Nick Adams Games Blog

This was a consumer event which seemed to appear out of nowhere; it certainly wasn’t on my calendar for very long before I actually went there. It was held at a great venue – Wembley stadium – and in the final run up to the event there was a lot of coverage in London’s free newspaper, Metro.

The whole purpose of this event was to promote 2008’s line up of video games, hosted by the huge entertainment online retailer, www.play.com. Clearly they’re keen to raise their public profile higher from simply a competitive website offering free delivery, as they really pulled out all the stops by offering generous prizes for games tournaments. A Soul Calibur IV competition offered a tricked out SUV as a prize, and a Pro Evo Soccer Tournament had a staggering £50,000 jackpot.

Among banks of game console pods showing games which have already been released (like Devil May Cry 4, Pro Evolution Soccer and Need for Speed), there were a few new unreleased games available for the public to try out. The most popular one by far must have been EA’s upcoming Rock Band.

What I really like about Rock Band is the huge emphasis on teamwork. Taking cues from its rival franchise, Guitar Hero, the multiplayer is at the heart of the game (knowing you’re not the only person in the room cradling a plastic toy guitar is a reassuring feeling!). Rock band has some nice touches, like the way someone can “die” halfway through a song and can only be revived if their bandmates pull together and all hit certain notes in perfect time. The triple syncronisation bonuses also reinforce the co-operative nature of the game, its something which I’ll be looking forward to later.

The majority of the stands at the show offering new games were showing looping trailers which avid games fans would have already seen, but all the same it was great seeing them in high definition on 60” plasma screens and reveling in the experience with other punters.

As exciting as it was, the constant bombardment of loud noises and flashing lights became quite exhausting after a while, and I retreated to a small bank of Xbox 360 pods running some Streetfighter 2 Turbo. I consider myself quite good at Streetfighter, but when a guy wearing a Streetfighter T-Shirt stepped up to challenge me (“Hear comes a new challenger”) I knew I was in for some competition. After suffering an embarrassing losing streak, I clawed back some pride by finally beating him. It turns out he was a tournament level Streetfighter player, and he invited me to join his online Streetfighter community.

For its first show, play.com live was quite impressive, offering lots of games to see, competitions to enter, and lots of entertainment like live bands on stage and Las Vegas dancers to promote the recent Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 game. I just hope that if they do another show next year, there’ll be more playable new games on offer.