So yesterday I spent 5 or so hours wandering a show floor in Broadbeach, Queensland. It was the very first 'EB Games Expo', basically a somewhat smaller scale E3 for Australia (dream come true <3). I got to play a LOT of good new stuff coming out, so here's some opinions on what I got a chance to play.

Please note the platform I list after each game is just what I played it on, and is not nessesarily the only platform the game is available on.

Super Mario 3D Land - Nintendo 3DS
This one I didn't get to play much of, sadly. There was a selection of four stages and I went for the one in the trailer where you step on the exclamation marks and platforms fold up and stuff. The 3D works very nicely on this, and the overall game was rather fun. I got past a checkpoint and then died tho. Then I passed it to Kluck who literally died straight away after messing up a jump.

I originally wasn't too interested in this, but it's on my radar now~


Mario Kart 7 - Nintendo 3DS
Well, not too much to say. Mario Kart doesn't really change it up too often, so i'll just talk about the new stuff.

First bit is customisation. When you pick your character, you move to a screen to choose a cart, wheels, and glider. These all effect the two new race portions in the air and underwater. I had some trouble with gliding at first, but I quickly got used to how the controls change in the air and it actually got me in 1st a few times. I wasn't good at all in Underwater segments though, and went out of my way to avoid them >_>

Like you'd expect, the 3D effect is done very well and you can really see the distance of your opponents.


Kid Icarus: Uprising - Nintendo 3DS
Man this was fun. I played the level seen in the original annoucement. When you start you pick one of seven different attack types to play with, I went with 'Palm'.

First you start off in a Rail Shooter, you fly around and you shoot enemies that appear. The controls, that I originally thought looked very odd, actually play very well and I had no trouble getting used to them.

The real fun was on the ground though. This is where your choice of attack type comes into play. I had to run through the city and take out the big enemies that were flying around. Using the circle pad right lets you do a dodge to the left or right (I think it was like, a flick or something. I got caught up in the action and didn't really pay attention to how I was doing stuff). When I got to the stadium, I got to fight this big Cerberus looking enemy. The battle was done rather quickly, since I'd adapted to the controls pretty well by this point.

I also got to play with the AR cards for this. I had some guy with a big sword verse the Antagonist, Medusa or whatever. Medusa won.


The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - Nintendo Wii
The demo offered three choices; Flying, Dungeon or Boss Battle. By the time I got my turn I'd seen the fight with Ghirahim so many times I could do it with my eyes closed, so I went for Dungeon.

Rather than actually progressing through the dungeon, it was more of a big open room full of enemies and you could experiment with the controls and stuff (which was my plan anyway). The actual controls took a while to get used too, and its the first Wii game in a long time that i'm actually going to have to clear some space in my room to play. I'm sure you all know about this though, so there's really not much for me to say.

Speaking of the controls, the guy who went before me obviously had not been following the game at all, and thought he could play it like Twilight Princess. He died. Quickly.

Kluck went after me and played the Flying Segment. Its the part where you have to follow the bird and catch the statue. Basing from watching him and a few other people, its harder than it looks. The best stratergy was to get up high (move the Wiimote up and down and your bird would flap its wings and ascend) and then sort of dive-bomb at yoru target, which would give you great speed. So thats the new thing I learnt; Height is a big deal.


Professor Layton and the Lost Spectre - Nintendo DS
I only played this because it happened to be next to the Xenoblade demo stand. I can safely say its definently a true Layton game. There are 155 puzzles in the game (I know this because when we got there, they were all unlocked and completed). So we played through 2 of them. The first was the basic intro puzzle. Easy. It was a letter to Layton, and you had to find the secret message. Reading the first letter of each sentence was 'HELPSOS'. Kluck somehow stuffed this up when I got him to play it ("If you can't beat this, don't bother getting into the franchise" I said) so he played it when I had a go at Xenoblade. I came back to him with his answer 'SOSPLEH', which just made me go into pure wtf mode.

After correcting his idiocy, we both had a crack at Puzzle 2, which, sad to admit, we took a while to complete. It was four pictures, each of a person at the same location. The puzzle was that 3 of these people were travelling together and took the pictures of each other, while another was taken on a different day. You had to find the three.


Rayman Origins - XBOX360
I played Rayman 3 years ago, and got around to playing Rayman 2 on 3DS this year. Though when the Rabbids took the stage and somehow actually was successful, I was sure the franchise was dead.

I was wrong.

Rayman Origins is a 2D 4-player Co-op bundle of absolute fun and laughter. I played as Rayman himself when I played with Kluck and Boothguy. It is, honestly, pure Rayman. You can punch your friends into the water full of deadly animals =D. The general idea was to get to the end of the stage, picking up all the bonuses and lums along the way. Its a basic, run-of-the-mill multiplayer platformer, but its done in a way thats just truely enjoyable.


Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One - Playstation 3
We only played this while waiting for the line on Tekken to dissapear. I was Clank and Kluck was that.. Captian Quark or however its spelt. It doesn't feel too different from the last one I played, Ratchet and Clank 2, all those years ago, but the Co-op adds a lot to the fun of it.

My main highlight of the time we played was when we got to this drop that we couldn't jump over. Kluck picked me up with the Gravity Gun and shot me over.

We got to the end of the level and naturally, out of the four of us, I won.


Tekken Tag Tournament 2 - Playstation 3
We basically got to play the 'Prologue' version. There was Xiayou, Alisa, Devil Jin and Devil Kazuya as the playable cast.

Not being a fan of the Devils, I went with the Schoolgirl and the Cyborg.

The guy I ended up battling was clearly cheating, since I lost in record time. He used both Devils, so that probably helped.


Kluck had better luck, I believe.


Final Fantasy XIII-2 - XBOX 360
Okay so, the very first thing I noticed was bad. In the XIII-2 booth there were three demo units. One on 360, the others on PS3. Two people finished around the same time, so I got on the 360 while another guy got on a PS3, and we both started at the same time.

The 360 version took nearly 4 times as long to load as the PS3 version did. As a PS3'er this doesn't really affect me, but I feel bad for my bros on the other spectrum and really hope they fix this issue up.

On to the game though. Its the same demo from E3. This immediately put me into the mindset of experimentation, so I set out to just do whatever. After beating the first Atlas battle, I went around and talked to a lot of the NPCs in the area, before moving up into the actual areas of combat and stuff. I immediately came across an area that was behind a wall, and looking over it from a height I saw a Treasure Sphere. However, annoyingly, I couldn't manage to get over there. So I moved on.

The 'Mog Clock' with the random encounters is very nice, I admit. It has the real feeling that a Random Encounter should have, yet keeps with XIII's aspect and lets you avoid them if you want. I went into a lot of battles, and quickly collected a respectable team of monsters. This was something I wasn't too sure on, but playing it myself I really got a feel for how each Monster works with each Paradigm. I assume in the full version there will be more customization to Paradigm's and active Monsters.

Being XIII-2, I was given a nice, big area to run around and have fun in, which was a very welcome change from XIII. However, the unexpected happened. I got lost. Multiple times. I did a few loops at one point trying to figure out what path I hadn't walked down yet (I had decided to avoid using the map). After a while I got to the point where you're made aware of the machine in the ruins. Remembering previous demo footage, I took the unused option at the Live Trigger; 'What does Mog think?', which gave me the extremely helpful and plot advancing answer of "I like Serah more than I like Noel". Deciding I might as well, I went for the machine. The Dimensional Rift thingy was an interesting puzzle, and theres a lot of potential in that. Then I fought Atlas and kicked his ass.

I was kinda dissapointed when it ended there, as I was hoping the segment with Lightning and Odin battling Chaos Bahamut would be included. But oh well.

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