+InsaneNutter MVC Posted September 23, 2015 MVC Share Posted September 23, 2015 (edited) Is anyone going to EGX this year? Myself and some mates are going down this year as it’s at the Birmingham NEC and not in the centre of London - https://www.egx.net/egx I’ve never been to any gaming conventions like that before, so not really sure what to expect. Probably a lot of standing around in long ques I imagine! However it should be an interesting experience to see what’s there and hopefully play some unreleased games too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MightyJordan Posted September 23, 2015 Share Posted September 23, 2015 Yeah, I'm going; I'm already in my hotel room in Birmingham. It'll be my first expo, too. I missed the bookings for the PlayStation VR, but I did get in for the HTC Vive, so at least I'll get to try out one of the big VR headsets. Looking at the show floor, I'll probably be spending most of my time at the Rock Band 4 and Project CARS stands. I do remember seeing on Twitter a contest for Destiny: The Taken King taking part at EGX, too... I've not played Destiny outside of the beta, but I'd be up for forming a Neowin team for that strike challenge! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skiver Veteran Posted September 23, 2015 Veteran Share Posted September 23, 2015 Yeah, I'm going; I'm already in my hotel room in Birmingham. It'll be my first expo, too. I missed the bookings for the PlayStation VR, but I did get in for the HTC Vive, so at least I'll get to try out one of the big VR headsets. Looking at the show floor, I'll probably be spending most of my time at the Rock Band 4 and Project CARS stands. I do remember seeing on Twitter a contest for Destiny: The Taken King taking part at EGX, too... I've not played Destiny outside of the beta, but I'd be up for forming a Neowin team for that strike challenge! I've already got a pretty stable 6 man team for the raids (not attempted the TTK raid yet) but I'd be happy to try and arrange a time to help out some of you guys who are new it all if need be (Xbox One). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MightyJordan Posted September 23, 2015 Share Posted September 23, 2015 I've already got a pretty stable 6 man team for the raids (not attempted the TTK raid yet) but I'd be happy to try and arrange a time to help out some of you guys who are new it all if need be (Xbox One). I've not got either new console or Destiny, so I won't be able to take you up on that offer; I'll have to go in blind this week. I imagine though that teams will be allowed to attempt it multiple times throughout the expo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skiver Veteran Posted September 23, 2015 Veteran Share Posted September 23, 2015 I've not got either new console or Destiny, so I won't be able to take you up on that offer; I'll have to go in blind this week. I imagine though that teams will be allowed to attempt it multiple times throughout the expo. Sorry I seem to have half read what you said and assumed you were talking of picking up a copy! ignore me, moving along Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+InsaneNutter MVC Posted September 23, 2015 Author MVC Share Posted September 23, 2015 Yeah, I'm going; I'm already in my hotel room in Birmingham. It'll be my first expo, too. I missed the bookings for the PlayStation VR, but I did get in for the HTC Vive, so at least I'll get to try out one of the big VR headsets. Looking at the show floor, I'll probably be spending most of my time at the Rock Band 4 and Project CARS stands. I do remember seeing on Twitter a contest for Destiny: The Taken King taking part at EGX, too... We're just driving down for the day tomorrow, its roughly 2h to 2:30h here so not too bad, setting off around 7am to be in for 10am. Hopefully get to see a bit before everyone else gets let in at 11am. Our theory is most people will hopefully go Fri, Sat, or Sun so it might not be as busy tomorrow. I think ill be spending a lot of time at the Halo 5 and Rise of Tomb Raider stand. Having recently got a Wii U i'm pretty interested to see what Nintendo has to offer too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MightyJordan Posted September 23, 2015 Share Posted September 23, 2015 Our theory is most people will hopefully go Fri, Sat, or Sun so it might not be as busy tomorrow. The ticket page seems to agree with you. Saturday's been completely sold out for a while now, Thursday, Friday and Sunday are sold out of Early Entries, but Thursday doesn't have the running low notice on the Day Tickets like on Friday and Saturday. Ooh, little heads-up, everyone: I saw PlayStation tweet this earlier... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MightyJordan Posted September 23, 2015 Share Posted September 23, 2015 Oh, and I got an email from HTC earlier; I wasn't successful in winning a slot. They did say though that there will be a "very limited number of demos available to book at EGX", so if anyone here's interested in the HTC Vive/Steam VR, you might wanna make their stand your first port of call when you get in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MightyJordan Posted September 24, 2015 Share Posted September 24, 2015 Just so you know, the Destiny strike challenge is taking place at 15:45 on the PlayStationPlayStation stage. I might not be able to make it, as somehow, I'm currently top of the Project CARS time trial leaderboard. If I'm still in the top eighteight come 16:00, I'll be taking part in today's final. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Audioboxer Subscriber² Posted September 24, 2015 Subscriber² Share Posted September 24, 2015 Enjoy it guys, can't make it this year! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+InsaneNutter MVC Posted September 24, 2015 Author MVC Share Posted September 24, 2015 I must admit I really enjoyed EGX today, we got there a bit later than planned, around half 10. The first thing we did was go over to the Xbox stand for Halo 5: We had to wait around 45 mins, however the staff were really friendly and talking to us and others as we waited. However we did get to play a full 25-30 minute game of Halo 5 which made it more than worth the wait. 24 Xbox One Devkits were all setup in one big game Warzone with 12 people on each team. If you have ever played Unreal Tournament 2004 Warzone could be best described as is a good mix of the assault / onslaught games modes on UT. I can see games of that lasting a long time on Xbox Live, it was difficult for either team to make any progress towards winning, however a lot of fun at the same time. I think once people have played a bit and are at different skill levels it would be easier for one team to push ahead as you can win in various different ways. It was certainly nice playing in a balanced games of Halo though, something i find rarely happens on Xbox Live. After that we attended a talk / demonstration of the new Hitman (2016) game, I found it quite interesting to hear the developers insights in to the game and it was nice to sit down for 20 minutes by this point. After some dinner we had a go on Starwars Battlefront, i'm not sure if i'd buy the game however it was fun enough to play a "hoard" style multiplayer mode on that. This was simply a local game played split screen on a PlayStation 4. The props in that area were pretty good too! I must credit Nintendo on their stand at EGX, it looked really good and the staff genuinely appeared to be the most happy people in the world. I walked in and a girl comes over and gives me a paper Mario hat to wear, looking around the majority of the people at the stand all have Mario hats which was something a bit different. Then another staff member starts talking to me about Super Mario Maker and invited me over to a Wii U to have a go on it. He went off to greet other people but kept coming back to give me tips and talk about Mario related stuff. I can certainly see the Nintendo stand been very family friendly at the weekend when i'm sure loads of younger kids would be there. Again with Super Mario Maker I easily got a good half an hour on a Wii-U to play about with that. Microsoft did a bit of a talk / giveaway hosted by @AceyBongos, they gave away loads of merchandise and had the art director (cant remember his exact name / title) from 343 talk a bit about Halo 5 and the Xbox One. Rise of the Tomb Raider was also really good to play, essentially if you enjoyed "Tomb Raider" released in 2013 its more of the same. The EGX demo of the game was probably around 20-25 minutes long depending on how quickly you were able to solve the puzzles. I was impressed that no one kicked you out, you were essentially left alone to play at your own leisure. EGX also had an area with just about every retro console in you could think of. I was impressed to see an Amiga 1200 with Treasure Island Dizzy on, which I had to sit-down and play for a bit as the younger me totally loved the Dizzy series. (Off topic, however Dizzy - Prince of the Yolkfolk had been re-made for Android) The retro area was generally quieter and more relaxed compared to the rest of EGX so it was nice just to spend a bit of time there. Sega consoles in the retro area from the Master System to the Dreamcast, playing each Sonic game released over the years: The same was also done with Nintendo consoles for Mario and Mario Kart. The retro area had some old shoot em up games too along with some other consoles i'd never even seen in person before. I had my Nintendo 3DS in my bag with me and managed to streetpass a lot of people, I imagine a lot of other people had the same idea as i did see quite a few people with 3DS's out when waiting to play a game. If you need the EON ticket for Pokemon, or another streetpass unlockable you would probably easily obtain it at EGX. Around 30 people potentially got the EON ticket from me anyway! It would be impossible to see everything at EGX in just a day, however I feel I got to see everything I wanted to without been rushed, getting way more time than I expected to play the games. I did honestly think i'd get 5 mins max on each game, however that wasn't the case at all. I'd say EGX is certainly worth attending if you can go, at £20 a person it's certainly great value for money. I have no other gaming convention experience to compare EGX to, however all I can say is I had a great time and i'd certainly go again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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