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Spore has been suspiciously complete looking for nearly six months now, in fact when we sat through a presentation at the Games Convention in Leipzig in August we were shown a Spore that seemed to have everything but the polish and a release date. More »
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I've kinda grown fond of Leipzig. Sure there's not a whole bunch to do there and having the opportunity to check out Berlin, Munich or Frankfurt every night after spending the day covering the Games Convention would be Zuuupear Koole, but there's something to be said for a town dwarfed by the show it hosts. More »
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Since the end of the 80s, it's been more and more difficult to find one man willing to open up a can of whoop ass on an entire army of foreign stereotypes. But Mercenaries 2 features just that sort of singular mantra we've been craving since Sylvester changed his name to Sly. More »
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Paul Wedgewood, founder of Splash Damage, loves his game. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is distractingly fun to play for him. It's so fun, in fact that there were times during our talk with him that he seemed to forget for a second or two that we were sitting there with him, interviewing. He seemed to get lost in the game... the best sign, I think for a game still under development. More »
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I'm not a huge fan of shooters on the DS. I've found from way too many personal experiences that the handheld just doesn't have the muscle to support the sort of graphics and experience I like from my shooters. More »
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Maybe mobile gaming isn't that bad. The id Software port of its Orcs & Elves dungeon crawler, born on the mobile platform now on the Nintendo DS, may force me to reevaluate playing games on my cell phone. After getting what I thought was a second string hands-on assignment from Crecente, I realized that I'm more into first person dungeon crawling RPGs than I had originally thought. Having experienced only a handful over my amateur gaming career—Shining In The Darkness, Phantasy Star, and a handful on Texas Instrument computers whose titles escape me—I realized that a straightforward dungeon hack might be just what I'm looking for next on the Nintendo DS. More »
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We sat down with EA's The Simpsons Game at Games Convention, rumps firmly stuffed into the Fatboy beanbags at Microsoft's Xbox 360 beach booth for a bit of split-screen multiplayer with Bart and Lisa. Our co-op adventure took us through a Lisa appropriate themed area, a redwood forest being slashed by a menacing lumber company, complete with foresters armed with back-mounted wood chipper guns. More »
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One of the big draw backs of Games Convention is that it is virtually impossible to get a direct flight here. To get to the Leipzig airport you pretty much have to fly to either Munich or Frankfurt. I flew into Frankfurt and then had a leisurely seven hour lay-over that I killed by blowing ungodly amounts of money on robotic roulette, reading and posting on the site. More »
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After sitting through a short and familiar presentation of Killzone 2 at the Games Convention last week I was finally given a chance to play the game. More »
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That's it. The show's a wrap. As we walked from the convention hall (actually we were repeatedly asked to leave until, finally, two security guards hovered over for us politely waiting until we obliged them) the trash was being swept into big piles in the corners and the booth babes were streaming through the exits, their no-neck, slabs-of-meat boyfriends in tow. More »
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The Games Convention may have wrapped up Sunday evening, but our coverage continues. Expect to see more impressions, stories, videos, cultural oddities and images from Leipzig over the remaining week. In case you missed what we've done so far I've listed our stories to date on the jump. More »
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True story. We were witness to the dark side of being employed as a booth babe when one German flesh worker broke down sobbing in one of the temporarily constructed business booths after hours. After holding in the tears after an all day (we assume) grope session and series of harsh evaluations of her figure by German gamers, she'd had enough. While we worked, the soft sounds of weeping continued to penetrate the thin plastic walls of whatever pissant European hardware manufacturer was paying her her daily pittance. More »
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We got to spend plenty of time with Activision's Guitar Hero III at their press center as the press presence during the weekend at Games Convention ranges from nonexistant to a mere smattering of aromatic Europeans. While there's little to add to the amazingly successful Guitar Hero formula, Neversoft has certainly tried to make it their own, revamping portions of the game's HUD and adding the new Battle Mode. More »
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You might think that video game marketing is easy, but it's not. It's hard. Sisyphean sometimes. At this stage in the advertising game, marketeers really only have three tactics—scantily clad ladies, alternate reality games, and cars decorated with game logos. German marketing teams who didn't want to pull a creativity muscle clearly opted for the easiest two of the three, sometimes combining them for maximum impact. More »
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I finally got a chance to check out Playground yesterday in Electronic Arts press booth. While I was a bit let down by Dodgeball I was surprised to find myself enjoying quite a number of the pick-up-and-play games packed into the title. More »
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I've found Germany to be a pretty clean country, much cleaner than a lot of cities I've visited in the U.S., but that was before the public swarmed into the Games Convention. Talk about trashy. An hour into the show and the floor is flooded with all sorts of German leavings. The walk from the convention center to the train is even worse, with paper, bits of swag, broken up discs, cups and even one very mutilated bicycle spotting the once-clean walkways. More »
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Someone ring a bell and this angel will get her wings.
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We are officially eight beers and about two Jager Bombs into the show. After hanging out at the Activision booth for way too long watching McWhertor pwn at Guitar Hero III, we realized we were out of time and high-tailed it to Hall number three where Sony and, more importantly, SingStar was located. More »
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Fuck 9:30 a.m., it's well into 5 p.m. here in Germany and we're well into our... um.. three Jagerbombs and five beers.. GERMAN beers. Around beer number two we noticed that the dank, stinking, littered halls of Games Convention had magically transformed into a sort of beer garden discotheque Valhalla replete with booth babes, Germanic gamers and lots of alcohol. More »
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T-shirts and inflatables might be good enough for the E3 and Penny Arcade crowd, but in Germany if you want to make a splash with gaming swag you've got to go big... big hair. More »
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We're, at this point, two Jager bombs deep (FOR ENERGY!), one Corona (apparently the party beer of Germany) and one man-sized Paulaner Hefeweizen. Games are looking a lot better and Mark is sweating up a storm. After spilling most of my German beer on the floor due to premature intoxication on the floor due to waiting in line at the PlayStation booth to play something PlayStation Eye related, we looked for something that we'd like maybe a little more fun in our slightly buzzed state. More »
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I can't tell you from a technical standpoint why Midway's BlackSite is so great. The graphics aren't stellar, the AI is lacking and your main weapon works like every other gun from every other FPS you've ever played. But it's fun as hell—not a cookie cutter FPS, but a dynamic new title that captures the heart of its arcade shooter roots. More »
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In true German fashion, we ate meat and starch after consuming precisely two mammoth Jager bombs (we polished off the tiny bottle). More »
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One of the more surprising aspects of Games Convention is the availability of alcohol, a rarity at a video game expo, BlizzCon not included. We've ridden into town with a drinking population of Leipzig-bound teens that was much higher than expected. Therefore, we've decided to try to see the sights and sound of Games Convention through the eyes of the German youth. By drinking. A lot. More »
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It's funny what can easily turn one on (and off) to an upcoming video game. In the case of Gearbox Studios' just announced Borderlands, it was Game Informer's teaser cover blurb that described the 4-player co-op shooter as "Diablo meets Mad Max" that whet my nerd appetite. Gearbox themselves pitched the shooter as "Mad Max meets Indiana Jones." More »
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We had the opportunity to sit in on a LittleBigPlanet demo with Media Molecule creative director Mark Healey at Games Convention to get a quick update on how the PLAYSTATION 3 game is progressing. Unfortunately, the build on hand was from E3 '06 meaning there was little in the way of new features or content. Healey did tell us though that we can expect an improved version of the "create, play, share" software at Tokyo Game Show. More »
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This is a little disturbing: I was playing Kane & Lynch on the Games Convention show floor earlier today when I accidentally shot a business woman who was running around on the floor I was on. Instead of killing her, I apparently winged her shoulder. She lay sprawled on her back screaming in pain with the camera angle shooting straight up her skirt exposing a pair of white panties. (That's her in that picture laying next to a dead body, one of my henchmen headshot her as I was about to take this picture.) More »
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Tucked away in a back room of Electronic Arts' mightily impressive press room here at the Games Convention was this spiffy retail display case for Rock Band. More »
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Friday was a bit of a lull, sure it was busier than Thursday, but still not the epic, soul-crushing crowds of today. Not only have the number of attendees increases exponentially, but so have the number of booth babes. Funny how that works. It seems like the naked, but painted Booth Babe is very popular in Germany. More »
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