Went to the eurogamer expo today, played a few games. PS Vita had the longest queues, followed by Skyrim and BF3 PC. There was shit load of MW3 kiosks, but I didn't play any.
These are what I played there
Kid Icarus 3DS Aside from the fact that I'm left handed and the games is clearly designed to be played by right handers, I didn't really feel it. Yeah it's a stylus controlled shooter, but I wasn't really taken by any of it. Only played about 5 mins and then went looking for more interesting games to play.
Super Mario 3D Land This one is tricky. I kept adjusting the 3D effect on and off to see if it makes an actual difference to the gameplay. I came away undecided. The levels, along with camera placement, gives the illusion of "Hey, this would make more sense if I turned the 3D up, just to have a better understanding of my location and surroundings." I can't deny that the game's chase and isometric camera angles make the 3D worth using, but I don't think it helps with the positioning of mario relative to obstacles. However, it does give a better understanding of what's in the foreground because (purposefully) the isometric and chase cameras make it difficult to know whether you're aligned right with obstacles, especially in 2D. And that's just frustrating. I don't want to have to guess if my positioning in the background aligns with a jump I have to make. Didn't come away THAT impressed. The camera angles make the 3D seem like a nice visual aid but also in turn detracts from gameplay by forcing players to guess positioning and jumps. I have an inkling this is the product Nintendo's gonna show off and say, "This why the 3D makes sense!"
Left the 3DS section. There were no lines, but I forgot to check out Resident Evil, and couldn't be arsed to try Mario Kart.
Zelda Skyward Sword It's only when you get this in your hands that you realise "OMG, everything is controlled by waggle. Everything :'(". I played around the bird riding tutorial first. Pretty standard. You twist the wiimote to go left and right, and you have 3 boost pips to speed you up along the bottom. Didn't seem that offensive, but I wouldn't want be in flight mode for long periods of time... gets boring fast. Anyway, tried a short section of the demo dungeon from E3 after that. First of all, the combat. It isn't a step up from any previous Zeldas'. Like previous Zeldas, the combat isn't fun, only this time, you have to swing the wiimote either up and down or right/left to actually get a hit on an enemy. When you fell your first goblin you feel a slight twinge of satisfaction that you wouldn't feel when fighting in any of the other 3D Zeldas', but that quickly dissipates once you realise you can't just mash your way through the boring combat this time. You actually have to wait and swing your wiimote in a specific direction to get a hit, somtimes you have to jab, like with the spiders -- "OMG innovation, only possible with Motion ++++. Ninetendo does it again etc etc." *sigh* Then, I played around with the flying beetle item to hit some high up switches and open some doors. Again, twisting the wiimote and pointing it whichever way I want the beetle to go. It was standard Zelda. How much you like this game is dependant on how tolerant you are of 'teh waggle', because it's literally everything to this game.
Dark Souls My game of the show (of the games I played). Played it on the 360. Loved it. Not sure what else I can say about this.
Tintin It was good! A nice 2D platformer. But it's really, really easy. Like babby's first platformer, at least the sections I played. I had fun though, it was really smooth.
Ninja Gaiden 3 It felt like Ninja Gaiden. Which is good. I don't think it'll be as good as either of its predecessors'. Sometimes when you are battling an enemy, a 'Y' QTE comes up on screen, you hit it and Ryu finishes the enemy off. There was an awful (but short, thankfully) stealth section in the demo I played--WTF, please no more of that, it was awful. Also I thought the graphics looked worse than NG2, but that might just be me.
Saint's Row 3 Amazing. If they enabled co-op on the show floor this would've beat Dark Souls' as my game of show. Now it has to settle for a very close second. Everything is ratcheted up to 11 in this game. This is everything SR2 was and more. I literally don't know how this can be made better. The perfect SR game. The perfect GTA game. The perfect open world murder simulator.
Binary Domain I really dug this. I am this close to saying I 'loved' it. I had played Gears 3 horde mode before trying this but that couldn't hold my interest. Binary Domain on the other hand was FUN. This is a definite 'must watch' title. I don't know if it's close to release, but the game was smoooth.
Halo Anniversary Played a few multiplayer rounds. It's Halo. It's fun. I will buy.
Rage 360 version on floor. framerate is smooth as butter. Looks great. Plays decently.
I didn't get to play much else (I dabbled in a few minutes of FFXIII-2 and MGS HD Collection -- Snake Eater still looks great!). Wanted to play Skyrim, Batman, BF3, Street Fighter X Tekken, maybe dabble with the Vita but I didn't want to queue up. I'd rate the games I played as follows, calculated in terms of enjoyment observed per minute, EOPM
1. Dark Souls -- must buy
2. Saint's Row 3 -- must buy
3. Binary Domain -- keep a very keen eye on it
4. Halo Annv -- buying
5. Rage -- will probably buy
6. SM3DL -- ain't got a 3DS, ain't persuaded me to get one
7. Ninja Gaiden 3 -- will get at budget price
7. Tintin -- eh, it's fun, can wait on it
8. Zelda SS -- was Zelda, all waggle, will skip unless everyone here raves about it
Oh and I got these awesome Johnny Gat/ Zombie Gat bobble budds
