EGX 2015 – Adam’s Saturday Report

Another day. Another trip to the NEC to play some video games! It’s a Saturday so I was prepared to muscle past an even larger crowd than the day before, but I still managed to see some big games.

Making my way past the impressive Tie Fighter that was there to advertise Star Wars: Battlefront I jumped in the queue for Need for Speed. To me, the thing I find most interesting about this reboot are the FMV cut scenes, because I just love watching terrible FMV, it’s a guilty pleasure of mine. So I was disappointed that there was no single player content being demonstrated, instead you’re placed in the world (along with the other demo players) and after an initial race, are competing against each other to earn the most points. The winner coming away with some nice prizes (I didn’t win).

The handling is solid and everything feels very much like a Need for Speed game, from the menus to the musical choices. From something that’s touted as a reboot of the series, it doesn’t feel like a revolutionary step forward. Still, it was decent and it’ll be interesting to see how it ends up.

Next on the list is something I didn’t even notice was here the previous day – Homefront: The Revolution. Huddled in the back of the 18’s area, surrounded by the likes of Assassin’s Creed and Rainbow Six it almost felt like an afterthought.

It was certainly a unique demo, and a little confusing at first. Placed on the map and after a short cut scene you’re told to go and capture certain points on the map. It reminded me of a multiplayer mode where you have to control areas on the map, only in single player. Looking on the map there are certain places you need to capture, capturing being different with each location. One area had me hack an object, another asked me to regain power to the building.

It was a timed demo so it ended before all my objectives were complete, which was a shame because the fade to black happened just as I got into probably the biggest firefight I found myself in. If there’s a complaint, and it’s a pretty big one, it’s that the firefights don’t feel big enough. Travelling between points on your bike it’s easy to just bypass a lot of enemies and fights you get yourself into aren’t that impressive. Usually only with a few enemies and maybe an armoured vehicle. Movement when running also feels sluggish.

It’s probably for the best that it’s getting a 2016 release, because this Christmas it would easily find itself getting lost in the pack. Maybe with a few more months’ development time it can mould itself into something more special.

After those two big console releases it was time to check out the smaller products over at the Nintendo booth, so I went to check out Mighty Number 9. Recently delayed, there have been more downs than ups for Keiji Inafune’s Mega Man knock off as of late.

While I was aware that this is Inafune making a Mega Man game because Capcom wouldn’t let him, I’m quite surprised at how much like Mega Man it actually is. It has a few different mechanisms like dashing through enemies to gain more power, but it can be quite blatant how much it takes from the Blue Bomber. None more so than when I came across an enemy behind a shield, a shield that he would then move so he can shoot before moving it back into place. Sound familiar? Yes, it’s the same Mega Man enemy, only with a new lick of paint. That aside, it was fun, challenging and has quelled the worries I had, if only a little. It’s going to be interesting to see how the final game turns out.

The final game of the day I got to try was Cuphead. Huddled in with the rest of the ID@Xbox games, like The Escapists: The Walking Dead, it was the definite favourite. While some stations were empty, a large part of the queue were there just to play this game. Essentially a long run of boss fights with an excellent old school cartoon graphical style, it’s exactly what I was expecting. Devilishly difficult, I did make it past the first couple of bosses, which were a giant potato and carrot (seriously) I soon succumbed to the sailor and his treasure chest that he kept dropping on my head.

I knew this was going to be good, and although I only spent a short time with it (I felt guilty staying on it for too long with a queue waiting behind me), it’s now made it onto my must buy list.

And thus ends my first ever EGX. It was certainly an experience with some excellent displays (special mention goes out to the Prison Architect guys who had the demo inside a jail cell), met some wonderful people and got to hear Shuhei Yoshida talk during one of the developer’s conferences. So see you next year!