EGX Day 4, the final day, started with VR and ended with cubism — in other words, it was a little geeky. But I also played a lot of co-op games, and met up with some awesome people.
Surprisingly, Day 4 was spent chatting to a lot of said people. Even though I played a decent amount of games, I spent equal time, if not more, just engaging in good conversation. I wonder how many people lost their ears?
Unseen Diplomacy
By developer Triangular Pixels, Unseen Diplomacy IS room scale VR. I have no idea how the game works, but going from one room, into a vent round a few corners, and then into a larger room without bumping into a wall is amazing.
The story of the game is centers around being a spy, but that doesn’t matter when you literally crawl through a vent. To get into vents you have to pick up a screwdriver, and unscrew the screws around the vent, then you just pick it up and crawl through the vent.
There are lasers to dodge, keyboards to type on, vents to crawl through, and evil overload plans to stop. Unseen Diplomacy uses the Vive as I believe HTC and Valve intended, and it’s amazing.
Unseen Diplomacy is out now on Steam, and not for a lot, other than the price of the Vive.
Battlezone
Battlezone, published by Rebellion, is a revival of the classic tank battling game, but in PS VR and with a Tron-esque aesthetic. Boy, the art style of Battlezone is good looking! Gameplay wise, Battlezone isn’t all that special — it’s a rather basic formula of dodge exploding things, and shoot your exploding things till other tanks explode. But it’s still fun!
Maybe part of the VR draw is that you can look around, but it never stops being cool. The sense of presence in VR is amazing, I kinda was in that tank. When changing weapons you can see them retract and extend, and it’s cool!
Battlezone is coming out on 13th October 2016, for PS4 and requires PS VR.
Sniper Elite 4
Sniper Elite 4 is the 4th in the Sniper Elite series. And, well, it’s just more of the same, but with a far more open world. There are sub-objectives to complete, and the levels are massive. If you were not a sniper, the levels would be too big, but there are now far more opportunities to actually make long shots at over 700m. Read any review of Sniper Elite 3 for how the gameplay is, and you pretty much have the same game, just with the larger levels and that is no where near a bad thing.
Sniper Elite 4 is coming out in February 2017.
Conga Master
Conga Master, by developer Undercoders, is a competitive — I think — game about making the longest conga line. You circle around people in the party to attract them to your line, but there are a few powerups which you can get to effect the other person’s congo line. Conga Master is rather fun, but I’m not sure how long lived that would be.
As a party game, it’s amazing fun to mess about with your friends, but it might be a little messy in design for even that. It’s not really clear what does what, but if someone at said party knows how to play, they can simply explain what you need to do in 3 words, “run around people.” While I wouldn’t play Conga Master on my own, I can see it being a lot of fun in a group.
Conga Master is out now on Steam.
Oh My God Heads
A mix between football, and slash-em-up games, your aim in Oh My God Heads is to take a head and run it to your goal. All of said heads are based on deities from different civilizations, and all have different negative effects on the carrier — like reversing all controls.
You can kill enemies, and use their respawn timers to tactically plan your run for the goal. You also have bombs, but only a few, so bum rushing for the head isn’t the best idea. Oh My God Heads is utter chaos, but utter hilarity, and was the only other game I walked away from with a smile — along with PikuNiku.
Oh My God Heads is by developer Titutitech. While it doesn’t have a release date, it will hopefully be out in 2017.
Flat Heroes
Flat Heroes is a platformer where you play as a cube trying to survive. You can play with up to 4 players, and while you can team up, you can also screw your friends over. It’s inordinate amounts of fun, and it’s a perfect easy-to-learn, hard-to-master game, and it’s oh so moreish. If there is any game that I could not put down it was Flat Heroes — I was just having so much fun with it. While it wasn’t funny, or existential, or complex, or graphically groundbreaking, or made me feel like I was in the world, it kept me playing.
The “just one more” feeling reminds me of games like Super Meat Boy, or the “just a few more minutes” in games like GTA 5 — it kept me hooked, line, and sunk. Deep on the clutches of the fishing hook, I was caught. Flat Heroes had me, and I want more! Why can’t I go back to EGX?
Flat Heroes is out on Steam Early Access now, and will hopefully be out fully early 2017, by duo developer Parallel Circles — Super Lemon Bits and InspectorRoar.
That’s it for EGX 2016!
Those were all of the games I played. From having existential crises, to picking up some dude’s head, even playing as an AI, or flying around along sick beats, EGX 2016 was a blast. I want to thank all of the game developers, PR people, and everyone else who took the time to chat to me or Emma about their games. I always love talking to passionate people, and boy did you guys deliver. I also got to finally meet a whole bunch of people I’d been bugging on Twitter for ages, so that was nice.
That’s everything from EGX 2016 on Day 4, but make sure you check out all the other EGX 2016 coverage from both me, and Emma Spalding.
Published: Sep 29, 2016 03:56 am