The Wild Hunt
So you might remember that just before I left for last week's Gamescom, Justin set me a little challenge. In between my various appointments, demos, interviews and desperate, screaming bids to secure good WiFi, I was to find and photograph ten pre-designated sights. The targets set covered everything from game developers and cosplayers to drunken antics and odd German words. I like to think I did pretty well, and you can find the result over the next few pages.
A cosplay picture that could be a screenshot from Dead Rising
To evoke that authentic Dead Rising feel, this shot needed a few basic criteria. Namely gore, a big crowd, and a general sense of panic. Despite the sporadic appearances of cosplayers around the show, all three elements came together in a perfect storm as I found myself trapped in the unmoving crowd around the Nintendo booth on the last day of the show.
A picture of the hardware running a next-gen game
While there's no photo for this one (all the machines running the next-gen games were hidden away in little wooden prisons, shielded from the prying eyes of public and journalist alike), I did see an actual PS4 debug machine at one point. But while a sneaky, clandestine, anonymous viewing of said machine would have allowed the opportunity for furtive snapping, in this case the machine was quite openly (but very unofficially) shown to me when I was chatting to a dev after a game demo.
An outlandish-looking gaming peripheral
Slight problem with this one. You see unfortunately, press conference and video production commitments (as well as an apocalyptic fit of tiredness) on the first evening of the show meant that I didn't make it to the after-hours Mad Catz party. That's where all the really crazy peripherals would have been on show.
A piece of gaming merchandise on sale for more than 100 Euros
Another forced subversion, this one. I trawled the merchandise/cosplay hall as well as I could given the crowds and available time, but didn't find much at all in the way of excessively high-end merchandise. And most of the stuff on show wasn't even priced up.
A photo of someone genuinely enjoying a motion-sensing game
Ignore the conspicuously over-enthusiastic Nintendo rep being paid to have a great time on the right. The guys in the middle were real, actual people, having fun waving their arms around entirely of their own accord. Look at the smile on that guy's face. That's utter, inexplicable joy right there.
BONUS ENTRY: Giant ice-cream sandwich
Okay, I'll admit that after the first couple of days of the show my mind was swiss-cheesed. Knowing that we'd initially discussed adding a giant but notoriously rare ice-cream sandwich to the list of targets, I then completely forgot that we'd eventually taken it off the list. Thus, I spent all week trying to find one.
