Features 1

EB Expo 2015 – First Thoughts

eb-expo-15-1

The EB Games Expo for 2015 has kicked off, and Kochie and myself are down in Sydney to check it out for the full three days.

Upon entering the Sydney Showground for another year, the first thing we noticed was the layout of the event and how well-spaced all the stalls were. Congestion from people walking from one section of the expo hall to another was a constant problem for the event in recent years, but this has been improved.

The Xbox booth immediately caught our eye when we walked in and we were overwhelmed by the sheer size of their setup. Microsoft even won a couple of awards from EB Games because of it. Although their floor space was rather large, the booth still could not contain the hoards of gamers wanting to check out Rise of the Tomb Raider.

After doing the rounds of the expo hall, we stopped at Bandai Namco to check out Dark Souls III and Just Cause 3. While I was running around blowing stuff up in Just Cause 3, Kochie was fighting the end boss of the demonstrated level in Dark Souls III. He has not been successful in killing the boss just yet, but has set it as his goal before the expo ends.

Before day one came to a close, we managed to get some hands-on time with Call of Duty: Black Ops 3. We both had our eyes on this game as we didn’t get time to check it out at E3. Everyone was given two multiplayer matches and we were divided into two groups of eight. First up was Team Deathmatch with Hardpoint afterwards. Both were very enjoyable and demonstrated how user-intuitive the weapon loadout and customisation options are.

Although the main section of the expo was well set up, we were disappointed to see the Homegrown Gaming section had reduced in size compared to previous years. Given that Sydney does have a sizeable indie development scene, we were hoping to see some more locally made games being featured at the expo.

We’ll be publishing more content from the expo over the next couple of days, so stick around!