eGames Expo: Aftermath

Update: Long Zheng (wow, another MHS Old Boy) has photos of the event on his eGames Expo.

Highlights

Fury

This has the potential to kill Guild Wars.
Many of the 'hardcore' Guild Wars players don't play PvE - they love PvP.
So much so, Arena Net (developers of GW), released the 'PvP' edition of Guild Wars, which contains the PvP elements only.

Now, from what I understand, Fury is PvP only, developed by the folks over at Auran - thats right, Aussies!

I met the lead developer, who was running the exhibition (how cool is that? I could ask questions, and somebody could answer….unlike every other stall!), and he seemed like a nice guy.

Fury was running beautifully on a 7800 series card and on some Pentium 4 processor. The game is powered by the Unreal 3 engine, making it one of the more intensive and pretty games out there.

I didn't get much of a shot at it, but it was fun.
The interface was clean, easy to learn (which when you jump into the middle of the game, is kind of nice), and overall looked fairly polished.

That being said, without sitting down for half an hour, I wouldn't be able to get properly asses it.

Nintendo Wii

Without a doubt, this was the highlight of the expo for me, and the main reason I was going along.

Today there were three main Nintendo things to checkout.

1. The main display (right outside the front door, with massive queues), where you could play any one of the WiiSports, Zelda, Sonic and potentially some others (I didn't check it out, we're talking 40minute queues).
2. "Head to Head" displays, where the 'winner stays on'.
   The Wii was loaded with Tennis (from WiiSports), and was fun. I'm not a tennis person, but it was just plain ole fun.
   The fact that I managed to survive 4 or 5 rounds made it more fun ;)
   There were similar setups for the PS2 (<insert racing game?>), XBox360 (Boxing..uhm..Fight Night?) and PC (I think it was Call of Duty 2) - none were half as popular as the Wii
3. Nintendo Wii Demonstration on the stage. I didn't get to check this out (it was really rushed, and stank), but I hear they threw out some shirts into the audience, and the fans rushed the stage.

All I can say, after playing just Tennis, is that I'm buying a Wii.
It'll set me back $399.95AUD, plus $69.95 for a second controller, but it'll be a lot of fun.

I also hear that Toys R Us are giving away the new Zelda game with every preorder of the system.
Preoreder quickly, because its out on the 7th of December!

Lowlights

No cameras or bags?

All camera's and bags had to be checked into the Cloak Room before you could enter. Argh?! Its free advertising for the exhibitors! Idiots!

Booth babes

No offense girls, but you weren't turning heads.
There were a few attempts at 'scantily clad' girls, but most ended up looking terrible or try-hard-ish.
The Xbox360 girls looked the most attractive, but unfortunately, looked skanky in doing so

Conclusion

A good first games convention, hopefully next year will be bigger, and allow the public to bring in camera's
It was a good day for me and Chickz0r, only spoiled by queues ;)