This time I was going with the "Evolvers" Gang so we decided to get there early. Early enough to be in the first 300 for the free loot bag.
Almost 4 hours of queuing was crazy! I think this is the first ever time I have queued this long for anything. Thankfully, we had some good company among ourselves as well as beside us. Met another gamer, Leon and we managed to kill some time just chatting about, what else but games?!
And then out of the blue.. A McDelivery guy appears!
Looks like someone didn't want to risk his queue spot.. That was really funny!
Since all of us in queue were already given our tags, a couple of us went for a quick breakfast. Came back just in time for the start. Almost ready..
First 300 gets a random Loot Bag!
I got just a EA T-Shirt and some other junk.
We headed straight to the Playstation Area. Got more hands-on with Far Cry 4, The Evil Within, The Last of Us Re-mastered, Shadow of Mordor (They weren't kidding when they said it was very similar to Assassin's Creed and the Batman Arkham games), Until Dawn and BloodBorne.
Had a better experience with Far Cry 4 this time.. Still couldn't figure out how to climb the elephant so I had to improvise. The demo was of a fort takedown, same one as this video.
The open choices shows in the demo itself. You clearly have several options on how to take down the fort. There was a 'flying copter' thingy just nearby so could have used that. Saw someone grappling up a cliff to get the vertical advantage and Abhi, who's very familiar with the Far Cry series went for the stealthy approach. It's not like other games where they claim you have the freedom to choose your gameplay style but don't offer you the options.
Good stuff! There wasn't anyone waiting behind me so I had the chance to try different approaches. Which was surprising in a way. Somehow, no one wanted to play Far Cry 4..
Moving on, we split up as me and Jerome tried to complete the Quest card thingy for the free goodie bag but found out all the bags were redeemed when we had just 1 more to go.. So sad..
Signed up for a free HearthStone card pack and the Heroes of the Storm Beta Access.
At this point of time, most of us were split up just checking out different stuff.
I tried some Diablo 3 on the PS4 as the Crusader class. Just wanted to get a feel of how the game plays on a console. Felt kinda weird as I have always played the games on a PC with a mouse and keyboard.. But I think those who have never played the Diablo games should give it a try.
Time to get ready for the BloodBorne Meet-the-Producer Stage Event!
Got our tix for the event and met some interesting cosplayers along the way.
BloodBorne time!
I was a lot more excited for this event than I was a few days ago. The game looked really good. Monster designs were interesting and the combat, while a bit clumsy, was fun.
However, I felt the game was very, very tough. Not a dumb hack-and-slash where the enemies do shit.. Far from it, you had to be very technical with this. Every minion was a challenge.
Later on during the event, it was mentioned that only 1 in over 300 people managed to beat the first Boss and in US, only about 30 out of 3500. Not sure how accurate the numbers are, but it was believable.
The game was so tough, that it was a turn-off. As much as it looked great, I didn't want to buy a game that I just wouldn't be able to complete.
Anyway, I felt a lot more confident after the Producer event where Producer Masaaki Yamagiwa showed off his skills. I'll give you the details of the Producer event on another post.
Went for a quick lunch, before heading back.
No gaming convention is complete without a racing game! Time to race!
Got selected by Tagronauts for some free Instagram prints!
Cool! But what do I do with prints of cosplayers? Time to make my own prints!
Messed around more with the Evil Within Photo Booth. This was such a hit... The rest of them were hooked on this! They kept getting more & more prints from Tagronauts and we even got a group photo!
After numerous prints, it was time for the Lucky Draw..
No luck again sadly..
Crowds started clearing after that and finally.. the Namco Bandai Booth was empty enough to join the queue. All I wanted to try in their booth was Dead Island 2. Game was similar to Dead Island 1 even though this was done by a different developer.
From what I have seen of game-play videos online, my concern was that the zombies didn't pose much of a challenge.That didn't change after the hands-on. I was still figuring out the controls and the zombies couldn't even kill me.
Of course, this was a pre-Alpha demo so I'm hoping the difficulty level will be pushed up a few notches for the game. Too bad the program kept crashing but still happy to have tried it. Yet to answer anything about Dead Island 2 vs Dying Light.
We went back to the Playstation booth again and I tried WWE 2015 and BloodBorne. Watching the Producer demo was helpful. Had a better idea of the combat system and progressed a lot more than my first few tries. Still very challenging but do-able. Couldn't figure out how to lock on to the enemies or I just might have progressed to the first Boss. Oh well..
Last but certainly not the least, we manage to grab 1 round of Evolve just before they closed the place. A huge thanks to Chris and the rest of the 2K Asia staff for squeezing us in for a game!
It was us 4 against their staff, Chris as the monster. It was a great and very close game. We almost had him but the Kraken got the win in the end. Great stuff however.
Just glad that in the end, we got to try Evolve which was what we all wanted to play right from the start. Long queues all day long but that's great for the game itself. I can for-see plenty of gamers will be enjoying the 4v1 gameplay next year in February.
Long and tiring day but we all enjoyed it and it was worth staying till the end. Wouldn't have felt right to end GameStart 2014 without a single game of Evolve.
That's all for Day 2..
..and the Day 2 loot!
Hopefully we will meet again next year, GameStart!
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