The first Eurogamer Expo to be set in Birmingham played host to a huge number of forthcoming games from the big AAA hitters to the smaller indie games. Â But which were the titles that had the most impact on us?
There were plenty of queues, so our time with games had to be selective. Â Bonus points go to the Rezzed section with all the great indie games and the developers who were more than happy to chat with us.
Starfox Zero – Paul
It’s no secret that I made a beeline for the Nintendo stand and there was one reason for this. Â Despite the announcement that Starfox Zero was going to be postponed until early next year, Nintendo had a demo set up and ready to play on their stand.
The game demo started with a very familiar tutorial which involved flying through rings and showcased the use of the Wii U pad for targeting. The biggest change from previous games is one that actually comes from an unreleased earlier Starfox game and sees your ship turn into a mech in order to fight ground based targets. Â You can switch at will between the two modes during certain sections of the game.
This is truly the next gen version of Starfox that fans have been waiting for and I can’t wait to play the whole thing in 2016.
Just Cause 3 – Paul
The Just Cause games are about 3 things; destruction, grappling hooks and mad vehicle-based combat. Â I’m pleased to say that from my short playthough in freeplay mode, the third game in Square Enix’s series is quite happy to continue this theme.
Despite only having about 20 minutes play time, I managed to blow up several factories. a petrol station, 4 helicopters (after hitching a ride on several of them) and a plethora of armoured vehicles. Â There’s a nifty wingsuit to fly around with, in addition to your trusty parachute and, yes, a whole load of new vehicles to attach your grappling hook to.
Unbox – Paul/Jon
One of the indie hits we came across at the show was the excellent Unbox. Â It’s a little bit Marble Madness, a little bit Mario and a whole lot of fun.
The idea of the level we played was to get a box to the top of a tower. There are a lot of obstacles and jumps to get past as you try to control this box (with varying degrees of success). One false move and it was a long fall down.
Simple, fun an obviously very proudly owned by one of the developers we were able to spend 5 minutes chatting too.
Star Wars Battlefront – Jon
I had to queue for over an hour to play about 10 minutes of this game. Boy was it worth it though. In co-op mode you are charged with defending against tides of oncoming enemy. It starts off pretty casual as you might expect, but then the AT-ST Â start appearing and the Stormtroopers start boosting and it all goes a bit crazy.
It’s all a whole lot of good fun. The controls felt nice (even though it took me a while to get used to where everything was) and the graphics and sound were pretty much perfect. Sadly I didn’t get to have a go at the 20-v-20 MP action as I wasn’t prepared to queue for 3 hours. Call me old fashioned. I had better things to do. It did look really good though.
Having played this might have just tipped the balance on my most anticipated game for the remainder of 2015.
Kingdom – Paul
Raw Fury games are describing Kingdom as a minimalist strategy/resource management hybrid wrapped in a modern pixel art aesthetic, which nicely sums this up, but more than that, it’s a beautifully presented game which brings some new ideas to the table.
Kingdom is not a game to hold your hand, as I found out to my cost. Â It has surprises hidden around every corner and you’ll need to learn how to adapt and survive to get far in this hostile world.
