[Picture above, George with Roger Craig Smith a.k.a Ezio Auditore a.ka. Altair 
) ]
It can be said that October 2010 was gaming month for the gamers around the UK, and especially for their London counterparts. Indeed, the capital hosted two large expos in the beginning and in the end of the month at two separate venues where thousands of people, gamers or not, gathered together to see and to feel (or to be more precise – play) what all the new releases were about. While all the above-mentioned was true for the first event held at Earls Court exhibition centres, the second one hosted by ExCel London at the banks of River Thames, was a far cry from its suggested name.
Spread over at least 4 times larger area than Eurogamer Expo 2010, Games Expo at Docklands which ran from 19 – 31 October, that definitely lacked the curiosity and excitement of the former event that was so captivating. Reason for that? However funny it may sound: Halloween, scarcity of long-awaited big titles and very limited area (size-wise) of those big-name titles that were present. I would not even have noticed the stands of Medal of Honor or Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, shouldn’t there be giant respective posters hanging from the ceiling. Even worse, if at Eurogamer Expo 2010 for these games there were several stands with 4 large screens on each side; Dockland analogues were limited to one or two, with screen sizes rarely larger than 32 inch. And why Halloween one might ask. Because it coincided with 31 October – its worldwide celebration date – and at least 70% of the floor was occupied by various vendors of fancy dresses, posters, masks, toys, table games, swords (plastic ones), daggers (real ones), Hentai publications and even several makeshift studios for photo-shoot. No wonder majority of the crowd were vampires, monsters, Star War heros and all other possible characters of Halloween.
As I have realised I attended all sort of games show, including table games with the little mix of video ones, whereas Eurogamer Expo 2010 was solely dedicated to video games and considered I already covered that Earls Court event, chances were I would see little or no different stuff at Docklands. Still, I left show with a bitter sense of disappointment. The only bright spot was to see Roger Craig Smith – they guy behind Assassin’s Creed trilogy’s main character – and to take remembrance photo while he was signing for the posters and other memorabilia for a handful of fans.
Apart from it the whole experience was – as Ezio puts it – Recuiescat in Pace!
You can find the full list of titles represented here and view photos from the day here.
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