Last weekend was the second Eurogamer expo to be held in the UK. This was also one of the best weekends in my recent memory and perhaps my whole life EVER and not just because of the expo. No, this was the first time Dtoid UK arranged to meet up and be sexy with each other.



Now I have never had the pleasure of going to PAX due to timing/money/being an arse but thanks to the Eurogamer Expo I now have a small idea of what it would be like. PAX is a big deal to Dtoid and is kind of like Mecca to the communtiy and for years now I've read the love letter blogs that follow every PAX wishing that I could have been there. Now OK, the Eurogamer Expo doesn't have a catchy acronym like PAX but it's very similar. There's a hired out space filled with upcoming video games and developer talks throughout the event and members of the Dtoid army travel to go to it from all over the country and even from Germany. So while it's much much smaller in scale, the Eurogamer Expo is basically the UK equivalent of PAX and it's fucking ace!



I must admit I'm not the most active member of the Dtoid army but I've always wanted the Dtoid UK community to get together like we did at The Eurogamer Expo. I've met and hung out with a few UK Dtoiders before but we've never had an event where lots of us could congregate but now we do and going and meeting crazy strangers from the internet who probably have never heard of me or knew who the fuck I was was one of the best things I've ever done (even though I didn't have to do very much). I met a lot of awesome people, formed genuine friendships (even though they probably think I'm a dickhead :-P) and it was just amazing to get everyone together and have fun. I imagine this is what it's like for people who go to PAX for the first time just with loads more people.



My "in real life" friends aren't really big gamers or at least they aren't into them as much as I am and so the Dtoid UK community means a lot to me because I get to hang out with fellow like minded gamers which I've never really had the chance to do before. The hope of meeting up with Dtoiders in a large group like this is the reason I signed up all those years ago, it's just taken a long time to happen but it has been worth the wait. About 20 UK Dtoiders came down for this years Eurogamer Expo and although that pales in comparison to probably even the first PAX Dtoid went to, I believe that's still a large group and quite the achievement especially when you consider that this is Dtoid UKs first official outing.



The Expo itself was actually pretty awesome. You never had to queue for long with the mega popular games like Assassins Creed 2 and Left4Dead 2 taking the most waiting time at about 20 minutes but for most of the other games you were looking at an average of a 5-10 minute wait which ain't bad. I played pretty much every game there and there were some phenominal games but when I think back to last weekend, I don't immediately think of the games. I think about the times I spent asking for things that were "more like 10 shitloads" with Dtoid UK. I think about the times we spent in the arcade, ramming each other hard... in bumper cars, playing 16 player LAN matches of Quake 3, all those close matches of Street Fighter Alpha 3 (I will defeat you one day Justice!), wandering around Covent Garden, geeking out at Forbidden Planet, staying up drinking until 5am and walking around with our trousers down... oh no wait.... that was just me.



I feel really privilaged to be a part of Dtoid UK and to have been a part of an awesome weekend/event and I have a feeling that the Eurogamer Expo will be as important to Dtoid UK as PAX is to the whole of Dtoid. I know I should have written this up sooner but well better late than never right?

So thank you Malcor, HammerTiem, Shakey1245, Half Left, Gandysampras, Nikmonroe, Corican, Batthink, XanderSan, ThePhil & Kat, Njsykora, Justice, Mikey, McSnow, DanGale, a special shout out to N0brein for travelling from Germany and a BIG THANK YOU to our fearless leader Pheonix Blood for organising everything. The Expo and the whole weekend was better than I could have ever hoped for. I honestly had the most fun I have had in a long time and it's all thanks to you guys ^_^

You are all fucking ACE and so sexy I might just cream my pants!


(picture stolen from N0brein)

<3 Dtoid UK 4EVA!!!

[Note: My friends and I produce an arts and culture radio show for Roundhouse radio in Camden and I thought I'd post the first draft (before it was altered for radio) of my most recent piece which is surprisingly on music games. Apologies in advance because it's unedited and probably a case of TLDR.

If you're at all interested the actual radio show can be streamed here:
Arts Attack - 28th August
My piece is towards the end at around the 25 minute mark. Be kind as it's my first proper radio piece]



By now, everyone has heard of the games Guitar Hero and Rock Band. These video game franchises have skyrocketed in popularity in recent years. In fact, Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock is the first game ever to pass a billion dollars in sales from a single video game title, which is an insane amount of money and then when you consider that over 50 million additional songs have been downloaded for Rock Band, you can see that there’s a lot of people playing these games. The popularity of downloadable content for music games is so great that the UK Official Download Chart is considering including these sales in the music charts and record labels and bands have released brand new material through these games. Guns & Roses gave fans a taste of their Chinese Democracy album when the track “Shacklers Revenge” was featured in Rock Band 2, months before the album’s release. You also have to remember that this happened at a time when no one thought that album would ever see the light of day. The developers of these games must be doing something right then and even Time magazine recognises this when they named Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy, the founders of Harmonix and creators the original Guitar Hero in the magazine’s list of 100 most influential people of 2008 for their work on the Rock Band games.



So you can see the impact music games have had on the music and games industry and we haven’t even mentioned Sony’s Singstar games which have sold over 16 million units in PAL regions alone. One game in particular demonstrates how powerful these games are and how important they have become. That game is The Beatles: Rock Band, a game about The Beatles that is also being released simultaneously with their full re-mastered back catalogue on the same day. It’s hard to understate how big of a deal this is for the games industry. It’s easy to dismiss this game as just another game based on a big band such as Guitar Hero Aerosmith and Metallica before it but then you then have to remember that The Beatles are probably the biggest band of all time with a huge loyal fan base. It also wouldn’t be a stretch to say that their back catalogue is the most treasured and valuable in music and more importantly it has also never been legally made available in digital form. This all changes when The Beatles: Rock Band comes out because not only will the game feature the newly licensed and re-mastered recordings but the whole albums of Abbey Road, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Rubber Soul will be made available to download. So the first time you’ll be able to download any music by The Beatles will be via The Beatles: Rock Band. If that doesn’t convince you that music games are at the forefront of music then nothing will. After all there is probably only one other band that could rival The Beatles in terms of how treasured their back catalogue is and that is Led Zeppelin and even they have made their music available on iTunes.

One of the unique features of the Rock Band and Guitar Hero games is that every week more and more tracks are made available to download and play in the games. This makes it much easier for music gamers to be exposed to new music. This is especially true for younger gamers who maybe listening to older bands such as The Grateful Dead, Boston and Talking Heads for the first time, since those bands aren’t played on the radio or MTV these days. In 2008, a survey conducted by Brown University’s Kiri Miller found that 76% of the players of Guitar Hero bought music they heard in the game.

I


Games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band are a hell of a lot of fun. They give you a whole new way to experience music and plays to the strengths of video games as an interactive medium. If you want to listen to music you have CDs and downloads, if you want to see the music you have music videos and live performances and if you want to interact and play along with music you now have these music games. Let’s also consider that not everyone is able to go to gigs/concerts to see bands live. Some people are limited by their age or location and in the case of some artists such as The Beatles, it’s simply impossible to see them live and these music games gets you a little closer to the bands/artists. You feel like you’re playing music together with them which is a completely different experience than passively listening to their music. Both experiences are very enjoyable but are very different.

If you’ve ever heard someone play one of these music games without the music playing it kind of reminds you of children banging on pots and pans in the kitchen and diving off the sofa with a tennis racquet guitar. This raises an important question, are music games trivialising music? The fact that music is being simplified to 5 coloured buttons on a plastic guitar controller has worried a lot of people. Instead of thinking of the correct chords in the song, you’re thinking about pressing the green, red, yellow, blue and orange buttons. Some musicians take offense to this and feel that it’s insulting to change, manipulate and strip down music to make it fit the framework of a videogame. They would argue that this makes the music featured feel like a cheap substitute to the real thing and distorts the artists work and vision. Because you are fixated on the screen when playing these games and focused on hitting the right “notes” you don’t get the same kind of mental imagery you get when you are just listening to music.



That being said, a lot of people don’t realise that Rock Band and Guitar Hero have never been designed to be a replacement for real instruments or teach you how to play any of those instruments, with the drums to some extent being the exception to the rule. You will probably learn a few musical skills such as keeping rhythm and hand and finger co-ordination but that’s not the primary focus of these games which is to experience music in a new and fun way. It’s important to remember that not everyone who plays these games are musically minded so seeing the note charts in these games can also foster a level of music appreciation. Having all the charts of instruments on screen side by side, you can see how the song is put together and when a player is performing poorly, you can hear the notes skipping in the music which can teach you about how each instrument adds to the song. All together this can help build a stronger level of appreciation and respect for the bands/artists of the music and as Noel Gallagher put it: “If it puts little plastic guitars into kids' hands and fires their imaginations, I think that's a good thing. It's harmless fun, innit.” A very valid point and not only that, it’s clearly more than harmless fun as a study by Youth Music found that 2.5 million out of 12 million children in the UK have begun learning how to play real instruments after playing music games such as Guitar Hero.



It’s obvious to see the impact games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero have had on the music and games industry. Guitarist Steven Van Zandt who is famous for playing the guitar and mandolin in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band claims that “in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, Rock Band may just turn out to be up there with the rise of FM radio, CDs or MTV.” The amount of time and money spent on these music games is a true testament to how well they are designed and how much fun they are to play. No other medium can allow you to experience music the same way that video games can and the commercial success of these games means that more and more bands can be featured in these games and be exposed to a whole new audience. I think Noel Gallagher put it best when he said that that these games are better for kids than ones that feature “somebody getting their f*cking head chopped off with a samurai sword while getting f*cked by a goblin up the arse with a laser” and “If it get’s kids interested in playing the guitar, then, wow.”

The UK has been lacking any kind of gaming expo for quite some time now but it looks like we now have one that we can truly be proud of. At the end of October the Eurogamer expo will once again be returning and they're starting to announce a few games that will be there.

As you can guess by the title those games are:

Bayonetta and Aliens Vs Predator and not only will they be playable but Sega will also be demoing the multiplayer version of AvP.

Holy. Shit!

Last years expo was awesome. All the games there were playable future titles and although they mainly focused on the Christmas line up there were a fair few games that were coming out the following year (2009) like Killzone 2, HAWX, Bionic Commando and Street Fighter 4. It looks like this years expo is going to be even bigger and better than last years!

I'm definitely going to at least one of the London dates and I think it'd be really cool to have some sort of Dtoid NARP or at least a chance for us to hang out there and get blind drunk.

The tickets are only £6 so it's a pretty fair price to check out what's coming out and after going to last years expo I would highly recommend going.

The dates are:
27th & 28th October in Leeds
30th & 31st October in London

So anyone else up for it?

Oh and here's the source
and here's where you can get tickets

NOTE: I thought I'd repost this blog since I got a few of the prices wrong (sorry!) but luckily they are cheaper than I thought they were so it's time we all got our Singstar on! Also a couple of these are flying off the shelves (not surprisingly), especially Street Fighter 4 so if you're thinking about picking any of these up I wouldn't hesitate.


I know Gemsi does the UK bargains blogs every week but since he normally only mentions online bargains I thought I'd do a shortblog to let you all know that hmv have dropped a load of prices on some really good games. These prices apply to the retail stores but I've checked a few titles online and some games are a little cheaper online but some are not. Anyway that's enough chit chat here's the list:

Playstation 3

Street Fighter 4 - £19.99
Resident Evil 5 - £27.99
Dead Space - £14.99
WWE Legends of Wrestlemania - £19.99
Fifa 09 - £19.99
Singstar vol 1 - £14.99
Singstar vol 2 - £14.99
Singstar Queen - £14.99
Eternal Sonata - £19.99
The Wheelman - £24.99
Saints Row 2 - £19.99
Tomb Raider Underworld - £19.99

Xbox 360

Street Fighter 4 - £19.99
Resident Evil 5 - £27.99
Dead Space - £14.99
WWE Legends of Wrestlemania - £19.99
Fifa 09 - £19.99
Ninja Blade - £19.99
Halo Wars - £19.99
Gears of War 2 - £19.99
You're In The Movies (including vision camera) - £14.99
The Wheelman - £24.99
Saints Row 2 - £19.99
Tomb Raider Underworld - £19.99

Still no love for the wii or DS though T_T

Anyone who's played Madworld will know that the soundtrack is awesome. A really cool fusion of rock and hip-hop, it's one of the few soundtracks that I will listen to outside of the game and apart from the commentators, it's probably my favorite part of the game.



This CD is playing non-stop in my laptop/ipod at the moment and I have 2 copies to give away to anyone who wants one. Just leave a comment and pm me your address and I will send one out to you. I'm feeling generous so I don't mind sending it to anywhere in the world but of course first come, first served.

I've added a high-res picture of the back of the CD so you can see the track listing.

A while back Capcom held a special event for fans to try out Resident Evil 5 and the response was so good that they decided to hold a little RE5 community party at Sony’s HQ over the weekend. Thanks to the always awesome CTZ, Wardrox and I were able to attend this swanky invite only shin-dig and see what all the fuss is about.

I'm not going to say much about the game here (I'll try and do another post on that soon and Wardrox has beaten me to it) but I will say that the controls are superb and the game is bloody brilliant. What I will talk about is the actual event which was very chilled out. There were no NDAs to sign, no windy corridors to navigate, no smoke and mirrors or blindfolds, just the game, some food and good times. Speaking of the game, the version we played was very clearly labeled on the title screen as "review copy." We found this to be a little odd as the game was playing in SD through a big HD TV and some textures were clearly not polished/finished and this was increasingly apparent in the cut-scenes. I always thought that review copies were the same as the retail copies except maybe missing a few features such as online multiplayer. Wardrox and I both agreed that the demo on Xbox live/PSN looked better but hell the game is still ace.

Anyways, back to the event. The day started off great. After meeting up with Wardrox we ventured to Sony HQ and as soon as we entered the building and signed our names in the guest book we were greeted by the Capcom community manager Chiara who was really friendly and she addressed us as "the dtoiders." I'm not sure what she was expecting from us but I really liked the fact that she refers to descructoid as dtoid. In hindsight maybe I should have dressed up as a shark to honor the great CTZ. We were then given some funky zombie themed name-tags and ushered into a room around the corner where about a dozen PS3s were set up and just parked out arses down and got stuck into the game.


(photo taken from gameical.com)

I think we got to the part just before the first level of the demo before we were told that it was lunch time! Coming out of the room and turning the other corner led us straight to the cafeteria and since this was a Resident Evil event the menu had a zombie theme running through it. We had the delicious choice of severed fingers (Ribs), satayed entrails (chicken satays), road kill pizza (you would have thought that this had meat on it but it was vegetable pizza), mashed zombie brains (strawberries and cream thingy) and gingerbread men covered in adorable chocolate stitches.


(photo taken from gameical.com)

Now I could write a whole blog about how good the food was. I kind of imagine that the food at any kind of event where it's free, sort of tastes like 3 week old school microwave dinners run through a dead mans pants but the food here was incredible. It was so good that Wardrox and I even contemplated just staying there and eating all the food and taking some home. I mean RE5 comes out in 2 weeks but when will be able to eat this food in Sony HQ again? Those Sony boys really know how to cook up a feast!

We eventually had our fill and made our way back to play some more RE5 only to find a flashing red power light on the PS3 we were playing on. Yes, our triple had died. LOLOLOL but the Xbox event was the last one, it should have happened there LOL. So in the end we hijacked another unused console and carried on from where that game was paused. Luckily for us it was only a little bit further ahead than we were anyway so it all worked out. I think by the end of the session we survived one co-op QTE and got to about halfway through the second chapter. Typically we had to stop just before an awesome section on a jeep. It seems that this time the event was all about playing the game and as a result there was no Q&A session like last time. I really wanted to know if we'd ever see another Resident Evil Outbreak.

Capcom were also running a competition for the "best zombie impression." I think Wardrox was a bit hesitant since he wasn't wearing a hoodie to do his famous hunter impression but he made a very convincing zombie... I think that's a compliment right? Luckily for me I have no problem of acting like a tit to win stuff. If I've learned anything from this event it's that if you want to do a good zombie impression just lie on the floor and try to grab people's legs and if possible claw at their crotch. So yay serious win is serious!

Here's what I won in picture form!


A Resident Evil 5 bag.


A mini Chris Redfield Figurine


A 1gb Resident Evil 5 memory stick (took me a while to figure out what it was! The usb bit folds out to make it look a bit like a key)


A signed promo photo of Chris and Sheva signed by the two producers Jun Takeuchi and Masachika Kawata (apparently only 30 of these exist in the whole wide world!)

A free copy of the game when it comes out


Oh and here is the name tag we were given

The best part was when the Capcom community manager was announcing the winner she said "the winner just had to be a Dtoider."

Hells Yes we have a reputation of some kind!

All in all this was a fucking phenomenal day. I'd like to thank Capcom for organizing the event and being really super nice people, Sony for being really welcoming and overly accommodating throughout the day (they even made us tea and coffee at the end of the event!), CTZ for getting me into the event and just kicking so much arse and Wardrox for not getting me killed and not staring at my/Sheva's sweater balloons all day.

<3 you Destructoid