EGX @ National Exhibition Center, Birmingham 23/09/16

Some conventions lack substance, you spend three hours pushing through a crowd of people looking at stalls and stalls of toys and collectables, but thankfully at EGX you can actually get “hands on” featuring stands from the titans of the gaming industry such as Sega, Bethesda and Square Enix alongside independent games and a selection of ‘Leftfield’ novelties, 2016’s EGX has something for everyone.

As more casual gamers heading into EGX, there was slightly less pressure to join the queues for games like ‘Call of Duty’, ‘Dishonored 2’ or ‘Gears of War 4’. That meant we could head first of all to the Rezzed Zone where smaller developers can preview their games. ‘Dead Pixels II’ was the first game we came across, and as fans of horror movies and in particular schlocky 80s gore fests, ‘Dead Pixels’ was a total blinking treat. If you imagine Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez had wanted to make a video game that had the feel of ‘Grindhouse’ - that’s exactly what has been achieved.

We were lucky enough to play ‘Unbox’ last year, and a year has certainly given the game chance to evolve and grow. The gaming industry certainly feels very accessible at the moment, the fact that games like ‘Dead Pixels II’, ‘Unbox’ and ‘My Mom Is A Witch’ are getting made and getting released is inspiring, it feels like the days when anyone could just code their own Atari game, and this is giving us such exciting variety as players.

Something a little different in the Rezzed Zone was ‘Political Animals’ which with the current political climate feels aptly relevant, an election simulator with a zoological twist. Other games in the Rezzed Zone which looked impressive, and boasted constant queues were ‘Yooka-Laylee’ and ‘Nature’s Zombie Apocalypse’ which we guttedly didn’t get the chance to try.

On the main show floor the Playstation and Bethesda stands were both heaving with gamers, on our agenda were two games ‘WWE 2K17’ and ‘Tekken 7’ the later of which delivered a gaming experience not felt since getting ‘Tekken 3’ with the original Playstation over 15 years ago.

The joy of EGX is mainly down to the Retro Zone, allowing us to roll back the years and play games like ‘Sonic and Knuckles’, ‘Donkey Kong’ and ‘Street Fighter 2’ as well as a couple of pinball machines, who doesn’t love a pinball machine? With the Nintendo Mini Classic: NES on the verge of release, retro gaming could be on the verge of a big resurgence.

EGX is such a fun event to attend, and hopefully other industries will start to see the commercial value of British conventions, it would be great to see some of the big film companies get behind the likes of MCM Comic-Con, until then we’ve got EGX to bring us some of the biggest and best games around.

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Event Review - EGX 2016