Gamescom Blog #1: Public show floor, Fe & Star Wars Battlefront II Gameplay

Hey NHL Gamers,

welcome to our Gamescom Blog 2017, where we will update you on some of the things we saw, games we played and people we met during our visit to Europe's biggest gaming event. This part will be about our experiences from the exclusive trade visitor's and press day (Tuesday) as well as some of the events that took place on Wednesday.
 

Public show floor

Gamescom is divided into two main areas: The public show floor (halls 5-10) and the business area (halls 1-4). To avoid the extraordinarily long queues during the public days, we spent our entire Tuesday in the public area.

After starting to get up at around 5 a.m. in the morning and driving to the trade fair, we started our journey in hall 7 in the Sony PlayStation area, where we were greeted with a Detroit: Become Human booth. The successor to Heavy Rain, Quantic Dream's popular game from the PS3 era, offered a 15 minute demo showing off some of the gameplay and storytelling aspects. As a human-like android, we were called to a crime scene featuring a hostage-taking of a young girl that went out of control. Due to the heat of the moment, we had the option to go all in and negotiate directly with the kidnapper, or we could also investigate the scene to increase our success rate (which was a visible meter during the entire demo). As you would expect, we chose to investigate the area, which included minigame-like tasks that allowed us to reconstruct some of the events that had taken place earlier that night, and learn about the kidnapper's name, age and history. Every single piece of gathered information increased the success rate, however it was also decreasing every few seconds, which means we were forced to hurry up. After finishing our investigation, we went into a negotiation with the hostage-taker and were eventually able to rescue the kidnapped girl. While killing the kidnapper. And ourselves. Yeah, I know, things could have turned out better in the end (I assume). We pretty much messed it up in the end. Detroit surely was one of our highlights so far, however we are unsure in which ways the game will open up gameplay-wise in other chapters.
 

Other booths in the PlayStation area featured PlayStation VR and Gran Turismo Sport (which we already tried last year) as well as Call of Duty WWII and a large stage hosting several tournaments. All of us shared the same thought: "Let's get ECL up there in a few years!". The other half of hall 7 was filled with Activision titles, such as Overwatch, World of Warcraft: Legion and Hearthstone. Due to the fact that none of us are too invested with any of these games (no offense!), we decided to move on to hall 6.
 

Large signs, plenty of lights, a BMW M5, huge Tie Fighters and other spaceships hanging from the ceiling. Turns out we arrived at home within our first hour at Gamescom: The EA public area. We queued up for Star Wars Battlefront II and played the new Galactic Assault game mode, which is somewhat similar to Walker Assault in the first Battlefront game, which in turn is pretty similar to the Rush game mode known from Battlefield games. To keep it short: If you played the first Battlefront game, you will love this one. If you are a hardcore Star Wars fan, you will love this game. The fact they included all of the eras and their characters, as well as some more of the iconic locations adds a lot of depth to the experience. As for the gameplay, Battlefront II introduces classes, similar to Battlefield. While others might not like the comparison, it is difficult to deny plenty of similarities between the two series. More about Battlefront II will follow later on.
 

The remainder of hall 6 was occupied with Project Cars 2 (with some super fancy racing setups!), Ace Combat 7, PES 2018 and plenty of Ubisoft games such as Far Cry 5, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, and Assassin's Creed Origins. Let me be clear here: I played all of the previous Assassin's Creed games and enjoyed all of them, especially for their interconnected storyline. However during the past few years, I was losing some of my excitement: Combat elements got repetitive, stories got rather predictable, and overall I didn't get the feeling of playing a finished product - janky animations and weird design choices are just two examples of a long list of reasons. So, what about Origins? Of course, it's hard to tell from a single mission. However, considering the dev team paused for a year to polish the Assassin's Creed series, the result so far felt a little bit disappointing. The characters we got to see looked and acted bland, janky animations are still a big issue and we were seeing lots of performance issues. Of course, the version we got to play was a very early build and things might improve until the final product ships. However, compared to other games' early builds, this definitely was a letdown. And with earlier Assassin's Creed games in mind, we are not sure if things will change a lot.

Moving back to hall 8, we were looking forward to getting a glimpse at Xbox One X and its games and their improved performance at the Microsoft booth. We faced our longest queue of the day there, around 45 minutes of waiting. Inside, we got to see a nice in-depth trailer about the new console, featuring Dolby Atmos sound. In case you don't know about Dolby Atmos yet, we suggest you read up on it. It sounds as amazing as it reads! After the trailer was over, we were directed to a small area with Xbox One X stations and several supported games, such a Rise of the Tomb Raider, F1 2017, Quantum Break and Assassin's Creed Origins and given 15 minutes of time to try as many as we'd like. In theory, at least. Practically, we were the last guys to enter the area and thus our choice was limited to some of the less popular games. Still, it was nice to see Xbox get on the 4K bandwagon as well, all of the games looked very clean. As a 4K TV owner since January it wasn't enough to surprise me, but if you're new to 4K gaming, the Xbox One X is a great choice to get started. To make up for the long queue, all visitors got a gift bag in the end, including a drink, some batteries, toys, sunglasses and shower sandals. Exactly. Xbox-branded shower sandals.

Furthermore, hall 8 also featured some of Wargaming's popular titles, such as World of Tanks and Total War Arena and other games like Gwent (we played that last year as well), Destiny 2 (the same mission that was already included in the beta a couple of weeks ago) and Farming Simulator. As well as Pure Farming. And if you didn't know yet (we did not either until today), there is also a third farming game called Real Farming Sim. This genre seems to be a thing in Germany... apparently?
 

Hall 9 did not cease to amaze either, welcoming us with a huge Nintendo Switch booth featuring plenty of titles. Thus, the queue was incredibly long, so we decided to skip that one. Instead, after moving past Final Fantasy Online, Shenmue III and similar titles, we decided to give F1 2017 with racing seats and actual Formula 1 wheels a shot. A shoutout to the crew: When they saw @Kenu and his crutches, they moved him all the way to the front of the line for instant access - nice service! My experience with the game: Overwhelming! Using actual racing equipment, manual transmission and no driving aids, it took me two entire laps to get used to the setup. After the third and final round, I obviously finished last, but the feeling was amazing. All of a sudden, it was very evident why people would spend hundreds or thousands of euros on this equipment.

At the end of the day, we checked in to the EA Game & Capture area (that's their official name for the business lounge) to get our EA press passes for the remaining days and already take a look at what it has to offer inside. More about it below.
 

EA Game & Capture lounge and a game called "Fe"

The EA Game & Capture lounge is filled with developers, marketing/communications/sales people and plenty of members from different EA-related communities such as NHLGamer. Essentially, it's the perfect place to get connected with previously unknown people and share ideas and thoughts with creators from other outlets - seriously awesome! At the same time, it offers smaller, more intimate booths with recording features for Star Wars Battlefront II, Battlefield 1, FIFA 18 and Need for Speed Payback and also some stations for NBA Live 18, Madden NFL 18, Sims 4 and a couple of mobile games. For Wednesday, we also got an appointment for a game called Fe which is developed by Zoink Games from Sweden. While we were not allowed to capture any footage for this, we are allowed to tell you about it in text form.

In Fe, you take control of a small squirrel-like character that is about to take on his exploration in the forests. Your main activity during the journey will be singing: You use it to interact with your surroundings, such as flowers, trees and animals. After a few initial tutorial popups, the game does not include any more tooltips, nor does it include a map, minimap or other UI elements. Instead, you will be met with a variety of ways to proceed, all about to be figured out by the player. By interacting with animals and other creatures as well as collecting shards that are scattered across the forest, you will unlock several new abilities such as climbing trees (the dev's replacement for a map) and flying in short bursts to reach previously unaccessible areas and to eventually proceed in the game. The Silent Ones however, larger beasts that have been invading the forests and capturing many of the friendly animals, will also try to capture the player. As there is no combat element in Fe, you won't be able to fight back - instead, you can either try to get away by looking for a hideout, or you can use aggressive animals like bears to your advantage by having these entities fight against each other. These Silent Ones will also be relevant for the storyline, however the devs did not explain any details so far. You might wonder: Why are we reporting about this indie after all? Well, the answer is simple: If a game manages to get me lost in it's world within just 20 minutes of time, it's doing stuff right. You will be met with excellent art design that features a very unique, polygon-like look with excellent use of colours and lights and a simply adorable main character. You will fall in love when you listen to it singing for the first time. Which leads us to sound design: Astonishing background themes, adorable character "voices" and high attention to detail when it comes to the many audio effects all let you dive into Fe within a heartbeat. This achievement of game becomes even more impressive when you take a look at the hard facts. The game has been in active development for the past two years, with around a dozen developers at Zoink working on it. Personally, I have to admit Fe was my personal highlight of this year's Gamescom so far. It will launch in early 2018 at an unknown price point, and will surely find its place on my to-do list.
 

Star Wars Battlefront II Gameplay

After spending some more time in the public area to talk to some of the many exhibitors, we met up with Mikko from SJK to get some lunch. Spring rolls for me, chicken and noodles for the other guys. Honestly, the latter was the better choice as I was still feeling pretty hungry, which ultimately made me queue up for some fries afterwards. Anyway, we decided to return to the EA business lounge, in time to get three free spots in the Star Wars Battlefront II booth. Awesome! This time, we were playing the Starfighter Assault mode which finally takes the Fighter Squadron game mode from Battlefront I into space. Aside of that, not a lot has changed, and it also didn't have to change. Fighter Squadron's controls already felt very intuitive and easy to take care of, so instead of revamping that solid base, the team at Criterion focused more on fine-tuning. The fact that a huge starship is the main area of focus for both attackers (they have to destroy shields other structures), and defenders (I don't have to explain... do I?) adds a lot of depth though. Opposed to Fighter Squadron, you can now evade attacks more effectively by using quick strides close to the starship to eventually get rid of other players hunting you down (in case you manage to not crash your Tie Fighter while doing so). With the starship in place, Starfighter Assault has gained a whole new strategic aspect which is very welcome. We also recorded some direct-feed gameplay from @gzell60 for you guys, enjoy!
 

Coming up: Gamescom Blog #2

In the second edition of our Gamescom blog, we will take a closer look at some of the other EA titles such as FIFA 18, Need for Speed Payback and Battlefield 1 and will also tell you about our stay at CD Projekt Red's business lounge where we will get to see Gwent: The Witcher Card Game. Stay tuned for that!

@gzell60 for NHLGamer.com