Gamescom 2010: A Quick Recap
By now you’ve probably heard a bit about the annual gamescom convention in Cologne, Germany. In just its second year, it’s firmly established itself as “the” place to be for game news in Europe, and this year I had the pleasure of being Adventure Gamers’ first on-site presence. Now, when you hear things like gamescom being E3’s little brother and that it’s trying to become more internationally relevant, you might get the impression that it’s a small-ish event and not too busy. I did, and I was dead wrong: this place is huge, filled with big names, airport-like halls, and lines, lines, lines.
With a fairly light adventure schedule planned, I walked around Hall 6 first. Activision-Blizzard was prominently installed here, with one-hour waiting lines that made me think better of trying to see Diablo III or more than a glimpse of the latest World of WarCraft expansion. Further in, EA took up even more space, but as expected, was offering nothing adventure-y. LucasArts’ presence gave a glimmer of hope, but it was Star Wars games only. Hall 9 had a good number of online RPGs, but these were even less significant for most adventure fans. Luckily, the things I saw after that would be much more interesting.
Entering Hall 8, I walked right into Nintendo. As a Kirby fan, I had some fun busying myself with the delightful Kirby’s Epic Yarn while waiting for their show to start. Sadly, the demonstration turned out to be all Mario and no 3DS, with the upcoming handheld only shown behind closed doors by appointment. But it wasn’t a complete wash: while the rest were busy watching the show, I got my hands on Professor Layton and the Unwound Future. People who liked the animated cutscenes in the previous games should be pleased, as not only are they still here, the voice acting seems markedly better and lasts longer before the spoken lines give way to the rest of the text-only conversations. And while the game’s interface is much the same, the note-taking feature has been improved: you can now use two brush sizes and eight colors. But of course the puzzles are what matter most, and the handful I saw were as good as ever. The ones about finding the best schedule to commute to work and figuring out the time needed to move some crates felt traditional, yet a bit trickier than you might expect so soon into the game. In fact, I actually saw someone else give up on an early puzzle. It may be largely more of the same, but I think it’s safe to say that puzzle buffs and Layton fans will be pleased.
There was much more to see in Halls 7 and 8, but it would have to wait: it was time to go to the business area for some appointments. Up first, I sat down with dtp’s PR Manager Claas Wolter and writer Anne von Vaszary for a preview of Black Mirror III, which is due (at least in Germany) next February. As the game starts out, the Black Mirror Castle is on fire, and Darren Michaels – the main character from Black Mirror II who now prefers to be called Adrian – is caught nearby holding a burning torch. The police quickly throw him in jail and make him do mandatory talks with a psychologist. Three weeks later, he is at one of these appointments when he learns that someone has paid his costly bail, leaving him free to go.
But released or not, Darren/Adrian is still far from mentally stable. While picking up some stuff from his cell, he sees himself killing his cellmate in the first of many gruesome visions that may or may not come true. Later in the game, his grasp on reality loosens further still, and he has trouble distinguishing between hallucinations and things he is actually seeing, with potentially fatal consequences. There’s more to say about Black Mirror III, but let’s save that for a full preview to follow.
After I walked around the (none too interesting) business areas some more, it was soon time for my next appointment: visiting Akella Studios for a look at A Stroke of Fate: Operation Bunker. This is a sequel that should not be confused with the first A Stroke of Fate game, recently previewed here at AG, which hasn’t even been released in English language markets yet. Both games are set during World War II and have us play as senior Gestapo officer Gerhard Mayer. In the first game, Mayer is trying to assassinate Adolf Hitler, and Operation Bunker picks up shortly after the first adventure ends, so mentioning even the the base setup of the story would be a big spoiler for its predecessor’s ending, and will have to wait for the preview.
The second day of gamescom made me realize that thinking the first day was busy was woefully mistaken: this was busy. Fortunately, the halls and corridors were wide enough to accommodate the masses, and Halls 7 and 8 would turn out more compelling than the first two. There was a small but pleasing presence of adventure games here, with dtp having set up a booth dedicated to Gray Matter and Black Mirror III. Since we covered Jane Jensen’s new adventure in detail barely a month ago, I wasn’t there to preview it again, but it was good to see it being advertised nonetheless.
Publisher Deep Silver had no playable adventures (update: it seems they did, but I didnt notice the game stations in the crowd), but did have a big ad for A New Beginning (which they’re releasing in Germany) on their wall. I was also pleasantly surprised to see Valve advertising Portal 2. However, the lines moved so slowly it was impossible to tell if what people were waiting for was an actual glimpse of the game or just the t-shirts Valve was handing out. Instead of waiting to find out, I chose some hands-on time with Super Scribblenauts, sequel to the unique text-based DS puzzler that adds adjectives to go with its nouns this time around. I had some ideas in my head to try out, and had some fun experimenting. Making animals and dragons in all colors was easy enough, and after getting Zombie President rejected, I got Undead President to work. Then I tried Undead God, and that worked too until they both attacked me. I made a Friendly Dragon to help out, but the Undead God turned it into an Undead Dragon that joined in on attacking me, so I had to throw them all in the garbage bin. Even without trying to actually accomplish the goals, this game clearly promises to open up all kinds of possibilities.
Another delightful sight was Return Magazine’s Retro Gaming Exhibit, showing many venerable systems, games and accessories. There were no adventures among the playable games, but boxes on display included Beyond Zork for Apple II, Maniac Mansion for NES and something called Philosopher’s Quest. But there were plenty of other games to provide a nostalgia fix, along with obscure items like the Virtual Boy and Sega 3-D Glasses. Moving from past to future, after that I saw what will surely be this year’s Big Things: the motion-based PlayStation Move and Xbox Kinect, and got my hands on the first one. It worked well enough, but frankly didn’t seem much better than a Wiimote, and it was disappointing to see that the games on display were the same kind of gimmicky stuff from the Wii’s early days. It’s good fun for a while, but it’ll be pretty sad if Sony can’t come up with more interesting uses for it. From what I saw watching others, the Kinect games seemed to be better in this respect, but not by much.
My last appointment was with Daedalic Entertainment to get a look at A New Beginning. I had a bit of trouble finding them in the business area, but after asking around I got there just in time, or so I thought. Then I found out that the presentation was in fact being held in a room that was another stiff walk away. As Murphy’s Law would have it, the room was so hard to find I spent the next half hour or so running around the complex, finding it just in time to have missed out on the whole thing. Yipes! Luckily, Daedalic’s Claas Paletta was kind enough to let me have a private look afterwards. I’ll have more to say in a preview to follow, but on first impression, the comic book style used in cutscenes works great, the interface seems smooth, and the soundtrack CD I got justifies its existence with more than 40 minutes of generally excellent music.
A big event like gamescom is not just an opportunity to look around on the spot, it also means getting your hands on plenty of promotional material. Taking the time to look through them helped me dig up some more surprises. Publisher dtp is working on a sequel to Memento Mori, set for Q4 2011, and their kid’s label dtp young entertainment will publish a puzzle-adventure based on the Emily the Strange license for the DS/DSi. Akella is advertising two newer mystery titles starring amateur detective Susan Rose, and is apparently still intent on bringing over more adventures not released in English yet, including the long-awaited Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel and Tanita: Plasticine Dream, so there’s hope we may yet see these one day.
And that was it for me this year. Some things could have gone better during my hectic two days, but between the atmosphere of excitement and the unique sights, it was a great experience to look back on for sure. The rest of you stay tuned: our in-depth gamescom coverage is still to come.
