EGX: A Grand Day Out

For those that don't know, there is a massive event in the UK for all the gamers out there, known as the Eurogamer Expo or EGX for short. And it is very popular, as the early access line (on Thursday I might add) demonstrates:

It's no wonder then that many developers and publishers, even hardware manufacturers want a piece of the action. But of course there was one place I wanted to look for first if you know anything about me from this blog.

The Retail Zone

Of course I had to see if there was any tasty vinyls I could get my hands on, so I pegged it there first. Unfortunately, to my disappointment there was no resellers present. On the plus side, it meant I could focus on other stuff. Like these Pokémon terrariums:

Made by the lovely folks at Bespokemon they were a nice detailed little world that you could place on your shelf. Here's a close up:

Later on, there were a few other vendors visited but of course for me I had to check out some custom keycaps.

Anyway moving on, as there wasn't much else for me what with the vinyls making a no-show, I thought it might be a time to you know, play some games!

The Main Gaming Zones

There was one game I wanted to play, the main raison d'être for EGX this year: Sonic Frontiers. If you don't know, this is an open-world Sonic the Hedgehog game that has been highly anticipated since the gameplay trailer. However on my way to the retail zone….

Well that was a problem. Someone even joked the queue looked like the Dreamcast logo; it even looped past the first circle where the queue started! Therefore I decided to go to the next important place: the Steam Deck Zone.

This is a device I had been waiting for for nearly 3 months, essentially a handheld gaming PC, however it also has extremely versatile controls what with the different input styles. Rather ironically, Evri (the courier about to deliver my Steam Deck) sent a text that I'll receive this by 2:30 PM while I was waiting in the queue. You can't write this stuff! Anyway, I got to the front and immediately got into the first game anyone should play on the Steam Deck: Aperture Desk Job.

It's a 20 or so minute demo taking you through all the controls of the Steam Deck, in the most entertaining way possible. In true Valve style, the first thing you do is quality test toilets. You then notice a pipe above the toilet that says ‘ammunition’ with bullets flowing through it. Putting that together with the picture above, and you know you're in for a good time! This was certainly my highlight of EGX.

Later on I found a stand hosted by TikTok, which held a few secrets.

I found some machines here that played both Sonic Frontiers & the brand-new Street Fighter 6. Finally getting to play Sonic Frontiers was great. There are some new combat features, and I was slightly annoyed that I got killed by a powerful ninja-like enemy during the demo. Still stings me as a Sonic fan. I also had a go on Street Fighter 6 which was a beautiful, inky reimagining, although my history of that game did not disappoint: I was terrible at it! Unfortunately I don't have pictures of these, check out some trailers online for gameplay.

I did also briefly visit the Retro Zone to check out some retro Sonic games as well as play a bit of Guitar Hero. Spoiler: I was rubbish. Moving on…

The Manufacturers

There was a fair number of exciting showings from the hardware specialists. Let's just have a bunch of pictures:

All custom PC needs are catered for here, custom towers, keyboards and all sorts. The Lenovo stand had some kind of fun competition for any Crystal Maze lovers where you leap for the paper in a fan room, although this one was shaped like a Legion tower which was eye-catching.

The Chillzone (or Horizon) stand had a lot on show from VR with the Vive to custom PCs to accessories.

I also came across some awesome Cooler Master keyboards. They are 60% of a regular size, and this has arrow keys which they usually don't. This Cherry Red keyboard was discounted from £85 to £35. I even got one of my friends to buy one. He's still trying to get me back for it!

Last notable thing was the Asus ROG Flow Z13. This is a Surface Pro style tablet with a full fat graphics card in for gaming. It was epic to see in the flesh.

The Rezzed Zone

This zone was all about the independent game developers, as usual. They also had plenty of variety as usual, I got up to a lot here. To give you an idea of how fruity it gets, this was just placed in the centre with no explanation.

I played a numerous amount of games here and they were all great. I kicked things off with a fantastic in-progress anti-gravity racer called Dune Riders. Anyone who has played the wipEout series frantically will appreciate the attention to details with the physics. For me it even outdid Pacer, which as far as I know had ex-wipEout members.

There was also a very charming RPG called Eastward which had a glorious and quite charming art-style, reminiscent of some of the moving lofi pixel art backdrop GIFs you may have seen on Pinterest and Instagram. The mechanic of switching between characters for different attacks was pretty cool.

In between these was a terrific zombie shooter called Sker Ritual that took the legendary CoD Zombies and distilled it into a standalone game. This was complete with perks, doors, a gun shop and my favourite part, Lucky the dog (or the Mystery Box). It's rather unfortunate I don't have pictures of that, guess I was having too much fun!

The last one I played was a one-button ninja game called Ninja or Die. This had an unusual mechanic of having one button for both jumping or attacking. You aimed your ninja to parkour, and avoided dangers to slashin while leaping. And it was heaps of fun!

Here are some pictures of other stuff around EGX for your delectation: