Day two of the actual show and, after waiting forty five minutes for the taxi driver to show up… who then decided to drive the arsehole way to the convention centre and keep us locked in the cab while he asked questions about when the expo finished, we finally made it to the show floor. The day wasn’t off to the best start, and it caused Mark and Lorna to be late for their first appointment, so the driver was either mighty brave or mighty stupid to keep a Scotsman locked up when he was running late for an important meeting. Me and Ben had about forty minutes to kill before our first appointment at Nexon to see their MMO, Vindictus, and during that forty minutes we did our usual morning thing of wandering the south hall asking each other every five minutes “So, what do you wanna go see?”. Granted, it’s not the best use of our time, but there was something special about just walking around soaking up the atmosphere.

Now, I’ll be honest, I do the same thing most gamers do when they hear the words “free to play” and the letters “MMO” next to each other – I start looking around for the nearest Xbox,  but Nexon’s  Vindictus really was a well polished game. I’m not an expert in the MMO field; I once spent the better part of a week trying to get out of Ironforge and managed to get everyone in my squad wasted that time I played Star Wars: The Old Republic but I could tell that this was a solid game just from watching Ben and one of the producers play it. Then some asshat from a site whose name sounds like LameSpot came windmilling in and stuck a camera in the poor guy’s face; he hadn’t got a clue what was going on and so our meeting was immediately cut short. We were also supposed to get a look at Dragon Nest but, thanks to the buttmunch from LameSpot, we didn’t get chance. Thankfully, Vindictus was clearly the better of the two, so keep an eye out for our preview and interview coming soon.

During our wandering time between games, we dropped by the 2K Games booth and asked if there was any way that we could get in for a look at the invited-press-only presentation for Bioshock Infinite, and the very polite lady was gearing us up for a “no” when she turned around, handed a fellow Englishman my card, and asked if he could fit us in. He then took a look at the card saying “Oh yeah I know you guys, you’re that black and blue site, right?” We looked at each other in complete bemusement – how could somebody from a company we’ve never dealt with be familiar with the site? It was a weird feeling, but also a pretty cool one that our business cards open doors, and so he asked if we could pop back later, which suited us fine because we had an F1 2011 appointment with Codemasters to get to. I’ll save the full previews for later but I will say this about each game we got to see on 2K’s booth: Bioshock Infinite – Oh My God, Darkness II – pretty good, XCOM – hmmmmm this could go either way.

As mentioned above, we did get an early look at F1 2011 by Codemasters , but the game was in its early stages of development and it wouldn’t be fair on them to pan it in its current state. However, from the presentation we were given, I’m glad to say that they are bringing in a few of the features that seemed to have been missed out of the last game such as two player season co-op, while new additions like KERS and DRS, and a greater focus on that out of the car experience are all changing what was already a good game for the better. I would, however, like to thank another asshat from a big boy site whose name rhymes with pie-gee-en for delaying the guys at Codemasters by a full fifteen minutes which, in turn, delayed us in getting back to the 2K booth for our previews.

With our impromptu 2K booth tour over and done with, myself and Ben head to our next meeting on the other side of the hall for a look at another free to play MMO, World Of Tanks (no no no, stay with me). World of Tanks was all over the expo; everybody was carrying a World of Tanks bag and you couldn’t enter the west hall without seeing the two whopping great tanks outside. The game itself is impressive, really impressive, and I’ll be playing this one when I get back. The MMO is huge and currently holds the world record for the greatest number of players connected to a single server playing at the same time (yes, that’s including World of WarCraft). The idea is simple enough – you choose from the huge garage of tanks from various countries, which include both pre and post World War II (no modern ones yet), and head off into a match. If you win, well done you, but if you lose it’s no biggy as your tank will enter the repair shop while you just pick another from your garage and hit play again. Keep an eye out for our upcoming preview – it was my surprise game of the show.

Just a couple of hours of show time left and Ben decides it’s time to get our names down for a Mass Effect 3 showing. I won’t go into the full run down of what we saw as we do discuss it a fair bit on our day two podcast, so go and have a listen. I’ll give you the headlines though: The Normandy has got blue bits on it, Ashley is looking hot (but dead in my game), the Biotec sword is cool, and the scale of the game is huge… way bigger than anything you’ve seen before from Mass Effect. I would love to have given it my Game Of The Show award, but it didn’t feel right.  Mass Effect was always going to be Mass Effect and, for me, it has its own standards to live up to. It’s a good game, and everybody knows it, so no thumbs up from me will change anyone’s opinion, and I wasn’t willing to waste my award on a game that we already know is great like pie-gee-en or LameSpot do, just so they can get their logo on the game box.

Straight out of Mass Effect 3 and into the line for Star Wars: The Old Republic, but there was only space for one of us. “You go on without me man” I told Ben; it was a tough decision and the first time we’d split up throughout the entire show. I felt lost without him, so I went to the only place where I felt like I was at home, and visited the Microsoft booth. I picked up the pad for Sonic Generations and had a quick bash on that (quick review – It’s alright, s’pose).  As I put the pad down a couple had just left one of the Kinect bubbles where they were playing Kinect Star Wars; the guy from Microsoft caught my eye and was beckoning me in. Now, I’d never played Kinect before but I felt like maybe it was time. This was a bad idea. These Kinect bubbles were built into the hub of the Microsoft booth with one side housing the TV and Xbox, and behind me was a huge glass dome with about twenty people beyond that were watching me ‘being the controller’. The game itself is actually pretty good and, let’s be honest here, most of us jump around the living room pretending to be a Jedi when nobody’s looking anyway, so you may as well get some achievements for it. The controls match the way of the Jedi well, and draw you in to the game, which is something I wasn’t expecting… especially from Kinect. Your right hand becomes the light sabre and your left controls the force, so you’d hold your hand out to target a small droid then raise it up and throw it to the side, whereas if you want to do a force push to knock droids over you simply pull your arm back and push the buggers out of the way; you can feel the power of the force and it is strong within you.

About two thirds into the demo two Droideka come rolling out from behind a blast door and the guy from Microsoft informed me that I needed to lean forward to do a force dash, then jump, then swish my light sabre at them all in one go. At this stage of the demo I’d become too wrapped up in believing I was a Jedi to remember that he was even with me in my Kinect bubble. So, like a true Jedi when faced with insurmountable odds, I did what needed to be done and rushed head on at the two droids  that were hell bent on turning me into bantha food. I jump graciously, pulling off a forward roll over the top of them in the air like only a Jedi can, before landing with the noise of my Jedi boots hitting the metal landing pad and resonating with a metallic thump.  A wave of dust blew out from where I landed; I felt like a Jedi, I was a Jedi. Then, at that moment, the fourth wall was broken. Back in the real world, a fairly big guy who normally wears his trousers pretty loose and had things like a dictaphone, notepad, wallet, shitload of coins and mobile phone weighing down various trouser pockets just jumped up in the air. This only ever results in one thing, and I’ll tell you now that it’s not a shockwave of dust.  And that’s the story of the time my trousers fell down in front of the man from Microsoft, at least twenty people and potentially the whole of YouTube.

The time a guy from LameSpot windmilled in on our presentation and didn’t even know what the fuck to ask…

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