So another year, another Eurogamer Expo. EGX 2013 was something of a madness, the next generation of consoles had yet to be released and it was the first chance for a lot of consumers to see and feel them. With this in mind and everybody pretty much owning an Xbox One/PS4 now, I assumed this one might be tad bit quiet compared….Oh how wrong I was.
One common complaint of owners of these shiny new consoles is “Where are the damn games?!”. 2014 has given us a ton of indie titles and HD remakes mostly to play on them, this has offended many, including me. Of course I understand good game development takes a long time, so its only normal that only now are we seeing them being released, close to a year after the consoles came out. The release of Destiny hailed the beginning of those big “Triple A” titles finally landing in our palms, with EGX 2014 being the first chance for most of us to play them.
Far Cry 4, The Evil Within, Alien Isolation, Dead Island 2, Evolve and loads more was all there to play and promptly queue 1-2 hours to have the pleasure. This year was just as busy an expo as last years and I only attended on Friday ans Sunday, I wouldn’t want to imagine just how immense Saturday would have been. Thankfully as seen last year, both floors of Earls Court has been utilized, meaning the event never seemed uncomfortably busy and the space was used smartly to help achieve this. Only the aforementioned epic queues dampened the event for me personally, meaning I barely played anything due to laziness and remembering the games will be out relatively soon for me to play in the comfort of my abode anyway.
The big platform holders in Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony of course stole the show with their huge stands and first/third party exclusives to help tempt you to them. Kudos to all of them for putting emphasis on community on each of their stands. Each had a host of community driven events and competitions, with a lot of them being hosted and professionally commented on by people who seemed on some kind of legal high. Nintendo nailed it especially with their Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart 8 attendee tournaments, some of these became stupidly tense towards to the finals and showed once again the somebody in Nintendo is finally understanding the times!
Overall I feel this was better than last years event, the hype of the new consoles overshadowed what wasn’t that great an event. It’s fitting that EGX14 was quite spectacular, as it’s been confirmed that it will be the last one in London (for a few years anyway), with the event moving to sunny Birmingham from next year! As a London resident, I will no doubt miss the event but will still attend at the new location (probably due to work reasons :P).
It was a great send off and hopefully EGX15 will be bigger and better!
PS – R.I.P Earls Court Arena 
