Retr-O.E. Day's 3-5

Day 3/4

Ahah! This was the the day I was waiting for. The start of the expo. I woke up at about 7am to have a shower, grab a pie and head on over to the Gold Coast convention Center. The place was already packed. After an intensely awesome opening show featuring indoor motorcross and a collection of trailers for old games and a talk from the chief of EB Australia, we were allowed in to the expo itself.

I decided to check my 3DS on the off chance I had some street Pass hits...needless to say,within 20minutes I have 30 or so so was able to complete a few of the 3DS Puzzle-Swap puzzles.

The first thing you I saw when walking in was the EA booth, with Battlefield 3 being playable for the xbox 360, as well as Mass Effect 3, SSX and a few sports games.

This booth was most definitely a zero photo taking zone, with signs everywhere stating the fact, so sadly, no footage from me. Same goes for a lot of the expo thinking about it, aside from World Cyber Games, Alienware, Nintendo and surprisingly Microsoft.

Nintendo had a good showing of 3DS titles, most of which were already out (Zelda and Starfox) and they teased us with Mario Kart 7, Super Mario 3D Land and Kirby. With the Wii, a large portion of the booth was dedicated the Legend of Zelda: Skyward sword, which is definitely in the run up to being one of the best Zelda games around.

The graphics are simply amazing, especially when coupled with a decent TV and HD component cables, the motion control's don't feel like an after thought either. The EB rep unfortunately didnt know whether the title was motion plus based or not, and was more intent on having me pre order the game.

Mario Kart 7 is a huge step up from Mario Kart Wii, with it having a more N64 feel to the controls with powersliding thrown back in (unless I'm naiive and cant find out how to do it on the Wii).

Sega had a small offering at the expo, consisting of the House of the Dead Overkill Extended Cut for Ps3 (in short: Prettier, gorier- but the Playstation Move is not the best light gun- it's highly innacurate and the on screen pointer tends to lag) and, Sonic and Mario at the Olympics 2012 and best of all; Sonic Generations.

Two maps were available each with two playable versions (Classic and Modern). I'll do a proper write up on that once I receive copies of the Hi Def footage from what I got to play from Sega.

Microsoft was showing off their new Kinect titles such as Kinect Disney Adventures, Star Wars Kinect, Fruit Ninja Kinect and several dancing games. Star Wars Kinect left alot to be desired, and was nowhere near as smooth as they showed when they announced it at E3, with it glitching out for most people, and just not tracking correct, or recognising certain gestures. Whether this is because it was a beta build, or whether it was due to the environment being crowded is to be decided, but it definitely didnt help with them putting Kinect games back to back in the way they did.

Tucked off in the corner was Halo Anniversary. A fully Live compatible, beautifully updated version of the original Halo, which is now coming on 10 years old. The campaign hasn't had anything changed from what I'm told, and from what I played at least, the map "343 Guilty Spark" hasnt either.

The multiplayer is another matter entirely, practically identical to Reach, which is a shame, as I would have loved to see it more in the style of Combat Evolved for PC with none of the abilities like those seen in Reach, and keep it pure vanilla gameplay.

After doing the rounds and playing on The Darkness 2, Spyro the Dragon: Skylanders, Rage and event getting to crank some Unreal tournament 3 (being used to show off a purely gaming laptop from Alienware), I headed over to the Pocket Music stage, an area dedicated to the sound of videogames in a more modern presentation. I'll be doing a nice big write up about the artists with some video after the weekend, but needless to say, it was eye opening, and a heck of a lot of fun. It's a shame it wasnt closer to the main arena though and instead placed down the side near the “beer garden”.

Day 4 was basically dedicated to checking out the cool and crazy cosplay and mopping up the last of the video I wanted to shoot. I got a chance to check out the new Metal Gear Solid HD collection, which features Metal Gear solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Metal Gear solid 3: Snake Eater and Metal Gear solid: Peacewalker, a 4 player co-op MGS game with simple mission based gameplay, ported from the PSP to 360 and PS3. All have solid (excuse the pun) controls and graphically have been well updated (with the game using higher polygon art assets, as opposed to just upscaling to 1080p. Sure, MGS2 looks a little dated, but lets remember it is 11 years old- it has definitely has stood the test of time.

Day 5 I finally got to chill out properly, and have a lie in- I went out and saw "The Thing", a remake of the movie fromt he 1980's. I prefer the original, but they didnt do too badly on the update of it so would say you might as well check it out if youre into sci-fi/horror. The creature designs are the most messed up since...well...The Thing from the 80's.

In a few days I'll be editing all the video, and I will make sure I put up some full photo galleries of all the pics I have taken. But for now, check above for few teasers from the weekend!