EGX is pretty damn amazing, my closest comparison is Download Festival but with video games instead of music. Today I’ve been able to play games like Concrete Genie, Dragonball Z Kakarot, Marvel’s Avengers, Nioh 2 and Doom Eternal (Avengers being my personal highlight).

It’s a haven for nerds and video game fanatics with amazing sights with displays from all the big hitters. I have been in a bit of a haze today just walking around and taking it all in, but having a thoroughly good time. Some quick comments on the games I’ve played! Concrete Genie whilst charming felt quite basic, you are tasked with thing like painting around lights to make them shine etc and exploring the city whilst making it pretty, perhaps this could be a fun simple game but it wasn’t for me. I’ve spoken about Avengers already today which you can find here. Nioh 2 is a really enjoyable game although difficult (obviously), I like the atmosphere and feel of the game more than the game itself but then I’ve not played the first one so am not used to the combat system. Doom Eternal was really cool but it was a brief brief look, it felt like more of the same which isn’t a bad thing. It was meaty, solid and violent. I did also play Legends of Runeterria but online card games ain’t my thing. And Kakarot is really quite good, I played one demo where you just fight Cell as Gohan, and another where you can explore a little and then fight Raditz as Goku. You can pick up side quests and fight (surprisingly) the combat is really fun to use, it’s easy to fly around, dodge, use energy and use specials and it’s done in true Dragonball style.

Our day finished with a live gameplay demo of Cyberpunk 2077, and all I can say is that I’m all in! We got to see two different play styles, one which is more of a stealthy hacker and one which is a strong destroy it all build. Both really showed how differently the game can work and whilst travelling around you could see there was an extremely deep world to explore, but I’m going to talk about this more in another piece.

Although the games have been amazing and made me want to commit to a lot of titles in the next year, what I’ve really loved is the people. In every queue we’ve had great chats with people who are so passionate about games and are having an amazing time here, where everyone can be themselves. You’ve got people dressed up as their favourite characters, talking to developers of their favourite series and just having an altogether great time. I’ve been really surprised just at the vastness of it here, you’ve got tiny indie games all the way up to your big boys like Avengers and everything is busy. We’ve been extremely fortunate to be able to queue jump for both Avengers and Doom, giving us a chance to play a lot more than most. There’s just a great atmosphere and people having an amazing time, whilst publishers get to advertise their wares but in amazingly enjoyable way. You get freebies absolutely everywhere and I’m super happy to have obtained a free Avengers t-shirt today.

I will be covering this a lot more in the next few days but I really hope that this will be a yearly event for me. I highly recommend every gamer get to an event like this at least once in your life. Now I’m off to have a beer and play some Mario Kart!

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