The great British weather reared its ugly head for Play.com’s first ever gaming convention, ingeniously called Play.com Live. Based in Wembley Stadium over the last two days and with the promise of a great line up of games available to play, the hopes of a gaming nation rested on its shoulders; not since Game Stars Live have we had a good public convention.

Unfortunately what Play.com failed to mention about their exhibitor list was that it was all pure unrestrained bullshit lying and what was available to see was utter mediocrity compounded into a liquid form and injected directly into my eyeballs.

Thanks to our unfortunate Wardrox, who had to suffer two days of staring at posters of games he will never be allowed to play before release, we learnt last night what a disappointment Play.com Live was going to be but even then, with my expectations set to Zero, I was still shocked at how poor it really was.

The majority of games listed on their exhibitor site didn’t even bring anything new, just empty stands with old trailers or in the most severe case of Force Unleashed just a poster. I did not travel all round fucking London in shitty weather on my day off for a fucking poster.

The VIP section was a joke, most of the time they weren’t even checking people as they went in and when they did they could be Solid Snake’d by walking 5 meters to your left and using the lift instead of the escalator. Of course I seemed to be the only person in the world who hadn’t received a VIP pass so I shouldn’t really complain too much that their security wasn’t top notch. Thanks for being shit Play.com.

When we did finally get round to seeing something I was vaguely interested in; Farcry 2, which we had queued up just to watch someone else play, it crashed to desktop less than half way through the demonstration and we were promptly told to GTFO because other people were waiting.

Even at only £6 entry I feel ripped off, in truth the highlight of the games I played was Co-op Halo 3 with Phoenix Blood, which clearly I couldn’t have done at home, at anytime, on a comfortable sofa.

At least some of us had fun getting hands on with Rock Band.

All in all the whole day was a big let down, had it not been for a good turn out of DTOIDers it would have been a complete waste of time, so thanks to everyone who came; Wardrox, Sterling, Anus McPhanus, Dan Gale, Demios, Pheonix-blood, Justice & Silverhertz.
It was awesome to meet you all, and I would like to thank Jim for not beating me to a pulp the moment I met him, even if I had called him a big fat ball of pus…

Also to remind you Brits that BunnyRabbit is apparently still holding a NARP on the 28-30th of this march, you should come. It will be rad.

Also cocks.