Everyone likes games, but no one likes queuing. While there are plenty of people kicking about willing to tell you the best titles to play at EGX, very few point out that you will have to wait approximately four hours if you’d like to play ten minutes of Final Fantasy 162 or whatever number they’re on now. In light of that, here are the best things to do that you won’t have to stand around in line for. Of course there’s a good chance it’ll be over by the time you read this, so… Not sure? Save it for next year maybe?
- DRINK SO MUCH FREE CAFFEINE THE PLOT OF METAL GEAR SOLID 5 FINALLY MAKES SENSE
There’s always some company or other handing out free energy drinks at EGX; y’know, the type of luminous liquid that contains not only caffeine but also bull’s sperm or eye of newt or some other horrendous thing. A bottle of water on the show floor will cost about the same as the average beer in a club (unless you’re from London, in which case everything here will probably seem pretty cheap). With this in mind, it’s cost effective to subsist on nothing but these sugary nightmares for the day, as long as you don’t like sleeping or talking slow enough for people to understand you.
- PLAY OLD GAMES
There’s a section at EGX that has a bunch of really old consoles where you can play really old games. I found NGB’s own Andy here, unsurprisingly, because he was already 76 when the original MegaDrive was released. He probably felt like he was finally home. Weirdly, there seemed to be a bit of an error with the logistics here because one of the games that clearly should have been in this retro section, Sonic Mania, somehow managed to get it’s own stand at the other side of the arena, and everyone was queuing to play it despite the fact it looked exactly like Sonic 2. Very odd.
- FREE THINGS
People will give out free things. Some of these are better than others. Most of the NGB crew felt pretty smug to have caught free t-shirts from the overly-energetic Sony man until we tried them on and realised it looked more like we had new torso tattoos than t-shirts because they were size ‘ladies medium’. So, does anyone want four slightly-stretched blue ladies t-shirts? Because we’re your guys.
- ANNOY THE GUY ON THE SOUTH PARK STAND
There was an appearance on the show floor from perennially delayed South Park game, The Fractured But Whole. Not only this, but the team also brought along their Nosulus Rift, a device that fits over your nose and allows you to smell the character’s bum emissions. I actually bailed on this queue eventually because it was moving incredibly slowly and also because it occurred to me that putting something over your nose that had previously been on about 1000 other people’s noses was ‘a bit gross’.
Either way, I had plenty of entertainment from just watching the queue. People kept joining the queue, and every time they did a man in a lab coat ran over, told them they couldn’t join the queue (no reason was ever given as far as I’m aware) and then he would start walking back to the other side of the stand until someone else tried to join. At which point he’d run over and do the same. This went on for most of the day as far as I could see. I’m not sure what the PR guys had against people wanting to queue for their game, nor why they didn’t just have a sign rather than some poor chap in a lab coat running 20 feet every time to turn away interested gamers, but here we are. The game’s probably alright, I didn’t play it. I’m not into queuing or second hand nose germs, mate.
- TRY AND MAKE THE CHOCOBOS BREAK KAYFABE*
(*Kayfabe is a silly professional-wrestling word for ‘character’. I could have just said ‘break character’ but I didn’t because I’m difficult)
To mark the release of spiky-hair simulator Final Fantasy XXVIIIXVXVX, there were grown adults walking around wearing big Chocobo costumes; the big ostrich-horse things you can ride and breed in the series. They were pretty content to harass passers-by in their feathery anonymity, but how far would they go to maintain the act? Could you ride them? Would they suddenly start humping if you threw nuts at them and threw on some Barry White? Let me know (NGB accepts no responsibility for any legal action or injury sustained while trying to ride or mate a Chocobo).
And that’s it really. Anything to add? Tweet at me and I’ll probably add it, to be honest. I wrote this very quickly because we visited on Thursday, while the whole thing is over on Sunday and I spent Friday recovering from all the energy drinks I had.
8/10
