GAMECITY - NOTTINGHAM

what a disappointment.

I was expecting a huge convention similar to the conventions like comic-con and the big film festivals that are always going on... not at all, i went and saw 2 days, Thursday 29th and Friday 30th, supposedly the bigger days due to 'Crysis LIVE', which admittedly i knew nothing about apart from the fact that its a huge game on the Xbox and PS3, the EA website giving it this quick explanation;

"From the makers of Far Cry, Crysis offers FPS fans the best-looking, most highly-evolving game play, requiring the player to use adaptive tactics and total customization of weapons and armor to survive in dynamic, hostile environments including Zero-G"

so obviously another game similar to call of duty, which are games i do not play, but still having my design mentality and my love for gaming, i went in with my gaming mind frame and expected to see something different.

apart from Crysis LIVE there was also a small EA sport's HUB, a Lego animation section, and in HMV they had lego rockband. So even though i wasn't interested in Crysis, i do have a love for lego going back to my childhood, and EA sports has always been a leading games company so i was interested to see what they had to show at GameCity.

like i said, very disappointed. Crysis live had no computer gaming interaction whatsoever, it was a reanacment done by a few men dressed up in army clothes in a room no bigger than the computer room im writing this in (not very big, considering its a game based on a massive island) and the fact that it was just actors with fake guns walking around, with barely anywhere to watch them live, it wasn't exactly what i expected.

LEGO ANIMATION! was closed when i got there at midday, which i would have thought would be a peak time for attracting people into whatever it is they wanted to show people, but the title does sound like it could have been exciting... who knows.

now, the EA sports HUB, sounds like it could be fun, and to be fair would have been had i been a FIFA fan, but im not, i play Pro Evolution, and after seeing the new FIFA 10 on a 60" screen in high definition, im now very happy I play PES, because FIFA looked just like last years, which was just like the year before that, which are all very bad games, graphics weren't anything special, game play looked slow, but this isn't a gaming review so i wont carry on with that. The actual hub looked very cool, loads of HD screens, loads of different games on each tv, and a camera with a big screen so you can be part of the FIFA 10 front cover
http://www.nidzumi.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/fifa10.jpg
(your upper body would go behind Rooney and in front of walcott)
so the EA sports section was the best part of this so called gamecity because it looked more like an interactive convention where the audience can take part in playing games, even if they are FIFA.

Finally, i come to 'lego Rockband', also sounded like an exciting alternative to the original rockband, turned out to be pretty much the same game but with lego characters, good way to make money and reach out to a wider audience i guess. This section was in HMV a few minutes away from the main centre of the convention, and what was it in HMV exactly? 1 xbox with the game, at the entrance, with 3 people playing it... thats it. do i really need to say anything else?

Im pretty much not happy with what GameCity had to offer, i've never been to a big convention before, i am planning on going to film festivals in the near future, and hopefully they will be nothing like GameCity. I would like to see a lot of changes for next year, changes which i myself dont know right now, but there is definetly a lot of room for improvement, maybe i can have some input with it next year, it does need help in someway if it wants to gain wider audiences throughout the UK and grow as a gaming convention.

The only lego i saw in the entrance to the closed lego centre