EGX

You would think that when you decide to go to a convention you would remember the date and be hyped up about it for weeks beforehand. Apparently both me and my partner forgot that we had tickets to this until reminded that we’d agreed to give friends a lift back from the event.

So Thursday, Friday and Saturday were spent in mild anticipation, but I’m still unsure how I managed to forget about my first convention.

Of course, now I have been, and I am certainly not forgetting it.

I was bundled into the car fairly early in the morning (I am very much not a morning person, so rolling out of bed and into the car at 7am in the morning was not my idea of fun) and then the partner drove us up in very good time, so we got there a little after ten, got our wristbands, and stood in a huge queue for half an hour. That gave us time to study the map and plan our first moves. And watch a helpful videos highlighting some bits and pieces of the show.

Gates opened at 11am, and my partner made straight for the Elite Dangerous booth where they had VR set up. I am not all that interested by tiny flying spaceships, so I left him in that queue and went over to Nintendo.

I played Zelda Tri Force heroes, which looks really fun, and the best part is you only need one copy of the game and two friends with 3DSs to get a team together. Or you can play over the net 🙂

I then went and looked around the Indie block of games. I watched a fair few, and played an interested puzzle game called Induction. Cubes and timelines have to interact to solve the puzzles. It was good.

Then I went into the over 18s area, picking up a free energy drink sample, and went and played the Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate Demo. I liked a lot (although I am slow at playing it and didn’t get that far through the mission).

I went back to the VR line, where my partner was still queuing, and handed the energy drink off to him. It took him another twenty minutes to get to the front of the queue (for a total time of two hours) and get into that VR chair for five minutes, but his face as he climbed out afterwards was one of pure ecstatic joy. He even said “I could have driven here for three hours, queued for two, played that for five minutes, driven home for another three hours, and it would still have been worth it.”

Thankfully, that wasn’t it. We went and pre-ordered Halo 5, getting a bunch of free swag for doing so (including cortana’s chip USB sticks) waited around the Xbox area, had a talk from the lead designer person for Halo 5, snagged a free Halo 5 tshirt, and then we both went and queued for the demo they had running. It was AMAZING. 12 v 12 arena fight, with AI, bosses, bases and a whole bunch of gear as you level up. I got 50 points for my team by killing mini bosses! My partner got 600. Because he’s a freaking show off. But seriously, it was great, and normally I’m happy to leave online battle alone, but I think I might get into it if it’s that good! And the introduction videos for the games itself were amazing and so hype inducing, and Nathan Fillion is in it! I’ll admit it, I fangirled.

We walked around a bit after that, he checked out the Indie games whilst I flumped on comfy seating. There were some other bits and pieces. We attempted and failed to win an Wii U, but got Pokemon cards instead. Met up with our friends, played a couple more small games, then headed home.

All in all, it was really great, and I had a great time for my first convention. Sure, I would love it if there were less people, but that just goes to show how popular gaming is 🙂

And as well as checking out a bunch of new games, we got a heck of a lot of loot by the end, only a couple of bits of it bought!