EGX Rezzed was an event held just over 3 weeks ago at the Tobacco Dock in London, and we got Press access to the whole day-long event! Running from around 10am until 6pm, we got the chance to play many exclusive and upcoming titles before the majority of the masses! Titles such as Persona 5, Yooka-Laylee, Battalion 1944 and Town of Light were just a few of the titles featured there, and, whilst we weren’t able to play absolutely everything, we did get to play a majority of them!
We’re going to be writing up our thoughts on the event, the games there, and some of the upcoming titles and innovations you should be keeping an eye on…!
So, without further delay, let’s get right into this! I’ve removed titles that have already been released, such as Yooka Laylee and Persona 5, for viewing ease.
Town of Light – Played by Zeke Furness
The Town of Light was a game that stood out from the norm on the day for being rather the opposite… The latest game by LKA puts you in present day Italy as a girl (Called Elena if memory serves me well?), who you control as she makes her way around a derelict 70s mental hospital. As you explore the abandoned building you find artifacts that allude to how the place used to be run; from patient notes to broken china dolls left behind… each item you interact with activates some audio or a cutscene which releases more on the patients’ backstories and what they were subjected to. With each discovery, your character’s own sanity starts to unravel; the walls start to close in around you as you walk down the atmospheric corridors and you finish the demo literally walking on the ceiling! To sum the experience up, (developer) are commenting on the state of mental health practice in the 70s through an morbidly interesting journey. I couldn’t help feel like this game would fit right at home in a playlist of David Firth animations…
Interkosmos – Played by Joe Gribble / Clarice Kehoe
Interkosmos was an experimental VR indie game that focused on an astronaut re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere whilst being commanded by a Russian Kosmonaut, guiding their re-entry whilst being belittled and fought against by an American commander who demanded we re-enter in the US – The voice acting here was superb, and, whilst playing on stereotypes, was both hilarious and well-written; the game places you solely into the cockpit of a large ship, littered with differing switches, buttons, levers, gauges…The common sort of things you’d expect in a common spacecraft – Surprisingly, every single button and lever actually had some sort of function, be it cooling the ship, changing ship trajectory (Impressive since you could actually see out one of the windows how you were rotating), or activating the ship’s parachutes (Leading to instant death outside the local atmosphere!) – We were both incredibly impressed with how this game was trying to become “The VR game where everything you see, you can interact with” – Playing this innovative title, we not only felt like proper astronauts, but we also felt fear, anxiety, pressure, worry and stress; it felt as if you were really there, and, barring some minor collision issues, felt almost real.
Scanner Sombre – Played by Joe Gribble / Clarice Kehoe
Scanner Sombre was another interesting experimental Indie title, this time placing players within a deep, dark cavern armed with only a light gun to guide them – Players can “scan” the surrounding locations, painting them in a flurry of bright, multicoloured dots that truly is a sight to behold – Painting and filling each surface, and looking back at the cold trail of your adventure was something we’d never thought achievable within the Unity engine the title was created in; the game had moments of pure beauty, pure curiosity, and pure creepiness, especially at points where you started to scan the corpses of supposed past adventurers…We wanted to find out more, however our time was limited, and before long we had to go!
Battalion 1944 – Played by Joseph Gribble and Clarice Kehoe
Battalion 1944 is an upcoming World War 2 competitive Multiplayer FPS title being released and published by Square Enix, of all companies! Remaining surprisingly secretive, we were strictly told not to capture any footage whatsoever, take any photographs, screenshots or anything, being lead to a dark, cornered off room concealed by black curtains to play a pre-alpha version of the game’s multiplayer…It was certainly a bit odd! The game itself played a lot like CS:GO meets Call of Duty: World at War, honestly, with the fast-paced twitch shooting, agile movement and quick respawning times to boot – Players were split into two groups, and set upon a small map set in the centre of a European farming town; we did encounter a few glitches here and there, such as the game crashing once or twice, and your player’s eyeballs horrifyingly phasing into the main view of the screen whenever you respawned for a quick second…But putting all that asides, Battalion 1944 was an enjoyable, fast-paced twitch shooter that aims to recapture the charm and flair of older WW2 FPS titles.
So that was the first little part of our adventure to EGX Rezzed! Stay tuned as we upload more of our stories, adventures and tales from the showfloor of EGX Rezzed, coming soon!!