Gamescom 2012: The highs and lows
16th Aug 2012 | 15:11
Technically, there's still a day left until the sweaty masses are rounded up and booted out of Gamescom, but we've seen the conferences, absorbed the media and consumed all the german sausages a man can take.
You in the back, stop laughing and grow up.
The Gamescom vein has been thoroughly tapped. Our fingers are worn, our nerves are frayed and our minds are awash with PR speak, but we've got just enough in us to tap out a rundown of our highs and lows of the event.
HIGH: Remember Me
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Capcom is currently the boogeyman from Japan. Internet forums and comment sections erupt into a vocal symphony of DLC practice complaints and critiques at a mere mention of its name. So it's good to see, hear and read the buzz surrounding Remember Me. We're drowning in sequels and known quantities, so it's no surprise at all that Dontnod Entertainment's futuristic action game is the subject of many spirited discussions.
Remember Me isn't playable at the event but we've poured over the screens and videos Capcom has released. Cheesy dialogue aside it looks very promising. Once we've seen and sampled more of it we'll consider it on its own merits, but for now we're revelling in obvious comparisons to Assassin's Creed, Uncharted, Blade Runner and Inception.
LOW: Cruel Half-Life 3 teases
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It was never going to happen really was it? It never does. And yet for some reason we still feel utterly crushed that the game's blatantly erroneous appearance on the list of products on show at Gamescom turned out to be just that.
The perpetual edge-of-seat-anticipation that we've felt for the last five odd years has pushed us well beyond breaking point, we're floating in a realm of madness and illogicality now. A dark place where even the most implausible, obviously fake Half-Life 3 developments are stretched and skewed into something vaguely resembling a dead certainty by our desperate psyche.
What else is on the list? Dragon Age 3. EA has confirmed it's working on Dragon Age 3 hasn't it? Yes, it has! It said it will "surprise and delight". Yes, surprise and delight! We're about due for a Dragon Age 3 announcement aren't we? Yes, Origins was out just over a year before the second was confirmed. We're due, definitely! We're due. EA is going to announce Dragon Age 3 at Gamescom. It will. I know. Which means... Half-Life 3 will be there. Finally, Half-Life 3 will be announced. This time. For sure.
On a personal note, I was very disappointed with Dragon Age 2 and am indifferent about a sequel. But I wished with every fibre of my being for a Dragon Age 3 announcement during that EA conference.
HIGH: Sony and Vita
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Sony had a solid E3 showing off the back of a jaw-dropping The Last of Us demo and the debut of Beyond: Two Souls, the next effort from Heavy Rain studio Quantic Dreams. However, it was woefully light on
The PlayStation firm more than made up for that at Gamescom with a wealth of game and service announcements. Sony might be struggling to convince third-parties to get in line behind the handheld but it's looking to turn the tides by getting its own best and brightest to lead the hesitant.
On the software side it showed
On the service side it finally confirmed PSOne games purchased through PSN will be playable on Vita this month (coincidentally Sony is having a sale at the moment, so snap up those classics while they're cheap). It also detailed the too-good-to-be-true Cross Buy scheme and demonstrated the intruiging Cross Controller functionality with LittleBigPlanet.
Day by day Sony is starting to look more like the eager to please new kid on the block of the early PlayStation era. This tenacity can only bode well for the Vita.
LOW: German 'still' water
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Where 'still' actually means 'just sparking enough that you'll want some real water once you've finished the bottle, at which point you'll buy another bottle to try to escape the aftertaste of the previous bottle, then another, then another, until you've drunk so much water that every organ will flood and you'll die a horrible bloaty death next to booth for a random free-to-play game that'll never make it out of Germany'.
HIGH: Dishonored
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Our expectations for Dishonored are sky high and continue to soar towards dangerously unattainable heights. Although our Gamescom hands-on was a single-mission vertical slice, if the rest of the game can provide the same high quality experience this will be topping more than a few Game of the Year lists. Read our Dishonored Gamescom preview and find out why we were so blown away by it.
LOW: Beer muzzles
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There's a lot of amazing Beer in Germany. Why haven't we developed the ability to drink unlimited quantities of delicious beer without getting painfully drunk yet? Did someone break natural selection? What the hell is going on?
HIGH: In-show currywurst
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The most delicious thing in Germany not called Hana Nitsche.