GAMESC

The biggesT games convenTion in europe Took over cologne and Dan Griliopoulos was There. read all abouT iT...

SHOWTIME!

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he Wargaming.net booth is heaving. The crowd spills out on three sides; on the fourth, a hairless alpha male in the accoutrements of the metal subculture is rabble-rousing, waving his arms and yelling. Behind him, two giant screens show close-ups of him from either side. Above him three barely-clad women writhe in very small boxes. He turns to one camera and, enormously magnified on the screens, shows what hes been whipping the crowd up about. I think... its a mouse? A nice, sexy, black metal mouse. But still a mouse. I leave, because I know the routine. Hell hurl it at braining speed into the crowd, where grasping hands will snatch it, fight for it, their owners snarling like hungry apes. November 2012

I know the routine because Ive seen something similar. No, not in Total Recall (though I do find it funny that few of these older science fiction movies, save for Cherry 2000, managed to predict the sexist, hedonistic me culture that GamesCom exemplifies). Ive seen it all around the show shiny promo staff barking at the crowd and hurling T-shirts like gold into the baying morass. Id love to say that GamesCom is a showcase of all thats best about games, but from my tone you can tell that would be disingenuous. To say that GamesCom demonstrates the true morality and liberality of gamers would, as the sadly-missed professional liar and politician Alan Clarke put it, be economical with the actualit. GamesCom is a showcase of everything it means to be a hardcore gamer. Thats the truest thing I can say.

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You know you want it, I want to hear you beg!

GamesCom consists of eight giant hangars big enough for space rockets. The total floor space is 140,000 square metres. At the end of one, the Electronic Sports World Cup qualifiers are taking place. There are maybe 2,000 seats for spectators, and there are people standing, their faces lit by the huge displays. On stage, a handful of competitors hunch into their computers, playing League of Legends a hugely successful multiplayer game that has a single map. One. Map. Which was ripped off from Warcraft III. Its developers did introduce a new game mode with a second map earlier this year, but its not heavily played. Each hangar is home to titanic constructions structures of metal and plastic, carefully designed to be

the big compaNies areNt makiNg the big bucks aNy more
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built and dismantled in a few hours. Over 600 companies have travelled from 40 countries to be here, and they each have one of these stands. They are to normal consumer show stands what a Super Star Destroyer is to the Millennium Falcon. They loom over the crowds. On business days, these halls are filled like a normal convention, with a few thousand wandering the stands, browsing and trying the games at leisure. But on the days the consumers are let in, you literally cannot move. Over 275,000 people visited the hall during the three days it was open. One former bigwig at Electronic Arts told me that in 2011, people queued for eight hours for a short demo of Star Wars: The Old Republic. His team had built three themed rooms on their huge stand just for the people to wait in. For last years reveal of Battlefield 3, there was a 10-hour queue. My expeditions to see games on the show floor this year inevitably ended with me flotsam on the teenage tide, moving slack-jawed between T-shirt giveaways.

On the last day I was so exhausted from endless running that both I and a friend from the cerebral Rock, Paper, Shotgun blog walked up to a massive booth and said Hello, were here to see The Secret World. The man in front looked baffled. Weve an appointment! my colleague insisted. The man looked at us like wed just walked out of the sea and were spouting brine instead of words. He pointed up. Way up there, in letters 10 feet tall, were the words ACTIVISION-BLIZZARD. EA is next door, he said. Whats stranger is that, though both Activision and EA still had their traditional monstrously large stands, theres been a drop-off in who else is attending among the major game companies. Sega, Codemasters and THQ, trapped in the middle of the scale, decided not to attend; their games were only on show in the business centre, in rooms theyd borrowed from more lavish companies normally their German distributors. Nintendo and Microsoft were nowhere to be seen both are

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rpG of the show :

Dishonored
itd be hard to pin down the genre that Dishonored fits into. assassin simulator seems to have been taken by Assassins Creed but its more like Deus Ex, Thief and Hitman. here, says the developer, is a vignette. here is your objective in this vignette; you have to achieve it to move to the next one. Weve built rough paths into the game, but theres nothing to stop you finding your own route, or exploring and fulfilling your own objectives. Dishonored takes place in a 19th century London-parallel called Dunwall. its a socially-stratified city and you, corvo, the erstwhile bodyguard of the countrys empress, have been framed for her murder. meanwhile, a plague is spreading and the poor are dying you can see the limits of Dishonoreds cross-platform development. though impeccably designed, areas are small and combat comprises mere skirmishes. the section we played was a masked ball given by the three Ladies boyle our task was to find and remove one who was important to the government. With multiple entry points to their estate, and multiple ways of removing her ladyship, including simple violence against all three ladies, poirot-style questioning of the guests and reading her diaries, Dishonored encourages you to use stealth, violence and intelligence as you see fit. your choices do have consequences in the end, and the game has multiple endings to reflect this.

Who gave that kid a mech?! I sense danger...

A Boyle that needs a good lancing?

Stealth, violence and intelligence? A heady mixture

preparing for the transition to their next consoles. Microsoft has developers working frantically to make games for the next Xbox; two thirds of its internal studios are now working on it exclusively. Nintendo really should have attended it should have shown off the Wii U, which is expected out this Christmas so its absence was noted with concern. Sony on the other hand, seeing its sales of PS2s and PS3s falling off a cliff and its handheld Vita console doing nowhere the figures it has been predicting, needed to be there to show that it still mattered. It had a huge stand, including a 10x scale model of its interactive Wonderbook: Book of Spells, which features a new Harry Potter story from JK Rowling, and five new titles all PS3 exclusives, sadly. The reason none of the bigger companies are here? Theyre not the ones making the big bucks any more. Even without them, the show had grown up 14 per cent on the year before. Wargaming.net is getting not high double-digit millions in revenue every month

and, until recently, that was with all profit (it just took on about 800 staff). Theres also a touch of hubris in their display here the new kids on the block wanting to show off. Hence the Wargaming.net booth bigger than god and twice as ugly, swollen on the proceeds of World of Tanks. Hence League of Legends, a supremely profitable free-to-play game. Hence Ubisofts conversion of the small studio that once just made The Settlers into the forefront of its digital games, with a few hundred global employees. And hence its announcement of The Settlers Online, Anno Online, Heroes of Might & Magic Online and Silent Hunter Online at GamesCom. The money is in free games now. Despite that, well, the free games we saw just werent that good. Ill go through a few impressive ones, but mostly the blockbuster games were single-player or small-scale multiplayer only. My three games of the show Dishonored, X-Com and Far Cry 3 are mostly singleplayer experiences.

Somehow Sonic costumes always look sinister

The GAmes

So, to the free games (and by free they normally mean youll eventually want to pay to skip the boring bits). The company thats doing these best, with the ethos of making really solid games and then seeing if they have to go F2P, is Trion Worlds. Its flagship title is Rift, which we reviewed favourably last year, and which has made over $100 million since then. At GamesCom it showed us the mind-blowingly huge expansion, Storm Legion. This trebles the size of the game world, adding two huge new continents to the game, as well as crazy large bosses called Colossi to fight. It also introduces player-housing and four new souls (sub-classes), and raises the level cap to 60. We got to see one of the new classes, the Harbinger, which was a highly flexible and innovative battle-mage. Defiance is a huge jump for Trion an MMO tie-in with a weekly series on the Sci-Fi channel. Set on Earth after an alien invasion, the game is a third-person shooter where humans battle aliens for possession of the planet. November 2012 105

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rTs of the show :

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

ill give you a clue who the enemy is: its the aliens. i think so, because they shoot at you. i remember that from the first three X-Coms, which were passable, then the dreadful interregnum of Interceptor and Enforcer, and the long hiatus punctuated by rip-offs of variable quality. this reboot was inspired by the poor reaction to 2ks earlier Fps reboot, titled simply X-Com, which has faded into the ether. this is a polished, modern remake of the original UFO: Enemy Unknown. the combat system has been reworked extensively to make it quicker and less complicated, but the team has brought back all of the old favourite enemies, including the chrysalid, sectoid and cyberdisc, in new and gruesome guises. it has a strong, dark plot. youre heading up an organisation dedicated to combating an alien invasion. you fight aliens on the ground, research their tech, replicate it and use it against them. meanwhile, your troops are slowly levelling up and getting more kit, and the overall world plot is advancing. at gamescom, i played a surprise the multiplayer. thats something no X-Com game has had before. it follows the style of a Warhammer game like Necromunda; you buy up to six powerful aliens and flexible humans using a well crafted points system, customise them to your hearts content, and then send them out to kill or die in the turn-based combat arena. its quick, fun and moreish.

What games have always needed leopard attacks

Theres only one winner here...us when UFO gets released!

At GamesCom I got hands-on with the PvP which, for me, was as good as Tribes: Ascend or the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer. One to watch, and almost certainly free to play. Its also finally releasing End of Nations, the online-only arena strategy game from a whole bunch of Command & Conquer veterans at Petroglyph. These guys have been demoing this game for over a year and its finally gone into open beta, so we expect it out soon. Itll face competition from EA though, which is releasing Command & Conquer: Generals 2 as free to play as well. Its also releasing Warface, Cryteks F2P FPS built on CryEngine 3, which is seeking to challenge the dominance of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in the multiplayer arena. NCsoft showed me a minor surprise, behind closed doors. Its action-MMO Blade & Soul, which has already been released in Asia, is coming to the UK. Its a lush fantasy world based on the classic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon motifs, meaning it features amazing acrobatics and ludicrous 106 November 2012

combat moves. This is also one to watch but will it be free to play?

sTrATeGy GAmes

Paradox Interactive, as ever, had a huge line-up, with a range of strategy titles leading the pack. Game of Dwarves is a promising 3D dungeon management game (themed around dwarves, if you hadnt guessed), but was totally overshadowed by the similar-butbetter Cyanide-developed Impire. Impires premise is that youre a top-ranking demon trapped in the body of an imp by an incompetent sorcerer. Every room has a sickening design, and its mechanics are impressively original. Paradox also showed off Europa Universalis 4, the most complicated strategy

game youll play save for Hearts of Iron, and Cities in Motion 2. Getting hands-on with the new Sim City was a revelation. EA has obviously learned a lot from Spore and The Sims in terms of design and user interface. Its very easy to start playing and get into and also very easy to screw up through bad town planning. Its new multiplayer mode has taken much from the defunct Cities XL, with super-projects that players can build together an international airport, for example. Also reviving a long-dead franchise is Bohemia Interactives Carrier Command. This is a faithful, but beautiful recreation of the original genre-buster, and was one of my games of E3 last year. Players control a futuristic carrier-factory as it sails between islands on an alien world, aiming to capture them from a superior enemy carrier.

shooTING GAmes

coNsoLe makers are FaciNg the periL oF cLouD gamiNg

Borderlands 2, the sequel to a game that was all about not making sequels, is a post-apocalyptic first person romp. The first game took a lot from the world of MMOs and the Fallout series, and applied it to an FPS. This one promises to be even more batshit, with an infinite array of guns to find. We got a lengthy demo of the new Star Trek game as well. This is a shooter very much in the guns and bromance genre of Modern

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Fps of the show :

Far Cry 3

my reaction, instinctively, was not to go for Far Cry 3 as my final game of the show. its the Championship Manager of shooting games, after all, but it was the most fun i had at the event, so i have to knuckle under on my prejudices. ill explain. once upon a time, three brothers got together to make a game engine the cryengine. after years working on it, they thought that theyd better make a game as well, to show off how powerful and beautiful their engine was. so they made the blue-sky, greenjungle, blue-sea open world shooter, Far Cry. then they went off and started making Crysis. meanwhile, the publisher, which had the game rights, shat out sequels and spin-offs of Far Cry, none of which were any cop. personally, i loathed Far Cry 2. Far Cry 3 is the series redemption. its lost the po-faced nonsense of the previous game, (which had been pretty comprehensively undermined by shoddy design decisions), replacing it

with a sense of joy inspired by the first game and Just Cause 2. Now your protagonist drives a range of beat-up vehicles around the island like a ritalindeficient crackhead, as you spot more cool things to do. climb a radio tower! shoot some bandits! go hang-gliding! get a granny to upgrade your gun! Jump on a mans head! its like an adult Famous Five adventure. moreover, the island is riddled with wildlife, all of which is out to kill you. During my 45-minute hands-on, i was savaged by a bull shark, swarmed by komodo dragons and gored by a warthog. kill one of these animals and a) global biodiversity isnt really affected, and b) you can turn its skin into a stylish accessory. komodo dragon hides make excellent ammo bags, for example. oh, and theres a plot, about rescuing a girl and some evil Heart of Darkness inspired banditos but thats fundamentally irrelevant to the plot you make up in your own head.

Warfare and Gears of War. Players take the role of either Spock or Kirk, with AI or a friend controlling the other. The plot is set in the period between the 2009 movie and next years sequel, with the Vulcans trying to rebuild their world. Doom 3 BFG Edition was the least impressive game I played at the show. We gave it a high score when it came out originally, but even with faster combat and more open areas, without that cutting edge gloss, its just not a very good shooter. We only had a limited amount of time on the EA stand, so we didnt get a chance to play Need for Speed: Most Wanted or even Crysis 3, but we did get on hands on Battlefield 3: Armored Kill. Adding a handful of new maps to the original game oriented solely around tanks, this changed the game substantially. The only challenger to its crown is the true MMOFPS Planetside. There were plenty of other shooters. Primal Carnage is an asymmetric multiplayer combat game based around a team of humans facing off against a team of tyrannosaurs, velociraptors and pteranadons. Similarly, the much-anticipated Natural Selection 2 features humans vs aliens, with a commander on each side organising upgrades and commanding the troops. Dead Island: Riptide is an expandalone sequel based on last

years surprise FPS-RPG zombieholiday resort hit. The survivors from the original have landed their helicopter on another island for no good reason, and are fighting more zombies. This time, water and weather play a much larger part, and players (in co-op or on their own) will use boats to get around the flooded island. Hitman: Absolution almost escapes the shooter label it is, after all, an assassination game with nothing said about just shooting someone but it still fits into this category. Like Dishonored, players are given a target and asked to remove them as subtly as possible; unlike Dishonored, this is the modern day with modern weapons and CCTV, so you cant just murder anyone, anywhere. At GamesCom, a new multiplayer mode was shown where players set their own in-game challenges on any level, which their friends can then attempt to replicate.

Epic MMOFPS joy is promised in Planetside 2

The resT

There were other great single player experiences for PC too. Deus Ex creator Warren Spector returns to his rebooted Mickey Mouse world in Epic Mickey: The Power of Two. The original was a Wii exclusive, so no one played it, but this sequel is looking very

promising. It draws on Disneys huge back catalogue of underexploited characters, such as Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and features a painterly style of gameplay, as well as co-op so you can play with your kid. The hardware side of PC gaming was a bit neglected at GamesCom. There was one astounding VR device, the Oculus Rift, which everyone reported was uncannily accurate, but beyond that and the announcement of some expensive headphones from Plantronics, there didnt seem to be much new. Thats GamesCom done for another year. There are several shifts going on major publishers are struggling to cope with free to play, the younger generation are treating the event as a concert and pro-gamers as cool, and the console manufacturers are facing up to the perils of cloud gaming. Through it all, GamesCom gets bigger year after year. Weve been struggling for years to tell the world that the games industry is growing up, that its mature, that games are on a par with literature and art. With GamesCom as evidence, with the audience games actually attract, we may have to step back from our arguments a bit. n November 2012 107