading (i assume it will be optimized when it comes out), to the race I get a chance to study the HUD, map on the left side, rear view mirror, with a sort of stealth mode view? at the top in the middle, the D pad weaponary to the bottom left below the map, which for racer is Turbo up (chopper for cops), Jammer right, EMP left and Spike Strip down (I could have got this wrong but you get the jist), you also have, to  the right bottom of the screen, your Damage, Nitro and speedo! Top Right the players, of which there are 8 in all,  but can vary on what people put in for choice, so it could be one racer vs 7 cops or any other combination up to the 8, as long as there is one person on the team it all good, so chase the rabbit will be a must when the game does come out, lol.
 
The scene for this race was daylight and semi arid/ desserty, but the cop race I did before was at night, another pain for me on my first go as darkness does mess with my eyes, but since I'm a racer this time round, i'm good.
 
You start off with a rolling start, Racers then the Cops after a distance of a few seconds come after you. I switch straight to Bumper cam which seem to impress Iain at the time, lol. And a nice open road with 3 other racers on my side.
 
Now I don't think your D pad armory is up and running straight away or all us racers would have dropped spike strips off the start, lol. But when it was ready and just around a corner, I dropped my first Spike strip, and got a hit, now I think it was one of my fellow racers and I asked Iain was it right to take out your fellow racers, he said it was who ever finishes is the winner no matter what ya do, so my guilt melted away after that, the object was to finish first, ok I can do that.
 
From there it was run, at at one point i was 40 seconds ahead with a build up from 7 to 12 to 22 seconds, I was hitting short cuts, and laying down destruction to all that was behind, they even sent a chopper to drop strips on me but I EMP'ed it for 500pts. Yes, Points I think make Prizes, from drifting, slip streaming, oncoming, getting through road blocks 200pts, avoid EMP/spike strips 200pts etc all get you points for you final finish tally and may also add to your nitro, which is similar to boost from Burnout Games but the Turbo Button was the kicker, you really shoot forward, now this is where the points may also be added because I had at least two turbos in that race, and from the start I thought I could only use one for the whole race. 
 
Anyhew I've been doing well and got a mile or so to go, got EMP'ed which messed up my driving, turn left but ya go right etc. I hit a chopper spike strip so that's 2 hits and I know I've hit oncoming just a second ago, and i think I'm on Critical Damage. So not far to go when I hit a barrier, thankfully my crash takes me over the Line for the win, but up to that last mile I though I was  Burnout Racing god, lol, but in truth just a lucky proper first go, lol. I also get the fastest time and lots of points for finishing etc, lol. And unlock a slew of cars which is nice.
 
I then get  T-Shirt with Seacraest County Police Department on it, and a bit later on an Air Freshener with the SCPD on it too. Nice Freebees. BTW gave my T-Shirt to numpty, but still got my Air Freshners, lol.
 
I then let someone else have a go while I talk to Iain about the game, I know I'm not coming across very well but I get out of him that there are six modes in the single player, 3 for each player type (Cops/Racers) and 3 modes for online, from Race, Chase and Interseptor which is fully open world, no Yellow Cheverons to guide you in that mode.
I give him the thumbs up, as the game drifts as good as Burnout's before Paradise, still has the NFS feel plus some Burnoutness on top! He also told me about a bit of road that goes in a circle for ultimate drifting, I assume going down and around a mountain, but fail to ask him if there are any other 'White mountain' elements!! Suf Fail, and still did not get a chance to ask again d'oh!
 
So I walk away, to think about what I have seen and done in the game. It looks good, It drives Good, It plays good, and seems fun with strangers, though i did hit the guy next to me on the shoulder when he took me out as I knew it was him that owned me!LOL! I can't see anythink or anything wrong with the game it was fun end off! I have just seen the map via NFS forum site and do know what roads I sort of drove on, and it looks like there are 24 events, 12 for racer, 12 for cops, weither they are reversed or not is another question and the map does look a bit small, but potential for growth with DLC.
 
One thing I did not do was turn and face the cops from the start, as I think the game has set finish points, you either travel a certain distance or a certain time before the finish goes up, but when you see the map you realise these are fixed start and finish points which means practice will make perfect over time as you play. Will 24 points be like 24 races from other games not sure, but it is definitly a game for NFS and Burnout fans alike, i would say 10 to 12 hours single game play and almost unlimited game play hours on Multiplayer. But going by what Kev said in his post, this is with friends only, and no open lobbies, that could be a issue!
 
As I sat in a place to gather my thoughts I spotted hn6 watching Def Jam Rap Star, and dragged him to a table where i was set up to blog/twitter to friends about NFS, and we sat and talked about his new Kindle and his misshap with an open bottle of Oasis! Then after that went back to the NFS area to get his take on it, which I will hope he will comment about after this. But he did nail Iain and others about questions I did not even think about or consider or was too in awe of being at another game show and playing something finally that I liked, yes I told Iain I didn't like Paradise, my bad but it was a failed racer for me, the Stunt runs etc were fun as were challenges and we got more because they worked, and not more race options because no one was doing those, because it sucked end of, lol! And I kept calling him Angus, fail again, lol. But got a tweet that said it reminded him of being back at school, not good from my point of view but glad he was ok with it, lol.
 
So hn6 had a go and he enjoyed it too, which means/seems it going to be a good game from release coming from a 'aholics point of view. But till I get my hands on a proper copy nothing is set in concrete. I think hn6 told me there was a single player version on the other side of the show so I went and had a look at that.
 
It was like an early build, the hud was different, map in another place and graphics not so polished but definetly playable, maybe from the E3 showing. But it was the same track over again but with day and a night cycle if i remember. There were 4 pods showing that, but you could tell they had come along way to the multiplayer build! 
Graphically it was similar to the final build of Paradise, similar colour tones, but with the NFS colour wheel in there, but a lot more polished and on a larger scale in size etc. But with real cars in the mix, you could see, though an arcade racer it had a better polish than Forza 3 and GT5 to my eyes, sugar coated as they were looking at a Criterion Game. On  side note, did not like GT5 it reminded of the first time I saw Project Gotham racing on the Original Xbox, yes it probably was very pretty but to me it just looked like any other sim racer I had seen from before, and looked very tricky to drive going by what i was seeing, people messing up on first corners etc, but the sim pods they were in were awesume, lol. For something in development for so long I was expecting something more Hyper-Real from the GT5 people!
 
So part one done and i've only been here an hour or so! I've walked the floor, met up with a gamer I have played hundreds of hours on Paradise with, but only just met, and what a cool smart arsed dude hn6 is, already in awe of him for the questions he asked developers and other people and I still got to buy the guy a beer for something he did with me or for me in the Paradise game sessions we had, lol!
 
OK something I missed while but noticed during editing, there was no sound i could hear over the noise of the show, it was there but I could not judge it, though I do know and trust that Criterion never do duff sound! And that looking at the crashes from the older single player demo to the multiplayer, that they got better with each rendition, but way off even Paradise's type of crash physics or particle effects so far, I do think there is more from that game mechanic to come?! Though they were ok for the demo, I was expecting a bit more bits and pieces flying about and a lot more carnage and damage on the cars. Then again this is NFS not burnout.
 
So there's Part 1, Part 2 the rest of day 1 or after I met hn6! lol. And yes i did a lot more in that first hour, walking the stalls, checking out the 18 section etc will get back to that if it's important enough.
 

 

 

Comments

hn6's picture

hn6

Thu, 10/07/2010 - 23:37

 My somewhat unique experience with the Brink demo can be seen here.

 

ZombieTron's picture

ZombieTron

Mon, 10/11/2010 - 21:53

Thank You Suffur! You and Eurogamer (and Kev with his comments too) have made me very excited about NFS:HP now... and it's only a few short weeks away!!!

I just read this eurogamer hands on, well worth a read for those who haven't seen it yet;

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-09-29-need-for-speed-hot-pursuit-hands-on

 

SUFFUR's picture

SUFFUR

Tue, 10/12/2010 - 17:20

Oh shit i just lost all my comment again hitting the backspace, lol.

good to start again it was all over the place, lol.

But after reading the above interview with Eurogamer and this interview about Autolog:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-08-18-need-for-speed-hot-pursuit-preview?page=1 

And these specific quotes:

"Road Rules was an asynchronous game mode that we did a pretty good job of hiding in Burnout Paradise, but when people discovered it, they used it a lot," says Webster. "We realised that it's really tough to get people online together at the same time. With things like Facebook, people are hardly ever online at the same time... but the system still facilitates that social interaction. So that's what we've concentrated on.

And from another Review about Autolog, linky from Eurogamer:

Webster explains how the studio's history in creating multiplayer driving games has culminated in the creation of Autolog. "With Burnout 3, we were online for the first time - it was a whole new experience for us. With Burnout Revenge we started to track relationships between people, using stats in a human way. For Burnout Paradise it was about the friends you were playing with, not a meaningless ranking in a world leaderboard," he says. "We're more about people playing together, a social competition between people on your friends network on the console. Autolog is a suite of connective features that allow social competition."

And:

"I hate the phrase, but asynchronous gameplay is very important. Being able to play against my friends when they're not online is really important. We've done it before: six players in Burnout 3, eight players in Paradise. We can do that directly-connected stuff, we know that."

But this site and numerous others have been created because we met on these games that Criterion made, I, a complete stranger in a room on Burnout 3 Road Rage (the first day I got online, after some child abuse on Halo 2) on the Blue team, proved my skills and ran away from the unknown Reds at the time, true i had skills from Burnout 2 to help, but i proved i was good enough to hang with those people/strangers/gamers that I beat and over a very short space of time got serious pwned by, are now my friends.

Both Paradise and it seems NFS:Hot Pursuit will remove me away from greater players. And due to the 6 man room (on BO3) you could only hang with friends by a certain time of the night, hell we had mulitple rooms going to accommodate us 'friends', swapping to let someone in so they could chat, but the messaging service on Burnout 3 was also another communication device that with the new 360 and chat helped while playing with other friends in Revenge.

The PS3 only got Paradise, they never got Revenge HD and they certainly did not abuse the backcompatability with the other games of the canon, most went and bought 360 to play on Revenge and BO3 and compete and prove their worth by lap times etc against 'Xboxers'. Some were pretty good too, lol.

Road Rules was a great addition to game play, yes you could compete against someone/a friend over the pond due to time zones, but in the BO3 days we played from 4pm till 2am to play against all the world, we found the time! And so did they.

But with Road Rules on Paradise we went looking for the best, as we could not access world leader boards, most of my friend list had the best from road rules to challenges and we did not have abusers/glitchers on them until the game got old, then again most times were beat when the really fast cars came out.

After reading both interviews and what i found out at Eurogamer myself, I like NFS:HP, it looks great, drives great, has a speedo, lol, has a lobby system etc, but if i'm only hanging and competing against friends it will get old quicker with out some better goals to beat, if we get world leader boards, we the gamers can make a choice and seek out someone who is better than us, and then make friends, not keep it just to the 100 people i got on Xbox Live, true with FB and Twitter I may find others but why should i rely on an out source app to find someone to play with, Xbox Live and PS3 network should be enough?

"In Paradise it's not very nice when you're having a good race and you take a wrong turn through no fault of your own and they just end up screwing up the race," he says. "That'll never happen in this game. Because of the way we've designed this world and the roads in it, everything should feel like an epic drive, like you're really travelling a long distance."

Which is great, but if the main route (Paradise)was Yellow Cheveron'ed and other routes were racer choice to find a faster/more entertaining route they should break away or be drivable through? NFS:HP is a better version of Test Drive Unlimited with looks and Arcade Drivablity, but even Test Drive only worked with friends because they were the only people understanding of the crap of 'I have been disconnected from you and now racing with someone else for some connection reason, send me an invite so i can carry on racing you?

The roads on NFS are huge compared to Paradise, in length and width, wider than some of the roads on BO2 and 3, when the toy cars came out for Paradise I loved racing them as they seemed to fit the roads of Paradise, but since the roads were restricted to only 8 finishes it did get old quick and very frustrating to others who could not race open world. 

I can see NFS has fixed the 'help i'm lost' from Paradise, which is great, but after the Cops and Robbers fail on Paradise, and Road Rage due to crash box issuses and even on Revenge, NFS seems to go back to Burnout 3's Road Rage style, the cars are or seem more solid, hitting one seems like a hit rather than a fart in your general direction of Revenge or Paradise type of 'takeout'.

 

Leader Boards are there to improve ones self against the world, Trails HD has world leader boards, I go by them to beat my friends as they are normally better times to beat, don't get me wrong I am fortunate to have a very competitive friends list and a lot of them are in the top 100, from FPS'er to Arcade Racers, so I know that i am an above average gamer, true I have played a long time and yes XP is a good factor of game play over time but never skill at that game. Autolog is a great addition to friendly competition but i would rather kick 'number ones' ass on as  many occasions as possible and if i became number one i would expect to have a full room of wanna be number 1's, lol.

Ok I don't know what i was really writing here, but seeing both Matt and Craig say Paradise had problems with some stuff is great, even after talking to Iain, they seem to say the racing on Paradise was underused, meaning no many people played it! And it was because racing failed to live up to all the other Arcade Racers Criterion had made before, so we played with what worked! Road Rules and Challenges, find places to hide, Stunt Runs etc.

I just think it's odd that, with the Experiment that was Paradise and a good one it was for so many reasons, Criterion just don't get that hanging with mates is great but we would as a group like to kick anyone who may be better than us ass's at any time we want, lol. There room/lobby or ours. But can't because you won't let us?

Ah the mental map, if you enjoyed Paradise you will like NFS:HP, if you liked NFS Oldies and Burnout before Revenge, you'll like NFS:HP, I can still draw some of Paradise from memory, just like I could build Rainbow Six Maps in other map building capable FPS'ers, but a route with a finish and start that loops is so much easier to remember over repeated use. After lots of game play because the game mechanic works the game becomes second nature, communication like jokes and stories are remembered, you could say Mug shots were a good fun distraction but only after you got good could you laugh at them or take part but still carry on with the race with out loss of speed or direction, because muscle memory takes over, but when it is tense and tight the room will always be silent except for expletives due to poor driving or a great takedown or the bastard who is winning as they always boast, the big ego ones anyway, lol. 

As I said not sure what i was writing about, i just find it odd that a great racer like Revenge or Road Rage'r like 'Burnout 3 Takedown' which both had flaws, could have been fixed to make them the best racers of all time, as long as they had new tracks, it seems simple?

But enough as I am truly lost... with where i was going to go with this after reading those interviews.

Because I lost the original comment, lol!

 

 

 

 

'Better to write for ones' self  and have no public than write for the public and have no self.' Some quote I heard.

Patience is something I taught myself, so I never know when it's going to run out?

Patience is something I taught myself, so I never know when it's going to run out?

Chu's picture

Chu

Sat, 10/16/2010 - 22:14

 Sounds simply excellent. I can't wait to start playing with you guys again.

Nero Angelo's picture

Nero Angelo

Sun, 10/17/2010 - 01:25

I wish I had time to play these games, but I dont anymore.. :(

 

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"There's Nero, One of the Twin Angels" - DjSubzero18 (Burnout Revenge Online, 3/ 20/ 2009)

"There's Nero, One of the Twin Angels" - DjSubzero18 (Burnout Revenge Online, 3/ 20/ 2009)