GameCity Nights, Season One, Episode One (25th Feb 2010)

Hey guys,

I decided to go check out the event that was happening at Antenna last night just to get a feel of what it was going to be like (the event will run monthly) and just a bit of natural curiosity.

Here's what happened...

I got in just before 7.30, went to the bar got myself a pint of beer that I'd never heard of before, but the hairy barman recommended so I went with it. Took a seat, had a quick glance around to see if anyone else had come along and sat down to start writing my observations.

Things didn't kick off till about 8.15, must have been some tech issues maybe, but nothing obvious. There was an introduction from Craig Chettle, Chief Executive of Antenna & Confetti (didn't know that) and explained about how they were supporting the idea that GAmecity should run more frequently than just once a year.

Next up was Ian (really bad as I didn't catch his second name) who was apparently the chap that started up the whole GameCity concept. He explained what would happen that evening - Hello Games would be showcasing their new game, Joe Danger, and Publisher 'SouthPeak Games' were going to demonstrate '3D Dot Game Heroes' by 'From Software', a small Japanese company that developed 'Demon's souls' and 'Enchanted Arms'. There was also going to be a quiz through out the night and if you saw the character 'Horace' from the 1982 game 'Where's Horace?' then you had to shout out 'There's Horace' to gain a prize, silly harmless fun really...

3D Dot Game Heroes is effectively a tribute to all old school RPGs such as Final Fantasy, Castlevania and Zelda. To highlight this there are over 100 loading screens, each paying tribute to a different RPG. The game introduction shows a 2D world where a Sorcerer turns the world into 3D on the Kings command, the world changing is shown in the intro cut-scene too. You can interact with NPCs who will say things like 'It was much easier to clean before we all went 3D'. At first the game registers as a high resolution, rich colour, 8-bit game using 2-frame animation where everything is very pixelated, but then you are reminded that this is being played on a PS3. When you attack characters or items you begin to see PS3 powered sprites which work surprisingly well with this type of visual style. A great thing about this game is that you can create you're own character from scratch using the character editor in the start menu, they had one of Santa Claus and you can create different poses such as 'walk 1, walk 2, action 1, etc' The game hits Europe on 14th May 2010, will retail for about £30 and has about 20 hours of main gameplay with lots of side quests in there.

Side note: The chap giving the demo explained after to me that he used to be a games journalist for Nintendo Magazine but went from this to working in the UK office for SouthPeak Games (American based Publisher)

I had plans in the evening so I didn't get to hear the talks on Joe Danger unfortunately, but what I did learn from seeing screen shots and keeping my ears open was that it was put together by 4 people in total. I want to call the game a side scroller platform type of game, but it looked like the game had been made in 2.5 D, a 2D character in a 3D background. The action moved from the bottom-left to the top-right, giving the impression of depth. The gameplay seemed to be about a daredevil motor bike rider that goes up ramps to clear cars and obstacles bounces off bungee pads on his bike and went up big ramps to clear holes. The artwork looked impressive and the gameplay presented as one of those really addictive type games that you'd download off Stream or Xbox live. check out this video...

I had a good time and will be going along next time too, anyone wanna come too?