Dear Diary,
As the moon wanes on the night of the 25th, I stayed up making sure to get my diary ready to be checked by the home front. The early rise then didn’t deter me from that party. That was a good idea at the time, but being in bed by 04:30 and getting out at 08:00 is not something I’ll do again soon. Especially when I’m on my feet all day on both ends of said night. That said, today I got really tempted by the exact same premise but chose to get that extra hour of sleep in tonight. The 26th being the third and final day for business appointments and scheduled press demos of upcoming games, everyone was noticeably tired yet ready to give it all one last shot. And what a shot of a day it was!
While I was up bright and early, ready to go, the friends who I share a stay and transport with were all quite knocked out after their first day of Gamescom, meaning we arrived towards noon. Right on time for my demo of the System Shock remake at the THQ Nordic booth where I got half an hour’s worth of hands-on time. I never played the original but did do a lore deep dive on the fan wiki, so I knew all too well about SHODAN, her creator, what she was trying to do and why you got into your perilous situation. The remake gets a fresh new look that pays homage to the original by recreating the old look with modern means. The sound design was also one of the better ones I heard that day. It isn’t without flaws, however, as any melee action feels rather weightless from both ends, making it hard to judge whether you actually hit an enemy.
My next demo round wasn’t up for another hour and a half, so I made a couple of social calls. And while no gaming came of it, we did chat experiences at the convention, Elite Dangerous Odyssey, and even managed to pass some convention loot on for someone who couldn’t make it to the convention.
Once I had caught up with them I just so happened to walk by the press booth of Lies of P, the upcoming souls like which Robby covered recently. Without an appointment, but seeing as they had an unplayed demo standing ready I asked if they had the time to let me try it. Lo and behold, they did. Choosing from a small selection of premade demo classes I took to the in-game streets to cause mayhem. I realize Elden Ring might have spoiled us a bit, but I did find P’s default movement speed a tad on the slow side. The environment, enemies, and sound design were all superb, however.
Since I was filling the free time gap between their planned Lies of P demos, I did get only some limited hands-on time with the game, but enough to have me wanting for more. It is roughly at this point that I met up with Robby to go and make use of our fast passes for THQ Nordic to go play Outcast 2 which we’d seen on Thursday. Outcast’s premise, visuals, and sound all hold up beautifully, but needs some more polish in the locomotion (also known as movement) felt a bit stiff. I’m still very optimistic about and looking forward to it, but will probably find a beta or demo later to see how this evolves.
At this point it was getting pretty late to queue for any more games, so Robby and I decided to do some window shopping in Hall 5 where the vendors are. We can’t help but look at those masterfully crafted figures and figurines of our favorite characters and wonder what it would be like if we had the cash to get them. Here we stayed until the announcements began that the convention was closing. Time to get the first worthy meal into our stomachs and call it a day. I’m going to sleep like an entire logging operation when I get to my apartment.
Tomorrow it’s indie time!
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Hey there. Thomas is the name, Sci-fi, action and (J)RPG’s are the game. I strongly prefer co-op over PVP games. Whenever possible, you may find me run wild at a convention in western Europe. Certified anime enjoyer.
