I had a very enjoyable weekend at the UK Games Expo, I got
to play a lot of new games and had a fantastic time. I’ll give an overview and
the highlights here, but some of it will need to go in a separate blog. Even
so, there’s lots to cover here, so this blog will be a little longer than usual:
Having had most of this week off work for the half-term
holiday, I had time to play some video games; I cracked on with Eternal
Crusade, but I played a new game as well: Divine Divinity. It’s an action-RPG
in the style of Diablo. Indeed, it starts in pretty much the same way; you find
yourself in a small town plagued by some misgivings from the local area, and
after some initial fetch-questing, you descend into the dungeon to sort it all
out.
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| Down in the Dungeon... |
What I like about this game is that there’s no hand-holding;
no easy first level, no tutorial. It’s you vs the game almost straight away,
and I am fine with that. One of my pet peeves of video games is having to play
it for an hour before the actual game starts. But in Divine Divinity, once
you’re in the dungeon, you’re on your own. And I had a really good time; I
chose the Wizard class, I managed my resources, killed enemies, got the
treasure and went back to the town to take breaks when I needed to. I’ve noticed
that with some RPGs, the dungeons are designed to give a sense of realism and
pacing, and while the latter is crucial for a good game, sometimes the need to
stop playing the game to advance the plot makes it feel somewhat artificial.
While plot can add to a game, developers should never forget that the core of
the game is the gameplay, and when it’s done as well as this, I could happily
spend the entire game dungeon-bashing without any semblance of plot. I’ll be
coming back to this one!
I make an effort to return to the UK Games Expo every year!
It’s very often the highlight of my year. Here’s how it went down:
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| Yep, it was as rickety as it looks... |
On Friday, I had entered two tournaments: Catan and
Dominion. It had been a long time since I’d played in tournament, and in
previous years I felt I’d missed out on some of what the expo had to offer by
avoiding them, so I signed up to play some games. I never expected to do very
well, which is just as well because I didn’t, but I played seven games in a day
which is more than I think I’ve ever manage in my life!. I’ll cover what I can
remember of the details in a new semi-regular blog series titled Tournaments
and Tribulations, but at this point I’d like to say that the atmosphere was
almost the complete opposite from what I expected from tournaments. I’ve played
with so-called hard-core players before, and I’ve struggled to enjoy it. I
didn’t know the games very well so I expected to have a rough time, but the
vast majority of people I played were very nice, patient and helpful, and that
made my day as much as anything else.
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| Adam and Chloe - Showing me a new way to play Hey That's My Fish |
On Saturday I met up with some old friends from Swindon:
Adam, Chloe and Tom. After going around the expo for a while we went to the
gaming hall; I was happy to introduce them to Hey, That’s My Fish! We played a
couple of games, and I won both of them. Chloe made an interesting observation:
She suggested that we play the second game blind, with the tiles upside down. This
would have been covered in playtesting, but it made a remarkable difference to
the game. Without being able to call our moves based on the number of fish we’d
get, we instead played a lot more aggressively, blocking each other off, and
making sure we had a long run of tiles to collect when we were blocked. We also
borrowed Riff Raff from Thirsty Meeples; a game in which you aim to be the
first to put all of your wooden pieces of cargo on a rickety ship without them
falling off – if they do, you need to catch them. Adam and Chloe won that
between them. Finally, we played A Fistful of Penguins; a gambling game in
which you compete for money by rolling different combinations of animals on
dice, and using penguins to re-roll or add dice. I can’t remember who won those
games but it was a good laugh!
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| A Fistful of Penguins. Penguins are purple. |
Tom stayed for Sunday and Kirsty was there as well, so we
watched a couple of shows. Dark Room was excellent; John Robertson was
exhausted after what must have been a long weekend for him, but his
improvisation and crowd interaction was spot-on. We also saw Knightmare Live. I’ve
now seen the show three times, and it was good to see some different rooms
being developed. The team guiding the dungeoneers was the best I’ve ever seen
it; they were from Shut Up and Sit Down. The two lead actors, however, weren’t
quite as on it with their improvisation as they usually are, and I think there
was a presumption that the vast majority of people had seen the show before. This
blunted their usually excellent performance, but it was a very funny show
nonetheless.
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| You can see the pattern emerging in our preferred choice of gaming animal... |
Earlier I’d bought Ice Cool, and
Tom showed Kirsty and me how to play. It’s a really good game about flicking
penguins through the halls of a school to get fish, while one penguin tries to
stop them. It takes about ten minutes to play, and is meant for children, but
it’s great fun and we thoroughly enjoyed it. I won the first game, and Kirsty
won the other by being very good at catching our penguins!
So, a brilliant weekend, and I
while my bank balance can certainly wait for the next one, I can’t! See you
next year.
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