A beautiful day had dawned with the sun shining brightly through the windows. That essentially woke me up and i quickly checked my watch. The dial read 8:30 am, which was the time that we had intended to reach the venue. The sudden realisation set into motion a flurry of activity and we hailed a cab in order to reach on time. We did manage to reach before the gates opened so it didnt make much difference, although that was something we intend to avoid in the future.
The first thing that struck us on the way was the effort Cologne had put into promoting the event. i havent seen any event, how so ever big, get as much poster publicity in the UK. Elections in India come a close second though, with every lamp post, bus stop, paan shop and your neighbour's wall proudly holding up a parliamentary candidate's beaming picture. But even then, you would have different posters for each candidate, in various poses or gestures or promising different things. The propoganda in Cologne was more uniform and you knew that it was something special. One look at the queues outside the venue only confirmed this. One thing about Koelnmesse that is hard to miss is the sheer size of the exhibition complex. I have been to a few different venues so far but this one took the cake and the packaging with it !
For the information of friends who had accompanied me to the MMC expo at the Excel centre in London, the Games Com hogged 4 times the space that MMC did.
Gate opening wasnt a ceremony of sorts but it was met with raucuous cheering from all present. Contrary to expectations, there werent goody bags handed out and we felt releived that we didnt miss out on anything. Since the issue was resolved we turned our minds to the most important thing at that time - breakfast and promptly located a food stall. I must admit that they did a really cool potato salad along with chicken escalope. We then sauntered along checking out what lay in store for us and came across Mario and Sonic posing for pictures with little kids and girls. A few guys got interested at all as did Tan. However, he didnt get the chance (how can one get a chance when you hesitate for 10 times) and his face said it all. It seemed as if he wanted to say, "why cant i get a chocolate?"
After that, he got very miffed and, hold it, ORGANISED ! He chalked out a plan to scout the floor and woe betide if i had strayed off. I was getting very excited on seeing booths set up by Rockstar, EA, Blizzard, Bethesda, Remedy, BioWare, 2K and few other notable developers. I just wanted to rush into each one fo them at first sight but no, we had to it in order ! Oh, how i hated being organised, especially by someone else !
Nevertheless, it did have its merits and we entered the presentation area for Realtime Worlds, creators of Crackdown, who were displaying in-game footage of their game APB. It was an interesting one, seemed like a fairly new genre with upto 100 pairs online at any given time. That is massive by any online team based game's standard! At the end of the show we asked a few intelligent questions about the game and were rewarded with a couple of cool T-shirts :)
Visits to presentation areas for Modern Warfare 2, Starcraft 2 and 2K just reminded us of the long queues we'd have to stand in if we were to get anywhere. Hence we ditched the plan to sit in on the presentations and decided to check out everything that was on offer. Suffice to say that we over-estimated ourselves. At the end of the day we just ended up scouring only 2 of the 4 exhibition halls and briefly peeping into the 3rd. The 4th remains untouched so far !
Personal highlights for me were getting to see Guild Wars 2 trailer before it was released on the net ! After all, this is one game that i have been looking forward to for a long time. The devs have promised that work on the game was right on track. Also got to get my hands on the beta version of Aion. Beautiful graphics but not much difference to other MMOs apart from the fact that you could FLY ! After Daedalus and Icarus, these are probably the only people to fly using real wings. We then tried our hands at Ghost Busters, Mini Ninjas and another one called Dofus (only cos the girl handing out leaflets was very cute and friendly).
The girls at various booths were astonishingly good looking, some hot, some attractive, some beautiful and some cute; and we took every chance to get a picture with them :) The finale of the day was a dance performance by a troupe at Sony's massive exhibition area on the floor.
As the day came to an end, we didnt feel like leaving and though our legs were tired our minds were still fresh and hungered for more. With heavy feet, we left the arena knowing that we will be there the next day to catch the action from most of the booths and come across some more interesting people. The Toy Factory is huge and even after four days i doubt if we would have been able to uncover all of its secrets. It is a wonderful place but the fun lies in discovering it at your own pace.
The first thing that struck us on the way was the effort Cologne had put into promoting the event. i havent seen any event, how so ever big, get as much poster publicity in the UK. Elections in India come a close second though, with every lamp post, bus stop, paan shop and your neighbour's wall proudly holding up a parliamentary candidate's beaming picture. But even then, you would have different posters for each candidate, in various poses or gestures or promising different things. The propoganda in Cologne was more uniform and you knew that it was something special. One look at the queues outside the venue only confirmed this. One thing about Koelnmesse that is hard to miss is the sheer size of the exhibition complex. I have been to a few different venues so far but this one took the cake and the packaging with it !
For the information of friends who had accompanied me to the MMC expo at the Excel centre in London, the Games Com hogged 4 times the space that MMC did.
Gate opening wasnt a ceremony of sorts but it was met with raucuous cheering from all present. Contrary to expectations, there werent goody bags handed out and we felt releived that we didnt miss out on anything. Since the issue was resolved we turned our minds to the most important thing at that time - breakfast and promptly located a food stall. I must admit that they did a really cool potato salad along with chicken escalope. We then sauntered along checking out what lay in store for us and came across Mario and Sonic posing for pictures with little kids and girls. A few guys got interested at all as did Tan. However, he didnt get the chance (how can one get a chance when you hesitate for 10 times) and his face said it all. It seemed as if he wanted to say, "why cant i get a chocolate?"
After that, he got very miffed and, hold it, ORGANISED ! He chalked out a plan to scout the floor and woe betide if i had strayed off. I was getting very excited on seeing booths set up by Rockstar, EA, Blizzard, Bethesda, Remedy, BioWare, 2K and few other notable developers. I just wanted to rush into each one fo them at first sight but no, we had to it in order ! Oh, how i hated being organised, especially by someone else !
Nevertheless, it did have its merits and we entered the presentation area for Realtime Worlds, creators of Crackdown, who were displaying in-game footage of their game APB. It was an interesting one, seemed like a fairly new genre with upto 100 pairs online at any given time. That is massive by any online team based game's standard! At the end of the show we asked a few intelligent questions about the game and were rewarded with a couple of cool T-shirts :)
Visits to presentation areas for Modern Warfare 2, Starcraft 2 and 2K just reminded us of the long queues we'd have to stand in if we were to get anywhere. Hence we ditched the plan to sit in on the presentations and decided to check out everything that was on offer. Suffice to say that we over-estimated ourselves. At the end of the day we just ended up scouring only 2 of the 4 exhibition halls and briefly peeping into the 3rd. The 4th remains untouched so far !
Personal highlights for me were getting to see Guild Wars 2 trailer before it was released on the net ! After all, this is one game that i have been looking forward to for a long time. The devs have promised that work on the game was right on track. Also got to get my hands on the beta version of Aion. Beautiful graphics but not much difference to other MMOs apart from the fact that you could FLY ! After Daedalus and Icarus, these are probably the only people to fly using real wings. We then tried our hands at Ghost Busters, Mini Ninjas and another one called Dofus (only cos the girl handing out leaflets was very cute and friendly).
The girls at various booths were astonishingly good looking, some hot, some attractive, some beautiful and some cute; and we took every chance to get a picture with them :) The finale of the day was a dance performance by a troupe at Sony's massive exhibition area on the floor.
As the day came to an end, we didnt feel like leaving and though our legs were tired our minds were still fresh and hungered for more. With heavy feet, we left the arena knowing that we will be there the next day to catch the action from most of the booths and come across some more interesting people. The Toy Factory is huge and even after four days i doubt if we would have been able to uncover all of its secrets. It is a wonderful place but the fun lies in discovering it at your own pace.
where is the question?
ReplyDeleteGet me some betas as well!!!
ReplyDelete