14 DAY TRIAL // Nothing can prepare a gamer or a journalist for what a trade fair really means and I discovered that the hard way this Wednesday when attending the first day of Gamescom in Cologne.
Gamescom means a lot of square meters dedicated to nothing but video games and some relaxation areas and despite the huge fun element involved going to all the stands, looking at screens, shooting pictures and writing about new games can be hugely tiring.
Still, it's an experience I would not trade for any other because in about 24 hours it allowed me to go to a Sony press event dominated by three dimensional gaming and Move but also brought me close to a personal favorite, Fallout, and to an up and coming revival of a classic, Age of Empires Online.
On Softpedia we also have a host of other articles linked to Gamescom and the new coming out of it, which you can check out here.
Only video games and the people who make and promote them can make something like that possible.
One big problem with the shows is that the torrent of information coming from developers and publishers is huge, capable of overwhelming the attention of fans and journalists alike.
The other aspect of Gamescom that boggles the mind are the huge lines for all those big titles that everyone is expecting.
You would think that video game journalist are a more fairly distributed bunch, looking at everything the industry has to offer, trying to get into the RAGE presentation just as hard as they are trying to see the latest project from Aerosoft.
But we're as influenced by hype and promises of “revolutionary” features as everyone else, with the best proof being the lines that formed for Call of Duty: Black Ops and Medal of Honor as soon as the show opened and managed to last until the closing hours.
Here are some more photos from the first day of Gamescom 2010:
