Gamescom Diary Day 3

So we come to the final day of Gamescom, or at least, the final day that I will be at Gamescom. There’s actually another two days of ludicrously busy show floors for people to endure, but as the press and business areas shut down after Friday, there’s little reason to stay beyond the working week.

It’s also, as I might have mentioned, incredibly draining. Some of that’s obviously down to staying out until late at night for a good few beers, but there’s just such a lot to try and take in and digest in such a short space of time. Oh, and Cologne is in the middle of a heatwave that makes stepping outside utterly oppressive and even the business halls can feel icky.

So it was a mixed blessing that some games that I went to see yesterday took up far less time than I had allotted them. I’m talking 20 minutes instead of an hour here, which is time that could have been much better spent seeing other games rather than chatting to people. It made for an underwhelming afternoon, but there were still plenty of highlights through the day.

After a difficult time and even a studio name change Dambusters seems to be doing a good job with Homefront: The Revolution. It’s certainly feeling its pre-alpha status, but actually feels like it could deliver on its promise of a semi-open world guerrilla shooter. There’s still a long way to go for Dambusters before it’s ready for release, but it has several nice ideas that want developing upon.

Much closer to release is LEGO Dimensions, which is an excellent new foray into the Toys to Life genre. Thankfully, the NFC chip is just a stand for the minifigs to live upon, so its not just alump of plastic that loses the charm of LEGO figures. The portal then has some interesting ideas with LED lights that push you to interact on a more physical level and ties in with the particularly sublime Portal levels. At its heart, it’s another LEGO game and one that’s looking terribly expensive to get involved in, but it still manages to feel refreshing.

It’s not all AAA developers though, and it was good to briefly catch up with Drinkbox Studios and get a look at their quirky dungeon crawler, Severed. Similarly, there was the delightful trio of formats that make up Gremlins Inc., as a distinct and separate board game, video game and card game. It’s baffling to begin with, but soon enough you’re strategising about how to get to where you want to on the board and delighting in messing with the other players by way of some devious card plays.

Today is going to revolve around some VR gaming, as I go face on with new games out of CCP and Ubisoft – alas, I’ve not heard particularly good things of Ubisoft’s offerings so far. Add to that some more indies, a bit more traditional Ubisoft and my first forays into Black Ops 3 and Destiny: The Taken King, and it’s a good way to end my show.

So with that, I feel it’s appropriate to sign off with these diaries. I’ll be heading back to the UK this weekend and writing all about my various experiences. It’ll be a while before we’re done with all our coverage, mind you, since I’ve managed to cram nearly 40 games into just a few days!