Back From Leipzig GC

als ob die daGood evening friends! This was the first out of 4 GC days that are open for normal visitors. It was a very good day to be there. I know that you can hardly walk there on Saturdays but today we only had to wait a couple of minutes to play the games we wanted to check out.

• Little Big Planet! Yay! :D I was worried that the game was overhyped but it was awesome. The perfect coop game. A lot of fun even with a stranger.
• Motorstorm Pacific Rift. Spitscreeeeen! :) But still as random as the first game. In the first race I was 1st out of 8 and the next race 8th out of 8. The game just doesn't recognize talent! Anyway splitscreeeen!
• Pure. I watched EiRoGGe play it and it looked good. Even better than Motorstorm. Smooth controls and beautiful plants. But I don't know if it has a splitscreen option.
• Tomb Raider Underworld. Well, it looked good but played difficult. I couldn't solve the puzzles but maybe you grow into it better when you play from the beginning. Also you have to be very accurate where you are tilting the stick while climbing and jumping. I foresee frustration if they don't improve this.
• Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party. Very funny. We played a dancing mini game which is probably better than Boogie on it's own. Gotta have it!
• Skate it! on the Balance Board. Needs a lot of practice! I was pretty much unable to control the direction but I think I know what I did wrong. Also every time I tried to jump by going down a little and than up again the board wanted to reconfigure my weight. It does that when you leave the board step on it again but I did not leave it. I just might have lifted my heels a little.
• Sonic Unleashed. Another game with very beautiful graphics. Very smooth and colorful. I ran through the first level which was very easy. The controls seem to be good and some parts of the level are just like in the 2D games. My only worry about them is that the camera is pretty close and you don't see alot of the things to come.
• Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. Also played good. :) I will buy it though I still think that there cannot be a good RPG story with the Sonic characters.
• Street Fighter IV. I suck at this one. I did not think that it feels so much different than a 3D fighter. I guess SCIV will be my favorite fighter for a while but if EiRoGGe buys SF we will have some fun with it, too.
• Fallout. Ok, we didn't play it ourselves and only watched a guy playing it but we got a nice T-Shirt and a bottle of "purified" Fallout water. They picked a T-Shirt in size S for me which is of course still way to big but EiRoGGe can wear it instead of his M sized one.

We watched some more games including The Force Unleashed, Starcraft and Home but we were not interested enough to wait and play them. Music and rhythm games were dominating this GC. Everywhere were stages for wannabe bands. Rock Band, the Guitar Hero Rock Band version, the Konami Rock Band version, the Wiimote Rock Band version, SingStar, Dancing Stage and so on and so on.

Yesterday night we went to the Video Games Live show I told you about earlier. The musicians were superb. Everything sounded perfect and the choice of melodies was nice. We heard music from old cIassics, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, Mario, Sonic, Kingdom Hearts, Crysis, Halo, Castlevania and more.

But I have to say that I'd rather have had a pure concert (like the years before) without the video wall and the spot lights that were blinding the audience every few minutes. Also the audience was encouraged to cheer whenever they liked something and thus they cheered every time they had remotely heard of a game name. The music kinda did not get the attention it deserved and the show around it was not worth the distraction. Because of the video wall they did not even play in our real concert hall where the sound would have been better. But enough complained. It was still a good evening and I'm thankful for EiRoGGes invitation! :)

That's it from the game city Leipzig, folks!