EB Expo 2015 Review

Recently I attended the 2015 EB Expo and there was a lot to see and do there so I thought I'd showcase my thoughts and opinions of the event. Keep in mind, I only attended the Sunday event. Right, let's get into it.

I'm going to start with the lowlights of the event to get those out of the way. My main disappointment of the event didn't happen until the very end of the day with the Family Fireworks Show. The main reason - almost no fireworks throughout the show. It was instead let's focus on entertaining people with dancers and acrobats accompanied with a loud bassy soundtrack of recent hits and a montage of god knows what relevance to the event. If you're going to say fireworks show, make it an actual fireworks show. Anyway, the second disappointing thing to see was the ridiculous queue times for Star Wars Battlefront. Battlefront is probably the most talked-about game this year and consequently was going to be the one that most of the gamers would want to get their hands on. EB even emphasised this fact on their website. But a 3 hour wait for a game shouldn't happen for the normal pass; and you still had to wait at least an hour if you were in the express gamer queue (which is the queue that gets priority over the normal pass obviously). Sony should've put more game stands to accommodate for this possibility but unfortunately those wait times turned me off from trying to play Battlefront. The third lowlight was the Home Grown Gaming section of the event. I simply couldn't find it. I expected for this section a bunch of developers with stands showing off their games. I didn't get that though; instead there was basically fandom stuff being sold. If I'm wrong about this, I suspect I'll be notified heavily in the comments. The final disappointment was Bethesda particularly with Fallout 4. For a game so close to its release date, you'd suspect that you would get some gameplay footage to try out. You'd be wrong. It was basically mostly Doom and the stuff that was Fallout was basically taken from E3 and its trailer. Sad.

Now that the disappointing moments have been covered, here are some of the highlights from the event. Firstly, the first two episodes of Yokai Watch that were exclusively broadcast a couple of months before being televised were utterly brilliant. It's funny, very witty and extremely quirky that you can't help but love the charm of the show. It's no wonder that Yokai Watch was such a successful anime in Japan. You can feel a Pokemon presence heavily throughout these episodes however Level-5 did a great job of making the show stand on its on with the concept of invisible ghosts impacts on the emotions of people and the requirement of a Yokai watch to see these ghosts. The next highlight was the Good Game Q&A. Despite only running for half an hour, it was fantastic to see the interactions between Bajo, Hex and Goose up nice and close and some of their answers were quite funny and thought-provoking. It was followed up with 1 hour signings by the three Good Game members and based on my short time with them getting autographs and photographs, they seemed like such a blast to work with and was such a great dynamic between them. The third highlight was the SydBrick Show. While only a small section of the event, I absolutely loved the Lego models of numerous beloved franchises such as Marvel, Ghostbusters and Jurassic Park to name a few. It's kinda the same appeal I had towards Lego Dimensions (see the gaming opinions below) except you could hold the Lego. The final highlight was the Freeplay City & Interactive History Museum. It was a fantastic showcase of games all of which were playable that started from the 80s with the ATARI, NES and Commodore 64 among others - computing platforms that my parents grew up with and iconic games such as Frogger, Space Invaders and Super Mario Bros. It then progressed into the 90s decade which highlighted the rise and fall of SEGA in the console wars with the progression of the Genesis to the Saturn and then the Dreamcast but also showed off Nintendo's dominance with the Super Nintendo and the Nintendo 64 as well as the progression from 2D to 3D gaming and to top it off the start of a console known as the Sony PlayStation and its gaining popularity in the gaming community. Wow a lot happened in the 90s for gaming. Further in the exhibition, there was the 00s section which is most of my childhood gaming nostalgia. This decade was well-known for resulting in the highest selling gaming console of all time with the PS2, the introduction of more competition in the market with the Microsoft XBOX and also popularised the idea of motion controls in gaming with the introduction of the Nintendo Wii. However if all that nostalgia didn't interest you, then there was a little subsection which had quite an arcade feel to it with air hockey, pinball machines and racing machines all ready to entertain. Now onto the showcased games (because I haven't talked enough as it is).

The first place I went to was the Nintendo section (that comment surprised absolutely no one). Regardless, I got to try out three games - Yokai Watch, Tri-Force Heroes and Splatoon (I know Splatoon has been out for ages but I hadn't had the chance to get my hands on until that point). Yokai Watch was a nice catch-em-all game with the idea of completing missions whilst still being able to explore the different areas. It makes decent use of the touch screen but unfortunately not the 3D capabilities. However, if I had to choose between playing the game or watching the anime I would choose the anime in a heartbeat - something which I wouldn't say about Pokemon. Tri-Force Heroes was probably the one that impressed the most of the three Nintendo games played. It took the concept of Four Swords and improved it in almost every way possible. The customisation of Link is a nice added feature to the franchise but what stood out for me the most was how important cooperation was between players with the introduction of the totem that allowed players to stack upon one another to reach higher places, however because of this a lot of pressure is placed on the lower Link to manoeuvre the entire totem out of danger or towards the enemy. Now this might reason for people to commit friendly fire out of fun which is where the shared hearts system comes into play. By introducing this system, this forces players to think more strategically to allow all players to survive the level which highlights the teamwork gameplay that I believe Nintendo were going for. The touch screen is used well as the inventory much like the rest of the 3DS Zelda games and does a good job of getting the stereoscopic 3D gameplay to be lag free online. That being said, I love Splatoon too. The idea of a first person shooter mixed with turf wars mixed with ink was brilliant. I did have some initial difficulties using the gamepad to shoot but after the second game I got the hang of it and my enjoyment thoroughly improved towards the game. I only got to play a local multiplayer game which showed off the same level and weapon so I never got to experience the single mode nor any of the customisations that are part of the game. It is definitely one of the best Wii U games to use the gamepad, in fact probably better than Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. 4.

PlayStation had a decent presence at the expo showcasing games such as Disney Infinity and Star Wars Battlefront (both of which I didn't play because the former I lost interest in two versions and the latter was just way too long of a queue). The game I was determined to try out was Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection which is a remastered edition of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. The Uncharted franchise is definitely one of the best gaming franchises over the past couple of years and if you haven't played these games, then this game is the perfect game to start with and will set you up perfectly for Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. Speaking of Uncharted 4, PlayStation showed off extended gameplay that was originally shown off at E3 2015. Despite only showing off a couple more minutes of the game than E3, it was great to see the use of quicktime events enhance the gameplay in particular the tension that comes from it. Many games should take note of this. I'm looking at you The Order 1886. I'm going to be honest - I hardly spent time at the XBOX area. I managed to play a game of FIFA 16 as the newly introduced women's teams (seriously why weren't they included years ago) and there's nothing really else to say about it. It's FIFA. The core mechanics of the game haven't changed in at least the past 5 years and i hope that FIFA 17 will do something different because the same gameplay just comes off as lazy and boring. The highlight of XBOX though was Rise of the Tomb Raider. It took a bit of time to get to play than most of the other games I played but it was worth it. Tomb Raider was already a fantastic game and this is shaping up to be even better. It is visually stunning, Lara's movements feel real and the gameplay was action packed, something you would hope to expect from a Tomb Raider game. Looking forward to its release.

I also managed to play three more games before the day was over - the first of these was Rocket League. Rocket League, like Splatoon, had been out for quite a while however complications prevented me from playing it up until that point. The concept of this game is remote control cars crossed with soccer and while this may sound simple, it resulted in some very addictive gameplay. This is mainly due to the time limit of 5 minutes gives you enough time to improve how you play but it's quick enough so that it doesn't feel dragged out and means more matches played. I know for a fact I could spend hours playing Rocket League without realising. It's that good. Rocket League looks visually appealing and the customisation of the appearance of the cars is a nice touch to make the experience more personalised however I did notice that the online multiplayer resulted in slight lag at times possibly due to a server overload and I was disappointed that there weren't many stadiums to choose from however those are just nit picks on what is a great game overall. Rugby League Live 3 was a must-play for the diehard NRL fan I am and I was intrigued to see how different it was to Rugby League 3 which was the last NRL game I played. It looked visually better in regards to the stadiums and the CPUs responsiveness is much better since they come rushing towards the player with the ball instead of you coming to them and the camera work is much nicer particularly during the transition between offence and defence. However, unfortunately the controls seem much complicated to learn, the characters felt much harder to move around, the kicking designs both in-play and converting need improving, and the models of the faces that come up when a try is scored and converted are very off putting and most of the time seemed unrecognisable. So a very meh game. The final game I managed to get hands-on with is Lego Dimensions. Only recently released, this game incorporates numerous well-known franchises and merges them into one Legofied story. To put it simply, I loved it. I got to try out the Doctor Who section and instantly I could notice how nice it was to see the different utilising of the Dimensions board to enhance the gameplay. I loved the attention to detail in the environment designs. It gives me hope that a proper Lego Doctor Who game will happen. I also tried out the TARDIS attachment that allowed entry into the TARDIS itself. Once inside the TARDIS, I could change the Doctor into its past incarnations and also listen to all the different Doctor Who themes whether it be the original 1963 rendition, the 1989 rendition, the 2005 or the current one etc. I have no knowledge on whether you can change the TARDIS interior though but nonetheless its details like that that make the game that bit more enjoyable and allow for replayability.

That concludes my bumper-edition review. Overall it was a great event and I look forward to going again in the future. Thanks to every one who managed to stick around to the end of this. I hope you enjoyed it :)