I will be honest. I wasn’t looking forward to EGX Day 3. I was tired and aside from the interviews I had planned, I had pretty much seen everything I had wanted to see at EGX.
But I did make a promise to the Great and Legendary Ben to try out one of the AAA games for him, to brave the long queues and give it a whirl. But because this was a bigger day, Saturday after all, I could only do Just Cause 3. As someone who’s never played a Just Cause game before I have to say I loved it. There was so much freedom to do as you wished and the potential for creative destruction is outstanding.
Not my usual kind of game, but I enjoyed it. Sadly, I discovered very quickly I sucked at using the grapples to pull things together. Having said so, I did manage a couple of stunts:
- I tethered points of a statue to different rooftops, pulling at it from many sides thus ripping it apart.
- Pulled two guards together into an oncoming backup jeep.
I ended my playthrough with one last stunt: I crashed the damn thing. Crashed to desktop!
Since it was my last EGX day, I decided to take care of my interviews in quick succession and then just wander around looking for fun and trouble. Fortunately for me, I inadvertently booked everything in quick succession. Move or Die is a phenomenal party game, and the developer, Nicolae Berbece, discussed with me his plans for releases and how he’d love to do even more stuff with the Wii U version and between myself and the crowd, we gave him a couple of ideas. Merge Games showed me their wide array of titles, of which Cast of the Seven Godsends tugged at my Ghosts & Goblins heartstrings, and Riot: Civil Unrest hit home quite hard, reminding me of the many riots I saw on TV while still living in Venezuela. The people I spoke to had so much energy I just spent about an hour talking to them, discussing where the games came from, how Merge Games helped the developers and what they’re planning on in the future.
I hadn’t realised how much I was looking forward to talking to Wes and Colin from Prologue Games until I was actually there. The PCs were all taken so I had a nice chat with Wes about the game’s origin, how they planned out the story, some of the future plans—a soon-to-come article—and finally I asked him the difficult question: EGX vs Rezzed, which one is better?
Then I played Knee Deep episode 2 and the only thing I could tell them was they were evil, leaving the demo at an amazing cliffhanger. I will definitely play it when it releases! If you ever get the chance to meet them, chat away, they’re really awesome people.
I once again stopped by the SpecialEffect booth, speaking to them about their organisation, the stuff they do and how much they amaze me. Organisations like theirs make me feel star-struck when I meet their people. Their dedication is just inspiring, humbling and I just want to do whatever I can to help.
Super Mixtape was a weird one, a game where you play as a cassette tape. It’s weird, quirky, but also really fun. The dev is another child of the 80s, and we had a laugh imagining things he could throw in there. He lit up when I mentioned he had to include some Synth-Pop.
The rest of my day I spent taking photos of the stands, the halls and the amazing cosplayers, always asking their permission of course. Always in the background I heard the roar of gamers to the very energetic speakes at the different booths. The Nintendo guys were my favourite, they had so much energy and kept pumping people up!
I then took some time for myself for a healthy lunch—a first for all of EGX, a nice yogurt and granola.
I’d decided to leave EGX early, right after my lunch but then I got a Tweet reminder from NFTS Games. I almost missed them. They were in the careers section but didn’t have the big banners I’d expected so I never saw them. I’m so glad Tony Evans contacted me before I left. The games I saw there left me in complete awe. And the students were so open to feedback and they liked some of the stuff I said. I also took the chance to find out about some of the Graduate Projects I saw in February.
On day 3, much like in a film, I took the time to look back at the whole EGX experience. I met amazing new people, saw old friends I missed (particularly Ben, that man gets all my references!) and it was first EGX. As corny as it may sound, I left the NEC with a smile…and really sore feet.
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