AWKWARD ZOMBIE

So, as some of you may know, I just got back from a 5 day trip to Cologne, Germany. When I was there I visited GamesCom, a large games convention, for three days. Here is the record of my journey:

I went there with 5 friends of mine, by train from Amsterdam. The trip takes about 2,5 hours and comfortable enough. We only started at 18:30 because one of my friends couldn't get that day off, so we did not arrive there until 21:00. I passed the time by listening to my new Florence + The Machine album, talking with my friends and replaying Ghost Trick (which is still a truly amazing game).

The guy who booked us the hotel didn't plan the walk from the train station to the hotel too well, so we ended up walking the wrong way for a bit. The people at the hotel pretty much only spoke German, which none of us speaks, but we were able to communicate our way into the reservation well enough.
Me and a friend decided to take the elevator up which was an interesting experience as it makes a sound as if zombies are crawling on the outside. Not my favorite sound when I'm standing in a very small space, suspended in a shaft.

The next morning, when we went downstairs for breakfast (by stairs) I met this guy:



Our hotel, by the way, was not exactly what I could call good, though the people who ran it were nice enough. We had two rooms for the six of us, which were connected by a small hallway. We had two bathrooms neither of which was particularly clean. The less said about the showers the better.
One of the rooms had three beds, one of which a two-person, and the other had one two-person bed. The latter I shared with another dude. There are no pictures. I am thankful that it was very large, especially with this wicked heat.

Regardless, our room was dubbed the Paradise of Man-Love.

So anyway, after breakfast we made our way over to the convention center, which was a 20 minute walk. On our way there we had to cross a bridge across the Rhine river, where we came across this:



That's the fence on the train side, covered with locks. Apparently every lock is placed by a couple, some inscribed with their names, after which they toss the key into the river. I don't think I need to explain what that signifies. There's about 400 meters of this.

The convention was busy. I read there were about 300.000 visitors across 4 days. We got wristbands that showed we were above 18, so we could get into all the exhibitions. The line into the convention was doable, provided you stood in the right place of the clusterfuck before the gates. I managed to take a quick picture from the escalator:



And here's one from some stairs:



I managed to get into all the exhibitions I wanted to check out and a few more. I was saddened at the lack of 3DS and Vita content though.
A quick rundown:

- The Last Of Us was still amazing, and they even showed some extra footage compared to the E3 trailer. Too bad we still didn't get to play anything though.



- FireFall was horrible. It's like you take all the questing from old World of Warcraft and combine it with a lackluster FPS game.

- Planetside 2 was entertaining enough, though from what I experienced it's just another class based FPS game. I hear the entire metagame where fight across planets is much more interesting though. It was too bad that was only got to play for a few minutes, before I could really experience too much of the game.

- Hawken was probably the biggest surprise for me, seeing as I'd never heard of it. I'll let the trailer speak for itself, but I can tell that it's very fun to play and has the best immersion I've ever experienced. The sound is as if you're in a cockpit and enemies get flagged by a HUD instead of colours on the unit itself. The only problem is that the booth was obviously run by hired people who didn't give too much of a shit. Check it out, it's good:





- The less said about Castlevania: Mirror of Fate, the better. They're trying to create a metroidvania game with the style and combat of Lords of Shadow.

- Neverwinter was playable, even though it's still in pre-Alpha. It shows a lot of promise, the classes that I got to play (Sorcerer and Warrior) were distinctive and the combat so far was fun. I've seen people play some multiplayer but didn't get a chance to join in on that.

- Playstation Battle Royale is Smash Bros. with Playstation characters, some of which feel a bit weird in a game like that. Fun to play with German strangers though in a long line though.

- Sacred Citadel isn't anything new, but a ton of fun and much better than some sidescrolling beat-em-ups that I've played:



- It was a lot of fun to be there for the premiere of the new WoW: Mists of Pandaria cinematic, even though they showed it in German before English and there was a screaming weirdo standing behind us. It was too bad they did the whole lead-up in German even though there were a ton of people from abroad there.

- My favorite part must have been the Steam booth, as it was filled with popular indie games and the developers were actually present. I didn't check them all out because it was very busy. But the ones present were at least: Castle Crashers, Toki Tori, Trine and Awesomenauts. The latter's developers were actually pop flyin' to be able to speak Dutch for a while with us and were generally very cool about their game and the new characters they showed there.

Me and a friend checked out the new Trine 2 expansion, which has new missions and abilities, and one of the developers played with us for a bit, explaining the whole thing. We spoke with him for a while and because we mentioned not having the game ourselves and I think because he enjoyed himself with us, he digged up 2 steam keys for the entire game + beta for both of us, from somewhere in the back of the booth.

One of the other good things at the Steam booth is that they were handing out cards that have keys on them. The keys give you a random game from a list they had there. I didn't get a good look at it, but I know among hem were Portal (2), vvvvvvvv, Awesomenauts, World of Goo, Ys: Oath in Felghana, Zombie Driver and Flotilla. I got a bunch of these cards.

I took a large part of saturday to see some of Cologne itself. I visited the Dom, which is the largest cathedral in Germany, another church and walked through the old city center and along the Rhine for a bit. Here're a few pictures:








These guys seemed like they were dancing. I tried very hard not to laugh when someone mentioned this.

We had dinner at a few simple restaurants, but aside from some very rude personel in one of them I ate really well. This however:



Some men just want to watch the world burn.



There weren't as many cosplayers as thought there would be, especially seeing as there was a hall dedicated to that and food, called the cosplay village. I did make a few pictures of some cosplays that I liked though:





The girls got all giggly after I walked away. I guess maybe it's a bit embarrassing to ask for a picture.

Now as for the free swag; besides some Steam keys I used myself and a keycord, I was thinking of giving it away. I have:

- 3x one free month of playstation gold subscriptions;
- 2x random Steam game keys;
- these Hawken buttons:



-This t-shirt:



- and if someone really wants it, this tattoo thing:

.

Feel free to ask. If I can't send it to you online, I'll ship it.

Some of my more random impressions: Being vegetarian in Germany can't be easy; all restaurants pretty much only serve meat. Nothing is in English and rarely does anyone speak it. The streets are very clean and well maintained. Bubble Tea is really good. There are a lot of pretty girls in Cologne.

Does the city smell nice

Doesn't really smell like anything. Not even pee, which was a surprise compared to Venice and Paris,

Everything I knew about Europe is shattered

Paris is an awful city imo.

Fun times. I'm sure the girl got giggly because she was asked for a picture with such a handsome devil.

Also haha lol paris sucks etc french is horrible and smelly ^__^

I could go for a free month of PlayStation Gold.

5 days? Weak. I stayed in Germany for about a month with my family while visiting our great grandparents about 5 years ago maybe? When I got back to Florida, I was all "wait, people call these things TREES? And where are all the mountains and curvy roads?"

i thought this was gonna be another SCP thread

Weakling. 22 years and going.

yeah i did too

Same

daisies you mainland Europeans and your fancy conventions

I'm just really surprised that I've only been able to give away one single thing. Who hates free stuff? Am I that untrustworthy?

Maybe people are too polite to ask? I'm not very polite at all.
Playstation gold? You mean PSN+? I'll tak that, I don't think anybody else here even has a PS3.

I'd like a month too thanks