I was lucky enough to be an exhibitor at gamescom which made me able to try out all the games behind the scenes without having to queue up or anything.
I've only spend a couple of hours at the regular consumer areas and I would never want to go there or even pay for it - super loud, overcrowded, super annoying, minimum queue of 1 hour for every game
here's some of my impressions
(sorry for the shitty image quality, I only had my phone with me)
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Mad Max
- looks absolutely stunning!
- they showed a ~30ish minute gameplay demo (played on ps4) and it sure looks fun
- vehicle combat plays a huge role in this game, you need to find parts, tune your "Magnum Opus" and fight off guys in vehicle battles etc
- grappling hook also plays a major role, gunplay limited because of scarse ammunition
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Batman: Arkham Origins
- was shown running on a PS3 and looked good
- gameplay demo of a level where you had to save the Pioneer's Bridge from destruction by Firefly
- fights still look super smooth, more maneuvers and a ton of new gadgets (like a remote grappling hook and shock gloves)
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Titanfall
- looks and feels amazing!
- only had a very short hands-on with it but everyone I met had the same impression: the trailers don't to this game any justice
- the balance felt great - you feel strong in those titans but they are certainly not overpowered because they can be taken out rather quick
- this means that you don't necessarily have to use them everyt time you see one standing around
- movement felt great and super smooth - those jetpacks work well with the walljumping etc.
- might have to change my attitude towards this title from "meh, not hyped" to "wow, can't wait!"
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Dead Island: Pandemic
- was surprisingly nice, too
- was expecting something different, it's played with WASD keys and mouse for aiming and spells
- very team-based, 4 factions (they called it PvPvPvE) 3 teams with 4 players each go against each other and respawning zombies
- however, teams have to work together to fight huge zombie bosses
- many characters and maps planned, looks promising
- the developers played with us and led us through at ~15min fight and it felt fresh and new - it'snot dota, not lol, not smite and the devs really love hearing that
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The Crew
- also looks promising even though I'm not much of a car buff
- driving through the "whole USA" coast to coast will take you about 6 hours
- they showed of 4 guys joining each other for some races and challenges
- most interesting for me: you can actually work together as a team (hence the name, haha) to finish races faster -- one guy goes for checkpoint 1 while the others can already ehad towards the second, third and fourth checkpoints to race through them in quick succession
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The Witcher 3 - Wild Hunt
- those guys from CD Projekt Red definately had the best freaking press demonstration
- 45 minutes of (live) gameplay in a cinema, they offered LOAD of beers for everyone and wouldn't stop before everyone had one
- they even tried to make sure that you don't grab one of the warm beers!
- game looks nice, and is about 24 times the size of witcher 2 (even though I always tend to think that bigger might not always mean better)
- showed a nice boss fight and some intereesting choices you have to make
- however, the fantasy setting seems a tad overused at the moment and it did look quite generic at times
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Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls
- clicked through it (~15mins gameplay wit a paladin), same old, same old, not wowed, meh ;/
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Battlefield 4
- 2 different huge cinemas in the consumer area
- each with a different mode (one was 32vs32 capture the flag, the other one 16vs16 obliteration)
- showed some nice fresh trailers before the hands-on
- game looks super nice even though it looks (of course) surprisingly similar to BF3
- still needs some balance tweaks, weapons were too strong
- and yes, they really had to use this sign at some point (which reads something like "you have to wait 8 more hours from here on"
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Calladuty: Ghosts
- very dog focused
- during the press Q&A I asked what they are trying to do to win me over as a huge fan ot the Battlefield franchise because I always felt "alone" while playing CoD multiplayed and I love the squad-based feel of Battlefield3
- their answer: "we now have squads"
- CoD;G's engine looks amazingly dated, can't even compare to BF3 (honest opinion even by the CoD fans in the press preview)
as a side note - those guys at Activision really know how to advertise for their target audience - they had built a huge room in their press area that resembled a typical multimedia store (e.g. Gamestop, German Mediamarkt etc.) and they showed the press how to perfectly advertise the games together with freaking Monster Energy drinks (they must have a partnership with them, those were everywhere) and chips etc.
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Destiny
- WHAT A HUGE LETDOWN
- if I had to actually queue for this, I would have felt so cheated
- first they forced you into a tiny room with ~120 other people to watch some boring trailers and interviews
- afterwards, they shoved everyone into a (admittedly nice looking and huge) cinema and showed THE EXACT SAME GAME SEGMENT we already know from the E3
- they even flew in those same 2 amazingly boring people that made the exact same lousy jokes while pretending to play
- even though they took a slightly different rout than at E3, everything felt super scripted and they made those bored "awesome" and "I got this" expressions
- in a private interview I was told that the game is still in an extremely early stage of development and it's pretty obvious that they don't have much else to show off
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EVE: Valkyrie
- this was one of my highlights
- CCP managed to get their hands on 12 of the first ever
full HD Oculus Rifts
- the game itself looks ass (it's a tech demo) but the Oculus integration was faboosh
- short 3 minute 3vs3 space fight which felt like nothing I've ever experienced before
- you really had to look down on your radar to see where the missiles were coming from and to be able to evade them
- my predictions (and my secret hope): Oculus Rift HD will go very far if integrated well - I could see myself buying one right away!
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Contrast
- this puzzler somehow managed to stay under the radar of many sites and members of the press because Focus only showed it on one console in their business area
- sony showed this at their press conference before they started the actual stream and never mentionet it again
- it's a puzzler where you can basically switch between roaming through the real world and the shadow plane
- you can walk on walls and objects (similar to link in the new zelda) and use the shadows as plattforms
- looked fun but I guess it will be highly dependant on the level design
- will be out for PC, PSN, and XBLA
personal highlight #1: meeting Charles Martinet (Mario's voice)
I was like "I can't believe I actually met you" and he used his signature move "Yes, it's a really me, Mario" - it was super effective!
personal highlight #2: Jessica Nigri said "I love you hair"
I've seen plenty of other games and people, if you have any further questions just shoot