Games Com 2012

I'm also going Thursday for the same reason. I already have the ticket. I might go on another day too if I haven't had my fill but I first have to get through the first day.

I do plan on having a Kölsch on the way back home.

We could meet there - any anyone else from the Watch.

I might perhaps wear that "Swampling" T-Shirt from "Simon The Sorcerer" again. ;)
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,908
Location
Old Europe
Okay, I'm off now. Late, but not too late. ;)

I'm not sure anymore whether I'll wear my "Swampling" T-Shirt, but I'll carry it with me at least. ;) :p

If anyone looks out for me : Red-black-silver backpack/rucksack on a not very high person with glasses and half of a beard ... ;)
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,908
Location
Old Europe
I know how to find you easily - just stand in the middle of the crowd and yell "Hiccup!". :D

Man, I wish I could travel there... Can't wait for your impressions.
 
Joined
Apr 12, 2009
Messages
23,459
Well, I'm back. I have to get up early tomorrow and i'll be away for the whole day - or at least 3/4 of it - so please don't expect me to answer your questions soon.

I'll write down what comes to my mind, in the usual "stream of consciousness" literary technique (if you don't know what it is, look it up on wikipedia) while eating my Butterbrot (read : bread with butter plus a bit more) because I haven't eat a single thing today (after breakfast, of course).

Don't expect any order; I write as things come into my mind.
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,908
Location
Old Europe
At an asian partner booth (we say "stand" for "booth" in German) I quickly saw a game called "Closet Wars", if I recal that name correctly. It is about doing puzzles and designing your own fashion for clothes. It is for mobiles.

For mobiles is also the "Oktoberfest Manager". It is a really simple game, and you have to manage a Oktoberfest tent, all together with beer, hendl ( = chicken), music, events, employees ... as you gain more success, your budget grows bigger, and you can have a bigger tent, more employees, more events etc. ... It is really simplistic in terms of graphics, so don't expect anything.

The same company did Supernova, which is for mobiles & tablets also, and new ! - for the PC, as the newest installment of its series (?). I was flying a starfighter, but since I totally suck with gamepads and have never hd a tablet between my hands, I totally sucked in directing that starcraft. At least I had 2 of ... I don't know ... pirate starfighters.

Did photos. Blizzard had an massive Orc totally made out of Lego !

Warner, owneers of Turbine : They had this interesting idea of "Gothham Impostots" or how it was called, an MMO where pretty normal people pretend to be superheroes and then fight each other ( 2 facions) last year;
this ear they showed a game called "Injustice" with the subtitle of 2what if our beloved superheroes suddenly became a threat ?" - superheoes turned around 180 degreed and becoming evil, a staff member said. apart from that, I couldn't find out much - and I really didn't want to queue in. I didn't want to for any game, so please don't expect any "inside knowledge" from me.

The queue for Sim City was surprisingly big, compared to its reputation as a non-shooter game. ;)

The queues for shooters were the longest, naturally. ;)

Played Herokon, the TDE MMO programmed in Flash, for quite a while. was fun, but don't expect anything extraordinarily. I did only 2 quests, and they were rather kind of fedex, with some hack & slay in the wilderness (you need to get past some weak robbers).

Kalypso had "Dollar Dash", looked like a fun game, where you are a kind of old school burglar/robber and try to collect as much money as posible. Playable as MP and it's for the Pc, too (surprise, surprise !). Wanted to play Demonicon, decided to get there later, forgot it.

Jack Keane 2 is on its way ! This adventure is looking fun, too ! 2 Ladies were driving after an Zeppelin with an oldtimer car, and one of them slowly but steadily rendered the car useless - which means that it has to be repaired by the other lady at full speed !

Demonicon : Don't expect it before the second half of next year, but likely even later.

They had paper masks for

- Jack Keane 2
- Dishonoured
- Brick Force

If you can get a demo of "Tiny & Big : Grandpa's Leftovers", then check it out 1 It's a very innovative game, imho !
They even got - as i was told (seemingly vby a dev or at least one closely related to them) a few tapes from Indie music bands, and the permission to include these songs as soundtrack ! - He even told me that if you buy the "Soundtrack Edition" of this game at Steam, these bands get a small amount of money, too !

Trine 2 looks beatiful ... Sad that it has Steam ...

Steam gave away several "product code" cards, with no hint whatsoever which game one redeems with them ... It's a surprise ! - I took a few of them (einem geschenkten Gaul schaut man nicht ins Maul ...) ...

Apropos Maul : The SW:TOR booth was as full as always. I was asking politely something as soon as it closed - and got a poster with a bonus for the game ! Nice. :)

The "Geheimakte" adventure game series goes to part 3 now ... A presentation revealed how they reworked a few scenes ... http://www.geheimakte.deepsilver.de/en/index.php
This series is quite popular here !

Ah, Van Helsing !
This is a standard hack & slay Action-RPG, but its character designs look funny and sometimes very creative ! If you can get hold to a demo, check it out ! It's fighting mechanics are nothing but standard, but its enemy character designs are sometimes imho quite funny !

Played "Neverwinter", the MMORPG. Very good grapics for my personal taste (and I'm not a "graphics whore ;) ), imho much, much better than DDO ... And my playing PC had a female Tiefling as a playable character ! - I don't quite know what she was, if caster or ball thrower (she always had some sort of glass balls ? in her hand, which I think she was constantly throwing, and it I think was filled with something explosive ? making damage ... ) And I didn't have enough time to understand all of it. But after having asked before that, I did a few photos of it. (It's too late here so I wonÄ't load them into tghis forum for now. Tomorrow evening, ifI'm not too exhaused, because U need to do heavy work tomorrow).

Whenever a fallen enemy had "lost" (read . "dropped" ;) ) something, there was a list of the items at the top of the screen : Sorted as a colum, one item under the other. One had 3 possibitities :

SH+1 Need
SH+2 Greed
SH+3 Pass

SH = the Shift key o the keyboard, and the 1 for the number key.

The item was rolled (?), and among several characters - it was not clear whether the others were player characters (it's an MMO, after all !)= or NPCs - one could win that item. Once I had rolled a "91" I saw. I had some problems understanding everything there, so please forgive my confusion here.
The person I had asked about it said that it would continue story-wise where "the other two parts" had ended; so it appears to be considered as "Neverwinter Nights 3" ?
By the way, what i had oplayed was a small breacvh through a siege somewhere; I don't remember the town's name anymore ... It could've been something with F ... Or was that in LOTR Online ?

If you preorder XCOM Enemy Unknown at Gamestop, then you get an "Elite Soldier Pack", according to a tiny sheet I have here.
If you preorder Borderlands 2 at Gamesop, then you get "2 expansion codes" named "Premiere Club" and "Creature Slaughter Dome", whatever this means. On the Games Com you can get a T-Shird bot both ? games, too.
And they had a bus standing there, fully painted with Borderlands 2. It is scheduled here for eptember, 21st, 2012.
XCOM is scheduled here for October, 12th, 012.

I have here a "closed beta" key for a game called "Raiderz Europ", dunno what it is - looks like Action-RPG to me.

I also have a coupon for a Dishonoured Tarot Crd set here - I think I'll try to get it myself, but it is valid only until the 18th of this month - and tomorrow I'm away ...

I didn't look into Dishonouredd, because the queue thre was just too long - as was for/with Skyrim. I circumvented all bigger games at all. too much traffic for my taste there.

And for SW:TOR I have now a small Tauntaun for redeeming within the game here ... Valid until next January ... If SW:TOR really becomes F2P, then I'm sold !
The card also says that there is a free Trial possible - until level 15. I think that I'm interested ...

I think that's it for now.

One last Anecdote : I saw a presentation halfway behind a curtain, for a bigger audience (this was not very far away from the E-Sports area), and i asked what was there to be seen ?

"Orken", was the answer.
"Orken ? Ich kenne Orken nur aus dem Herrn der Ringe !"

"Orken" is the plural form for "Orcs" used in TDE. I had thought it was used in LOTR as well, but I doubt that now.
Asking someone else it turned out to be a misunderstanding/mishearing : The game was called "Horken".
Edit : I'm wrong again : I even misheard this other guy ! - I just found out that the game is actually called "Hawken" !
So are the ways of cross-language mishearings ! LOL !
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,908
Location
Old Europe
If you can get a demo of "Tiny & Big : Grandpa's Leftovers", then check it out 1 It's a very innovative game, imho !
They even got - as i was told (seemingly vby a dev or at least one closely related to them) a few tapes from Indie music bands, and the permission to include these songs as soundtrack ! - He even told me that if you buy the "Soundtrack Edition" of this game at Steam, these bands get a small amount of money, too !

This part made me search for the game on Steam. Rather interesting art style, worth it to watch the video.

Thanks Alrik.
 
Joined
Oct 13, 2007
Messages
7,313
Yes, I think it was Gothham City Impostors.

I'm off until this evening !
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,908
Location
Old Europe
Alrik you rock! Thanks for sharing the info.
btw, I think that the Steam code could be for new CS installment.
 
Joined
Apr 12, 2009
Messages
23,459
If you can get a demo of "Tiny & Big : Grandpa's Leftovers", then check it out 1 It's a very innovative game, imho !
They even got - as i was told (seemingly vby a dev or at least one closely related to them) a few tapes from Indie music bands, and the permission to include these songs as soundtrack ! - He even told me that if you buy the "Soundtrack Edition" of this game at Steam, these bands get a small amount of money, too !
This is a nice little indie game. A bit short, but I found it entertaining enough for its price. Plus the soundtrack is fantastic! If you are going to get this game, for Pete's sake, get the soundtrack edition! The soundtack is filled with fantastic indie tunes, that had me tapping my foot and humming along in no time. Catchy tunes, indeed! For example, check this out (warped indie lounge jazzy grooving FTW!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsGxDelk2-8

If you preorder XCOM Enemy Unknown at Gamestop, then you get an "Elite Soldier Pack", according to a tiny sheet I have here.
If memory serves, this just gives you a soldier with a classic X-Com look (clothes and hair style). I'm betting it's the dude on the first screenie on this page (that hair style is… er, memorable): http://lparchive.org/X-COM-UFO-Defense/Update 15/
 
Joined
Jan 4, 2008
Messages
564
Location
I come from the land of ice and snow
I didn't look into Dishonouredd, because the queue thre was just too long - as was for/with Skyrim. I circumvented all bigger games at all. too much traffic for my taste there.
The queues for shooters were the longest, naturally. ;)

The first game I checked out was Dishonored (plus bonus Doom 3 BFG in 3D). The line wasn't that long at 11. When I was finished with that the lines where so long for almost all AAA titles (shooters/actionadventures) that people were sitting so I didn't bother (I have some back problems making it very painfull to get up from sitting on the floor).

Later this year there is gonna be an event in the Netherlands where I'll hopefully check those out. Bethesda hasn't been at that event in the past and I doubt they'll be there this year so I'm glad I at least got to check Dishonored out.

I checked my almost empty giant Dishonored/Doom BFG swag bag and now see I've got the Tarrot thing too. Is it only available in Saturn Köln?

I should have paid attention and gone there on the way home.

If you preorder XCOM Enemy Unknown at Gamestop, then you get an "Elite Soldier Pack", according to a tiny sheet I have here.
If you preorder Borderlands 2 at Gamesop, then you get "2 expansion codes" named "Premiere Club" and "Creature Slaughter Dome", whatever this means. On the Games Com you can get a T-Shird bot both ? games, too.
And they had a bus standing there, fully painted with Borderlands 2. It is scheduled here for eptember, 21st, 2012.
XCOM is scheduled here for October, 12th, 012.
I also saw the bus there, but there wasn't much activity but in another hall they had an X-Com/Borderlands2 area.

And just before I was leaving I saw a relatively short line at the X-Com booth. Actually still ended up with 30 minutes of waiting outside and another 20 minutes of waiting inside the booth. Sadly the PC's where occupied quickly so I had to play with a PS3 version (long loadtimes, either because of beta or console power). BTW, why does every console have the X button at a different position? I'm used to a X360 controller (for pc) so I kept using the wrong button. It was a very handholding experience and more of a tutorial. Not the best looking game, but luckily the gameplay seems great. (it was also in German, not really a problem but I might have missed more context than if it was in English.)

I have here a "closed beta" key for a game called "Raiderz Europ", dunno what it is - looks like Action-RPG to me.
It's like a MMO version of Monster Hunter, or at least that's what they are going for. I'm part of the beta through IGN Prime.

One last Anecdote : I saw a presentation halfway behind a curtain, for a bigger audience (this was not very far away from the E-Sports area), and i asked what was there to be seen ?

"Orken", was the answer.
"Orken ? Ich kenne Orken nur aus dem Herrn der Ringe !"

"Orken" is the plural form for "Orcs" used in TDE. I had thought it was used in LOTR as well, but I doubt that now.
Asking someone else it turned out to be a misunderstanding/mishearing : The game was called "Horken".
Edit : I'm wrong again : I even misheard this other guy ! - I just found out that the game is actually called "Hawken" !
So are the ways of cross-language mishearings ! LOL !

As a non-german I had to ask "Wass?" a few times (It's probably considered rude, I should have said "wass sagen sie?") because of language and loudness reasons. But I could manage with Ja and Nein and Zwanzig Minuten; Ein Bier, Bratwurst und Brotchen (why weren't the Brotchen cut open? Had to use a dingy plastic knife so ended up just biting it with eating the wurst with knife and fork from the plate.).

For the least-busy day it was still very busy. Alot of beggars in the area between train station and messe entrance.
 
Joined
Oct 22, 2006
Messages
409
I checked my almost empty giant Dishonored/Doom BFG swag bag and now see I've got the Tarrot thing too. Is it only available in Saturn Köln?

Yes, I fear so. Tomorrow is the last day ! - According to the sheet. I took it from the information desk, by the way, and no-one protested ! ;)

Because of that item I'll pay a visit to Cologne tomorrow. And I must look for a new graphics card, too, since my current one from my "gaming PC" began presenting me a garbled, scrambled view from day 1 of the Games Com on. ;)

Just in case you don't know what "Tarot" is : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot

As a non-german I had to ask "Wass?" a few times (It's probably considered rude, I should have said "wass sagen sie?") because of language and loudness reasons.

Yes, "Was ?" with an emphasis on the last es, like "Wass ?" is in general considered a bit … inappropriate, not really rude, except when you are within high society ;) - but "Was ?" is actually EVERY Germy unsderstands 1 ;) - Except dialects, where I'm not so sure because of no experience there.

I'm totally used to "Was ?" because I'm almost deaf on one ear and i had to say this throughout my whole life … ;)

Nowadass I politely point towards my ear being (almost) deaf with words, and suggest changing plces - in some rarer cases (like happened at the Games Com !) the other person suggests changing places for me being better able to listen to the other person by them selves.

By the way, I found out that this tablet game I had played is called "Galaxy On Fire 2 : Supernova".

I'm just reminded by a great - and I mean really great ! - sensual booth experience for an Sci-Fi MMO … Don't remember its name anymore … Something with "Fall" and with "Fire" … Edit : It is indeed called "Firefall" : http://www.firefallthegame.com/
This booth's experiwnce was imho impressive because it really ! made you think you were within a starship ! It looked and sounded very real, I have seen similar built-up booths a few times already, but only few succeeding in making it so "3D - sensual" so well !

(why weren't the Brotchen cut open? Had to use a dingy plastic knife so ended up just biting it with eating the wurst with knife and fork from the plate.)

Common use is to eat the Brötchen unopened with Currywurst or so, meanwhile other customs place the wurst inside of the opened Brötchen.

In this case, I assume, the seller was a member of those who are used to take the wurst into one hand, the Brötchen into the other, and then eat both, alternating (this would be the first of the above customs).
 
Last edited:
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,908
Location
Old Europe
Ein Bier, Bratwurst und Brotchen (why weren't the Brotchen cut open? Had to use a dingy plastic knife so ended up just biting it with eating the wurst with knife and fork from the plate.).

As Alrik explained, there are two completely different ways Bratwurst & Brötchen are served:
1.) The Brötchen is cut open like a hot dog, the whole Bratwurst is put in it and mustard is put on top. This is done with a standard brötchen, not toast bread and not some fluffy white bread which falls apart if you look at it.
+ the guaranteed decent Brötchen
+ clearly defined handling
- you can't influence the taste. Mustard and Brötchen are already included.

2.) Bratwurst and Brötchen are separate pieces. You put mustard on the plate and alternate between the stuff as you like. Don't cut the Brötchen or everybody will think you're an idiot. ;)
I prefer it that way.
You often get less and/or weaker bread though. Especially at crowded places the Bratwurst is served on a lengthy paper plate with a perforated edge meant to be torn of and used for holding the Bratwurst.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
Messages
7,830
Forget about Bratwurst & Brötchen, I want to see some photos of booth girls. :)

Then how about I let you take a photo of me with my Bratwurst between the Brötchen of a booth girl? Deal? :biggrin:


*ducks a wagon load of foul eggs from the feminist camp*
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
3,201
Tomorrow. I promise. (It's Saturday night here. Local time.)
But no photos of persons, if possible. It's not my style.
On the Games Com, however, it was almost impossible to take photos without people running into the view.
Except shortly before closing time. ;)
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,908
Location
Old Europe
The first game I checked out was Dishonored (plus bonus Doom 3 BFG in 3D). The line wasn't that long at 11. When I was finished with that the lines where so long for almost all AAA titles (shooters/actionadventures) that people were sitting so I didn't bother (I have some back problems making it very painfull to get up from sitting on the floor).

Later this year there is gonna be an event in the Netherlands where I'll hopefully check those out. Bethesda hasn't been at that event in the past and I doubt they'll be there this year so I'm glad I at least got to check Dishonored out.
Was it running on PC? Did you happen to hear anything about whether the released minimum PC specs are incorrect?

I checked my almost empty giant Dishonored/Doom BFG swag bag and now see I've got the Tarrot thing too. Is it only available in Saturn Köln?
Nice, the special card game they designed looked like fun.
 
Joined
Jan 15, 2011
Messages
1,477
Location
Chocovania
Okay, the photos from Thursday -

- Please note that I always try to take photos without any flash; theresult is often too blurry, but at least you can see most things. In some other cases I did use a flash.
 

Attachments

  • Neverwinter Playable Female Tiefling Control Wizard.jpg
    Neverwinter Playable Female Tiefling Control Wizard.jpg
    235.4 KB · Views: 30
  • Herokon Character Sheet.jpg
    Herokon Character Sheet.jpg
    300.6 KB · Views: 29
  • Herokon Inventory.jpg
    Herokon Inventory.jpg
    305.7 KB · Views: 28
  • Herokon Weapon Talents.jpg
    Herokon Weapon Talents.jpg
    303.9 KB · Views: 28
  • Dark Knight.jpg
    Dark Knight.jpg
    110.9 KB · Views: 28
  • Ironic Floor Square.jpg
    Ironic Floor Square.jpg
    137.4 KB · Views: 15
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,908
Location
Old Europe
Back
Top Bottom