Eurogamer Expo 2009 (Leeds) – Games Review: Part 1
So as you know, we here on Zath have recently attended the Eurogamer Expo’s in Leeds and London and we’ve played a few games that were there on show and I thought I’d share with you a few of the games that we managed to get our hands on this year.
Uncharted 2 (PS3)
First up is Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. After playing the first Uncharted I was expecting this to be just as good if not better and it certainly didn’t disappoint. I had played on the Uncharted 2 multiplayer BETA version before the expo, but the demos on show were the single player versions and it was brilliant.
You had the choice to play different parts of the game and I chose to throw myself into an espionage part and a good old stroll through the jungle with the odd bullet whizzing around. There have been a few new animations added to the movement of the characters which makes them flow a little better than the first. I’m saying a little because the animations that were used in Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune were unbelievable and you can’t really get much better. The graphics were stunning and I again, I found myself stopping just to take in just how good it looks.
From what I’ve read, the espionage part of the game is only a small part of the game which shows a darker side to Drake in his past but is still good fun. Another level I saw but didn’t manage to get my hands on was just after Drake wakes up in the train carriage hanging over the edge of the cliff which was seen in the first trailer that was released for Uncharted 2. From what I saw, there was a lot of scaling involved as you had to climb the carriages to get to the top to survive.
From the limited amount of playing time I had, it’s made me even more hungry to play what has already been tipped for game of the year. Someone give me £40 so I can buy it!!
Need For Speed: Shift (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
Next up is Need for Speed Shift (2D and 3D). I’m not a massive fan of racing games, but I will have a dabble every now and then and had it not been for Zath himself, I might not have played this one at all. I was quite impressed with how real it felt (not that I race cars for a living mind), and it was good to see that the AI cars were making mistakes too. You could see this going on in front of you and behind you by using the mirrors.
I preferred using the view from inside the car which is odd as I usually drive with the camera behind the car. It seemed harder to lose the race than to win it as the car used its brakes automatically when approaching corners, but it was up to you to accelerate and steer out of them. I still found the ‘Get the hell of out my way’ method to be very useful and much easier to go through the cars then around them. Thought I’d save petrol!
Visually the game looked very impressive, especially the details on the cars. I’ve quite liked a few of the Need for Speed games in the past and that has carried on with this. You’ve got the crowd in the stands cheers/booing you on and, on the course I chose, some nice scenery which surrounded the track. After playing this, we walked around for a bit and came across the very same game on PC using NVIDIA’s monster PC’s using their 3D gaming glasses system! This was great fun.
We had to put on 3D glasses which worked on a sensor, and it’s great to say that I’ve now played a game in true 3D. It was impressive to play and ran incredibly smooth but the 3D element of the game only seemed to be on the car (we used the view from inside the car again). Outside the car didn’t seem to have much feel of depth to it, but it still looked very crisp and played brilliantly. Overall a decent racer that I might take a closer look into, but unless you’re a massive racing gamer, there are other titles out there that I’d rather have. The 3D side of the game was impressive but didn’t take my breath away, but it’s a sign of what’s to come and can only imagine how impressive future games like Call of Duty is going to be like in years to come.
Alien Breed Evolution (Xbox Live Arcade)
My final game in this post is a digital download game from Team 17 called Alien Breed Evolution. Now some of you older gamers will probably remember the first Alien Breed that was released on the Amiga and know how much of a classic it was. I unfortunately and ashamedly never played the original but I have played this version and it’s brilliant. There were two of us playing at the same time and we were walking through a space station shooting hordes of aliens and trying to find a way out of the carnage.
It’s a simpler shooter but done very effectively and has left me wanting to play more. To say this is only going to be available as a download game, the graphics were extremely impressive and not only that, I found out that you can fit the whole game onto a 500MB memory card! How can something that looks that good only require a small amount of memory?
The animations on the aliens and your characters are cool and the dynamics thrown in such as fire in the corridors and a few sparks of electricity all add to the atmosphere of the levels. The full game will actually be split into three episodes with the first of them being available on XBLA before Christmas and not long after that, on PSN. The second and third episodes are to be released early next year so we won’t be left too long between the episodes. I was also told by one of the Team 17 guys that each episode will end with a cliffhanger so it will leave us wanting to know and play more. But from this demo, why wouldn’t you want to play more of this.
Overall a very impressive shooter that is going to be addictive as hell and is definitely going on my ‘Most Wanted Games’ list.
Summary
So ends my first Eurogamer game review post with some info about the games that I played. In my next post, I’ll be talking about Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time, God of War III, Red Steel 2 and a brief mention on the other games that I had a look at which includes Mass Effect 2, Dark Void, Heavy Rain and a couple more.
Are you excited of any of these games or were you at Eurogamer and have something else to add about the games above? Let us know below in the comments section.
Related Pages:
- Eurogamer Expo 2009 Review (Leeds Gaming Show)
- Eurogamer Expo 2009 – UK Games Show! (Leeds & London)
- Eurogamer Expo 2009 (London) – Games Review: Part 1
- Eurogamer Expo 2009 (London) – Games Review: Part 2
- Eurogamer Expo 2009 Review (London Gaming Show)
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Comments: 16
3:14 pm 9th November, 2009
Glad to hear you had such a good time. I’ve been hammering Uncharted 2 lately, it’s a terrific piece of work.