Sunday Spotlight: Eurogamer Expo 2013

We’re going to Eurogamer next week. Most of the revamped editorial team – that’s me, Stefan, Aran and Tuffcub – will be there, leaving Jim and the rest of the staff who aren’t going to hold the fort. Peter won’t be there this year, but Kris will be coming back with a vengeance, so there’ll be plenty of content from all of us on the site. I’m going on the Friday and Saturday, so just give me a shout on twitter @mynameisblair if you’ll be there and want to meet up.

Now, let’s shine the spotlight on the Expo itself – we’ll cover the games, the shows and where you can find everything in this edition of our Sunday feature. The show is sold out, so I hope you don’t decide you want to go after reading this!

Games

There’ll be plenty of games at this year’s expo, but most notably the PS4 and Xbox One will be making an appearance. While Sony’s full line-up is yet to be confirmed, the announced list of titles is looking good.

You can see all of the titles on the Expo site, but we’ll focus on a few highlights here. Ubisoft are bringing the fourth main Assassin’s Creed instalment to the show, so you won’t have to be a pirate to get your hands on the swashbuckling adventure early, and you’ll be able to get a first look at next-gen racer The Crew, too. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. have Batman: Arkham Origins, Dead Island successor Dying Light and LEGO Marvel Super Heroes to keep you happy.

EA are bringing the big guns with Battlefield 4, while FIFA 14 and Need for Speed Rivals will be there for some competitive action. Even the recently announced Sims 4 will be there, so there’s a lot of new stuff on show. Activision appear to be going toe-to-toe (perhaps taking advice from Stefan and his shoes) with EA, putting Call of Duty: Ghosts on display for all. Dark Souls II marks a quiet show for Namco Bandai, and likewise Square Enix will only be showing Final Fantasy X-2 HD and Lightning Returns.

As for Microsoft, there’ll be a host of Xbox One exclusives for you to get your hands on. No Halo this year, naturally, but Titanfall will be rearing its head along with their leading racer Forza Motorsport 5. Killer Instinct and Kinect Sports Rivals will be there too, as well as the interesting exclusives Project Spark and Ryse.

Nintendo seem to have quite a large showing this year, putting all those fears of no Wii U games to rest. Sixteen titles in total, including Bayonetta 2, Donkey Kong Country, Sonic Lost World and the already released The Wonderful 101. They’ll have a good dose of Mario action, including Super Mario 3D World which is utterly brilliant and Mario Kart 8 for some impressive racing action. Their masterpiece that is The Wind Waker HD will be there, but that’s not the only Zelda title on show – 3DS outing A Link Between Worlds will also be at the show.

And the extremely popular Pokémon franchise will be making its way to London, too – the first main 3DS outings, X and Y will be on show for everyone to play, just as long as the queues aren’t too big.

As I mentioned before, Sony haven’t shared their line-up but I’d bet that they’ll be bringing Beyond: Two Souls, Knack, Killzone: Shadow Fall, DriveClub, Tearaway and any other upcoming exclusives, bar the still heavily in development inFamous: Second Son. That would be a lovely surprise, though. PlayStation Access actually have a competition running on Facebook for you to win fast-track tickets for the PS4, and it seems like a great idea to enter.

Developer Sessions

Gamer Network have really ramped up the support for developer sessions, moving the show from a games show with some developers talking to something more like E3 or Gamescom. While it’s still not quite there just yet, there are some interesting talks going on next week.

They’re actually streaming all of them on YouTube, so you won’t miss out (other than actually playing the games) if you’re not going to be there.

Thursday 26th September
12pm – Phil Harrison’s exclusive Xbox One presentation
1pm – Forza Motorsport 5 (Dan Greenawalt from Turn 10)
2pm – PS4 Indie: Velocity 2X (FuturLab)
3pm – Killzone: Shadow Fall (Guerrilla Games)
4pm – Guild Wars 2 New Content (ArenaNet)
5pm – The Evil Within (Bethesda Softworks/Tango Gameworks)

Friday 27th September
12pm – Tearaway (Media Molecule)
1pm – Beyond: Two Souls (David Cage from Quantic Dream)
2pm – Dying Light (Techland)
3pm – FIFA 14 Next-Gen (EA Sports)
4pm – DriveClub (Evolution Studios)
5pm – Outside Xbox Live Show

Saturday 28th September
12pm – The Witcher 3 (CD Projekt RED)
1pm – Watch_Dogs (Ubisoft Montreal)
2pm – Batman: Arkham Origins (WB Montreal)
3pm – PS4 Indie: Resogun (Housemarque)
4pm – LEGO Marvel Super Heroes (TT Games)
5pm – Need for Speed: Rivals (EA Ghost Studio)

Sunday 29th September
12pm – Project Godus (Peter Molyneux from 22cans)
1pm – Thief (Eidos Montreal)
2pm – Murdered: Soul Suspect (Airtight Games)
3pm – The future of Ouya (Julie Uhrman)
4pm – PS3 Indie: Wasteland Kings (Rami Ismail from Vlambeer)
5pm – Eurogamer Indie Podcast (developers and writers from Eurogamer.net)

The Show Floor

Games and developer sessions aren’t the only draw of EGX, and there should be plenty of content elsewhere on the show floor. It’s actually going to be the biggest yet, and they’ve actually moved the over 18s section upstairs, so it doesn’t take up roughly a third of the area any more. It’s good to see them branching out and developing it more, although Earl’s Court could be getting demolished in the near future so a new location may be required.

The map below (click to enlarge) shows the exact layout, with Microsoft and Sony’s sites extremely close to each other.

As you can see, there’s quite a lot going on, with plenty of expensive food and shopping to be bought around the perimeter, too. The Rezzed area features an Indie Arcade, with a host of indie games on show. There’s also a gallery section, for gaming art, a board games section (Monopoly, anyone?) for those that don’t really care about all of the games on show and even a Retro Area which Stefan and myself spent the entire Sunday in playing Micro Machines and Mario Party last year. Oculus Rift will be floating around there, too.

It’s nicely split up into zones, each with a clear focus and plenty of room to get around the busy show floor. It’s definitely going to be a good year to go.

But all of this isn’t what EGX is really about, to me. It’s the one time of the year that the TSA family gets to meet up, have a laugh and be confident that we’re friends in real life as well as coworkers – or even just readers – on this website. So, if you’re there then come and meet us. We’re nice, I promise.

Finally, if you aren’t going to be there, let us know in the comments which games you’d like to see us cover. We’ll have plenty of content on the site, so stay tuned for that!