EUROGAMER 2013
Well, that was good!!
Met up with Dave Cator at London Liverpool Street and travelled to Earls Court quite quickly, getting there about 10 minutes after opening to be met by a queue of approx 2 - 3,000 people! but it moved through fairly quickly
No sign of Rich, Cal and the others with all day tickets and a quick call revels they're waiting on bacon sarnies
Earls Court is a big place and it quickly developed into a big place full of queues!
Upstairs in the 18+ are we started of with Battlefield 4 (queue time approx 1 hour) played on XBones - amazing even on those gimpy XB controllers!! well worth the wait to play one battle and I think this will be on my Crimbo wish list if not earlier. Queue wait was also livened by being lucky enough to catch a BF4 T-shirt being lobbed out randomly to the hordes
Still no sign of the rest of the "all dayers"
Back down stairs to CoD Ghosts (QT just under an hour). This was not quite so impressive and also played on the dreaded XBone. This time I couldn't figure out how to start the bloody game and the alloted time was for a TDM so, with a couple of guys on the otherside who knew what they were doing it was all over very quickly. From what I saw and the action I managed to get I think that Ghosts is probably run and gun and BF4 is more a thinking man's game
Still no sign of the guys with all day tickets (they're waiting for Tam to get out of the shower) so we stopped for a pizza then on to the Sony PS4 (QT about 40 mins to get into the area) to try out the next gen console
CELEBITY ALERT!!! - spotted Jason Bradbury from The Gadget Show in the PS4 area
Once you got into the PS4 area you're given two tickets to try different games and each one was valid for about 6 different games. Reasonably good idea to keep the waiting times down so we decided first of all to try DriveClub. Stunning graphics especially when compared to the PS3 drive game (Gran Tourismo 6) being shown outside of the area. All I can say are my memories are correct and I can confirm I am worse at driving games than FPS but it gave me a good laugh
The we queued for another FPS, Backlight I think which was letting you play a complete round of the game but my legs were shot so it was "Dave, gimme your bag. You queue for a go " and I sat on the floor. 10 minutes later Mister C had done the maths and had worked out with 6-7 people in front of him taking 8-10 minutes to complete a go on the game.....naah!
Still no sign of the others so we go for a wander around the smaller stands which were quite interesting and the retro area bringing back early computing memories - Doom anyone? Loads of the old machines as well
Then, just before 5.00.....text "We're here and getting our wristbands!" then "we're at the bar" (naturally! )
and so we have....
Cal, Tam, Jenna and Rich
Rich Euan and Stretch
Dylan, Kyla (Diddum's better half) and Rich......anyone spotted Rich's plan yet?
Dave C, Dave (Didds) and....Rich
Having taken refreshments and worked out who was who we gave them the low down on what we'd seen etc and the agreement was "try BF4" which was upstairs.....in the over 18 section. We tried but withou age ID it was no go for Dylan so while the others went off he and I wandered around the main hall and got a photo opportunity for him
I can't for the life of me work out why he wanted his picture taken with this young lady!!
Reunited with the others we mooch around the rest of the show, Didds buys a graphics card, we mooch, Didds pre-orders BF4 to get some free stuff then at 6.55 the PA gives out that the gig is over and please leave. So what shall we do?......
You got it!!
Dave and Rich in an intense debate, about Lego I think
Apparently Jenna was the only one to remain sober the previous evening
Someone comments that Euan and Dylan look like they're from the same family rather than Dylan and Tam being brothers. They didn't think much of this for some reason......
...but it all ended amicably!!
And so it ended, the first real Forum Meet-Up and we found out that we're all a pretty likeable bunch who seem to get along well. This is obviously sanitised sober version from the show. What went on back at Diddums flat I just don't know and will wait to see the photos which they'll hopefully post when they eventually wake up!
We gotta do it again!!
Naw, Mrs P said exactly the same but I think I'm in some of the pictures the others took. Judging by some of the (few) posts made by the others, I think some of them are still in a bit of a fragile state so the last thing on their minds wil be photos!