With the Eurogamer Expo heading to town last week for four days of game goodness, the crew of WoS were in attendance to see what space-flavoured goodies we could dig out.
With the enormous show floor dominated by Microsoft, Sony and the immeasurably fun Nintendo stand, we set to sniffing out the highlight for us; Frontier Developments’ Elite: Dangerous. With the first playable version of Beta 2 there to be sampled on an impressive bank of machines including 4k monitors and a couple of Oculus Rifts, we dutifully joined the queue.
This was in fact the first time we’d gotten a look at David Braben’s opus through the lens of VR technology, and the results were even more impressive than we expected heading in. With the Rift tracking our head movements, hunting down and destroying opponents was child’s play, and after being invited to stand and look around the cockpit vertigo quickly took hold as we gazed out over the black of space. This was one of those real “we live in the future” moments.
We managed to quickly catch up with Frontier commander Braben at the stand, so be sure to check out our interview here.
For all the triple-A titles and blockbuster shooters that littered the show, some of the most interesting experiences we had were at the Rezzed booth. Here we met up with Positech Games’ Cliff Harris, there to show off Gratuitous Space Battle 2, the title of which couldn’t be more up our street if it tried. Inspired, Cliff said, by sitting through sci-fi films waiting for all the talk of trade embargoes to end, waiting for the inevitable moment when the lasers start flying, the game takes all the frills away to deliver sheer carnage amongst the stars. Setting up your fleet in the game’s deep ship customisation menu before issuing orders to each individual ship, two sides then sit back and watch the melee commence. Impressive light effects fill the screen (the game is best experienced in high resolution across more than one monitor) as the two banks of spaceships tear into each other, with text-based radio chatter giving some flavour to proceedings. Although there isn’t a great deal of interactivity involved beyond fiddling with the light settings, Gratuitous Space Battles 2 really is a handsome game, and with online challenges getting extremely competitive, we look forward to seeing how this one turns out.
One game we were particularly keen to get a look at was Tom Francis’ Heat Signature. It’s a lo-fi indie stealth game set in space, where the player is tasked with carrying out assassinations aboard procedurally-generated ships. Piloting the player character’s own small craft into the airlock of larger vessels looked to be a really enjoyable challenge – the game was drawing a crowd of surprisingly young admirers which kept us away from getting hands-on ourselves. Chatting with Tom revealed that the game was deep into development, if some way from a final release, but we’ll be sure to report on the progress of this game as it comes further along the process.
Last, but by no means least, we braved the dry ice and Ripley-costumed staff to get hands on with Alien: Isolation. This was possibly the most frightening experience we’ve had in the interactive medium, and one that we hope can maintain its appeal over a longer playthrough. We’ll be running a full breakdown of Sam’s playthrough soon, so keep watching the skies for that one.
So the new wave of space games was well represented at EGX, with a group of experiences ranging from “intriguing” to “mind-blowing” by way of “horrifying”. Frontier’s quest to win our hearts and minds continued apace, while Sega managed to leave us a quivering mess on the upper floor of Earl’s Court. With a collection of indie curios catching our eye too, the weekend confirmed to us just how healthy the space gaming scene is at the moment. The golden age is in many ways just beginning.
The post Report: Eurogamer Expo’s Space Oddities. appeared first on World of Spaceships.