On Saturday I was sent to the Eurogamer Expo held at Earl’s Court in London. I am going to give a recap of my day for anyone who couldn’t be there.

My first clue that the day was going to be a good one was seeing The Mask queuing to enter. I was surrounded by hundreds of other early entry ticket holders all eager to burst through the door and get their hands on the up coming games.

As the doors opened and we all filed in. I knew exactly what I wanted to play. I walked straight to the over 18 area to finally get my first taste of Arkane Studio’s Dishonored.

The demo gave you a good taste. I got to use the possession skill, walking around in guards bodies to sneak around, before falling out and assassinating them. The blink skill is a good mechanic, similar to that of Nightcrawler from Xmen, you can teleport short distances without being detected and get to hard to reach areas. The world its self looks beautiful and the level design is so versatile. I can not wait to get my hands on this game.

Next up I had a shot at Hitman: Absolution. Everyone who played the Square-Enix game got a little Agent 47 model, who now sits proudly on my desk. The graphics are of a very high standard and the game play is typical Hitman from what I could see. Having only played Hitman:Blood Money previously, I was happy to see the ability to peak from hiding places, which was seriously lacking in earlier games. This will probably be another one I end up getting.

After seeing highly amusing stickers that were for the iOS game Carmaggedon I had to hunt down the stand. It is a remake of the game released fifteen years ago that had so much controversy surrounding it. When the game was first released the public didn’t like the fact that you had to run over people. They had to change it to zombies or face the game being banned. Now that times have changed the game is back in all its glory, the way it should have been.

I then visited the Train2Game stand to say hello. I was happy to see many students and potential students attending. Royal Rush, the winning game from the world record winning Game Jam, made by RetroMetro, was playable at the stand. Train2Game held competitions daily, who ever got the highest score on the game was awarded a prize later in the day.

At midday it was time for the Dishonored developer session. We all took our seats and were introduced to Christophe Carrier and Dinga Bakaba from Arkane Studios. They took us through the story and some of their development ideas before doing two demos for us. The first time through they demonstrated the stealth aspects of the game, using the blink mechanic and distractions to get to the end of the level. No one was killed and he was only spotted once before disappearing out of sight. The second time was much more brutal. Killing everyone he could find using different methods. The highlight of which being the moment he froze time with a bullet in mid air, possessed the guard who had fired it and walked in front of the shot before leaving his body and unfreezing time, making the guard shoot himself.

That covers my morning at Eurogamer. There was so much to do and see through out the day I am going to have to split this in to two blogs across the day. Check back later for the continuation.