It is nice to have a business area. Having a space to sit and write, take notes or just having people with enough time to answer your questions, is not vital to providing prompt coverage but it certainly helps.
Coming from the comparatively down and dirty TGS, Gamescom’s attitude to press had a great many advantages. There was one disadvantage however, which was that a great many games I DIDN’T get to play, that I was only allowed to watch. Of course Tokyo had its own fair share of ‘game theatres’ for upcoming games still early in development but with no appointments I rarely saw them.
The last few months of games really took it out of me, with games that demanded my attention long into the night thanks to both review deadlines and unhealthy addictions.
You may be asking why I feel this is important, well there is a psychological theory known as misattribution of emotion. Basically the idea is that a feeling can bleed in to an opinion experienced around the same time without conscious thought or control.
It should come as no surprise that Activision Blizzard’s space at Gamescom was vast. With Activision titles lining the left and Blizzard on the right, I paid multiple visits to their ‘booth’, which was constantly buzzing with activity. All of
My first appointment was with Warner Bros. With three appointments (plus one for Lollipop Chainsaw that I begged for) I spent a good chunk of time in this smallish, but well ventilated booth (did I mention that in the business section you could feel the air-con?) chatting to developers and press. It was casual, friendly, and far less harassed than I had ever felt at TGS as I relaxed in a chair with my cola.
This should be the last you see of my articles on Shadow’s of the Damned, the game I expected to worship but that I ended up just adoring. It was a hard score to decide on for Play Devil, as their scores are weighted slightly higher than I would naturally place them and I suspect that by comparison to some other reviews on the site I should probably have gone up to 8.5, rather than the flat 8.
For me Shadows of the Damned achieved a sublime mix of creative talent. If I were to compare it to the classics I would see it as a mix of Shakespeare, Mozart and Da Vinci coming together for a production. To my Japanese centric mind, with a propensity for horror and narrative, the pool of creative talent EA pulled together was breath taking. Suda 51 brought his spin to the story, with Shinji Mikami handling game play and Akira Yamaoka on drums… I mean writing the score. Honestly there is nothing in this mix that could possibly go wrong. Right? Well in theory yes but, as I proved one time when I made ramen with a beer and cheese, sometime the whole can be far less than the sum of its parts.
It was recently announced last week that the Nintendo 3DS was to undergo quite a sizable price cut (and indeed has since I wrote this originally). Here in the UK the reduction equates to nearly an eighty pound for anyone wanting to pick up the system, with prices plummeting from £220 to £140 RRP.