The ticket prices for the event themselves were a reasonable price; £15. Not bad for one of Europe's biggest gaming conventions. Transport was another issue... the train tickets were going to cost in the region of £45 each. No thank you. We decided to drive and book a place at the event's car park, which was steep itself at £25. But that and petrol split between three people worked out to be fairly cheap.
Now, before I talk about the event itself, I want to saw a quick word about driving in London. Don't f*cking do it. It really is horrendous; one way systems everywhere, hundreds and hundreds of cars and bikes and not to mention bloody buses. Ya know, normally, when you want to squeeze into a lane, you indicate then wait for the car behind to flash you in? Well, not in London. They indicate and move in one motion; we nearly had three bumps because of that. I must say, it was rather scary, being my first time driving in London.
But anyway, Eurogamer itself. The queue to get in was rather long, but moved at a constant and steady pace which was nice. So it didn't take us long to get in at all. I suppose what helps is that when you get to the front, you are given a wristband to put on yourself, rather than the people behind the counter putting them on for you. When inside the main hall, the size of the place is overwhelming. It's massive (that's what she said). And monumentally busy. Tonnes and tonnes of people walking round, queuing to get their hands on the new and upcoming video games.
I didn't know where to start. I definitely wanted to see Watch Dogs. I saw the trailer a couple weeks (or was it months? I can't remember) beforehand and it looks amazing.
There are a couple of first gameplay trailers on YouTube as well. At Eurogamer, we couldn't actually play the game as it's far from complete. However, you can watch a member of the Ubisoft team play through one of the missions in real time. It was definitely worth queuing up for an hour and a half to see. I even downloaded this pretty cool app for my phone that "encrypts" and "decrypts" messages you can send to others.
Watching the Watch Dogs gameplay was pretty much the only thing I did. The queues were that long and there were that many people there that I really couldn't be bothered to queue up for one or two hours to play 15 minutes of a new and upcoming game. Battlefield 4 was there, but I couldn't see the point in queuing up for that because the beta came out 5 days later. My brother tested and bought a mechanical keyboard; pretty much the only other thing he did. But my friend queued up for Elder Scrolls Online, which he was very pleased with.
One awesome thing about Eurogamer was that I met Tom Cassell. (I think that's how you spell his last name). He is a famous YouTuber under the name TheSyndicateProject. He literally had dozens of fans crowded round him, wanting him to sign anything and everything. I waited for ages to get my magazine signed.
I overheard that he hadn't eaten all day so bought him a pizza and a coke. My brother took a nice video of me handing it to him and this picture.
It was a pleasure to meet him as his videos are very good and funny. After that, it was time to call it a day and drive home; joy! More London driving. I don't think I'll go to Eurogamer next year - I mean, it was a good experience, but there was just far too much queuing for my liking. But at least I can tick it off my list that I've been to Eurogamer. I would recommend going, if you don't mind queuing for a while. There are plenty of other things to do as well, like buy merchandise and talk to people in the careers fair. It is just incredibly busy.
Sorry for such a long post, til next time! Bye.
Oh, and when I was writing this, I had a fluffy distraction.
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