So I went to EGX yesterday. It had moved from Earl's Court to Birmingham's NEC but was more or less the same kind of format. This will be the third year I've gone to the show - first time around a few friends talked me into going with them and we mainly just wandered around the smaller stands and the retro gaming areas, then in 2014 it was just me and so I took some time to look at Bloodborne (sadly, as good as the game is, the queueing took up nearly all of my time at the show.) This time around it was just me again, and I decided to go back to my 2013 plan and look at a number of things. I had a few games mentally noted down that I wanted to see first, but my plans changed after I noticed the layout and the queues.
For instance, I was going to make time to see Rock Band 4 - I still don't know if I'll be picking up the game yet as I've moved from 360 to PS4 and I doubt they'll let people migrate their song libraries from MS to Sony, but I thought I could at least get some hands-on time. Unfortunately the setup of the game had groups of people being picked out from the crowd, getting on a small stage and playing in front of the others, and I was kind of hoping there would be a small set of demo units not on a stage for solo play, but no dice. Similarly, I wanted to see the updated version of Shadow of the Beast but that was in the over-18s area and bundled in with a few other games, so you had exactly the same problem that people wanting to play Bloodborne last year were faced with - one mega-queue filled with people wanting to play one of three or four games. Boo.
The only other game I actually wanted to try and find (before going around random stands elsewhere and just filling time) was Mighty No. 9, the new game from the creator of Mega Man who left Capcom and started his own studio. It was a game that originally got launched on Kickstarter and raised $3.8m (I had no idea that 2D platform shooters needed that much funding, but still) and it played a lot like Mega Man - 2D, jumping and shooting, evil enemy robots, neo-future city backdrops, etc. The game has ground dashing and air dashing and the gameplay twist is that you're supposed to weaken enemies with bullets and dash through them when they are stunned, and the sooner you dash through them, the better your score and end-of level rating. It gives the game a nice rhythm, and everyone likes air-dashing anyway, so I might have a look at the full game when it's eventually released. My one issue with the demo was that it was running on a WiiU, and I've only played on a WiiU about twice so I wasn't that familiar with the gamepad. I'm not sure why they chose to use the gamepad rather than a pro controller though, and jump/shot/dash controls were spread across face buttons and shoulders which was a little weird.
Mighty No. 9 was about the most modern game I played at the show - afterwards I headed around the retro area and played things like Sonic 3, Jet Set Radio and Super Star Soldier (oh, I also played some 2D skating game on iOS which I forget the name of.) But yeah, EGX is a game of queueing - do you want to spend the whole day waiting to play the one big game, or go and look at indie titles and retro games? Anyway, before I left I went around the merch area and bought a Blanka t-shirt and a copy of Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist (webseries turned physical release and one of the closest attempts at a decent live-action Street Fighter "thing".) So yeah, that was my EGX - old games, shopping, queues and Mighty No. 9. Wheeee
EDIT: oh, they also had the new Guitar Hero there. I was actually kind of interested in trying it because it's got some novel gameplay features (like a 3x2 button fretboard - compared to the old 5x1 layout - letting you do basic chord shapes) but again it was queue city. Bah.