Fuse 07 is a unique gaming event that took place at Shepherds Bush, London. This review is a low down of the event from a VIP holder’s perspective, thanks to Rock Directs generosity.
I just had a bad day at work, managed to injure my neck, and heard I didn’t do well on an assessment the week before, so when commuting home you can imagine how I felt when I got a phone call from my colleague Dave telling me that he had two VIP tickets to Fuse ’07! Great, wait, isn’t that today? Thirty minutes in the car, two hours on the train and twenty minutes on the tube later here I was at shepherds bush watching the Rainbow Six tournament, as well as a mix of bands on the main stage.
The Rainbow Six tournament was on Xbox 360 platform, and had four player clans playing each other for the winners place, projected on a huge screen above the stage, action was closely watched by the two thousand large audience. The music wasn’t quite what a lot of us gamers were expecting from the recordings on the Fuse 07 website. Instead of light hearted indie rock style, it turned out rather screaming hardcore, but perhaps that’s what younger gamers will be listening to now!
There were plenty of photo opportunities, between mysterious Special Forces men in balaclavas and Jägermeister girls, the must have photo of the night was on the sofa with a Frag Doll, Ubisoft’s all female gaming clan.
Dotted around the venue there were Xbox 360 demo pods, playing some of the upcoming titles, including Ghost Recon 2 but most excitingly Assassins Creed. Becoming glued to Assassins Creed did become a slight problem, especially as it was with in arms reach of the bar and the Rock Direct stand.
Assassins Creed is most easily described as a Arabian style hitman game, set in one of the most detailed and most interactive cities the gaming world has seen, approximately sixteen times larger then the main city in Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Each building is made most simply put out of lego bricks, with each brick having its own interactive properties, meaning you can scale a building by grabbing onto every window ceil, security bar, ledge that you desire.
The crowds of people who live in the city each have their own characteristic and behaviours, some will be scared of you, and others will fight back if you push them out the way, the same applies to your enemies. These behaviours can change depending on your actions, for example they might be overconfident until you counter one of their fellow soldiers attacks and slice him in front of them, in which case they may cower, back off, and the last man or two in a large fight will often try and run away.
Your attacks and counter attacks develop as you play the game more, not because you unlock them, but because you as a player learn to play in a new style, and find new timings to use attacks and nudges. As a hitman you can also hide your appearance, blend into crowd, for example I pretended to be one of a group of monks.
The learning curve varies for each player, however even at the most basic level it is a very fun game, you can go about missions in various ways, which you saw with different players at Fuse. The one problem with the game was it didn’t use all the buttons on the Xbox 360 console, although they probably come into player later in the game, you found you could do most things in the game, including combat, with the analogue stick and the A/B buttons. But you could also see this as a good thing, as you could still do a lot, it was more to do with timing, and what you were interacting with, eg. climbing or combat, attack or counter attack. Overall though the game is a must buy, apparently developers from other games walked home gawping after playing the advanced beta.
On the two hour travel back home in the middle of a chilly winter night I had plenty of time to reflect, a fun, rather casual event, which I could see taking place on a more regular occurrence, music and gaming on a Friday evening is a awesome combo, even if the music could have been more desirable for the masses! It was a great grand finally venue of 2007 London gaming festival. Beat going down the local pub any day.
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