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GO3 Report

Brett attends the GO3 Expo in Perth and reports on all the glorious moments from the expo, as only he knows how.

PAGE 1 (Day 1 / Gamers Meetup) : PAGE 2 (Day 2 & 3 / Podcast)

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DAY TWO
NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS?

I woke a little late and with the "Australian Gamer Office Flu" that is somehow striking us down even though we are all in different states of Australia. All over the internet, other gaming sites were posting the news that there was no news from GO3.

Later today Hideo Kojima would give out no new information on Metal Gear Solid 4, instead referring to previous games more than the new title. One slide which showed the tech specs of the 360 compared to the PS3 gave a small glimmer of hope to those who wanted to see the title announced for Microsoft's console but other than that there was no mention of any cross platform release. I considered offering Hideo a six pack of Emu Export Beer as a bribe for more information, but then realized that Sony's NDA confidentiality agreement would have been at least half a carton, a price that was too rich for me to pay on my AG allowance of nothing.

Back on the Expo floor, I sent my girlfriend to see if she could charm the Xbox 360 guy into some freebies, but she too came back empty handed. Inside the blow up cube Microsoft were showing all the latest games from a year ago like Project Gotham 3 and Crackdown. It was like a fairy from the realm of Non Event had come and sprinkled Magic Non Event Dust everywhere. The whole expo was floating down the river like a dead thing, floating down a river….dead….like a dead thing floating…down a river..

Near the entrance were now some massive blue lights and a fan blowing some fabric around that may have been an old prop from a George Michael video clip. I stripped my shirt off and lay underneath one in an effort to get a tan and be more buff like that Auran bloke who wears cardigans. I now have a slightly tanned belly from the radiation. I urge anyone who let small children near those lights to take them to a doctor right away, as the itching only gets worse, especially at night.

Near the blue lights was the show highlight, a Sega Rally 1995 four banger unit in nice condition. No one had scrawled anything into the screen in bad graffiti font and all the steering wheels worked. I was overcome with emotion and will let the pictures do the talking.

Cosplay registration had started elsewhere and the normal crowd of onlookers gathered. I overheard one man wearing a West Coast Eagles Jersey laughing at one of the Cosplayers and the whole situation struck me as ironic. I got my photo taken with my favorite costume and went back to see Yuga and Matt.

Back at the Auran stand, things were looking up. They now had chairs for people to sit on, which unsurprisingly is most peoples preferred method of relaxing whilst playing a computer game. I gave Fury another shot but again resorted to mashing the keyboard as my "Furite" died over and over at the hands of the twelve year old across the table.

Over at World In Conflict the short intro snippet playing at four billion decibels on the plasma screens continued to drive the crowd into a shining style frenzy.

IT'S THE END OF THE COLD WAR OR IS IT? WORLD IN CONFLICT!

The game itself looked very Alpha build, with nice environments and lovely water effects but ordinary tanks and planes with little or no animation. In the spirit of GO3 I'm going to say nothing more about the game and reserve judgment on it until the final build.

I decided to stay on the game hunt and entered the black curtained off video preview area. The screen counted down from five minutes to go until finally the countdown stopped and nothing happened. I jumped in front of the projector and made shadow puppets on the screen to amuse the crowd. My game was about Mr. Hand and involved Mr. Hand flying up the screen vertically and shooting stuff. It's the spiritual successor to Galaga. Full video footage of my hand puppet theatre will be available on the AG You Tube Site very soon.

Minutes passed and still nothing on the screen. I spied a DVD player in the corner, and since I was wearing my AG badge decided to take the initiative and press the triangle play button. The screen roared into life. A hero I was! I settled back into my chair and watched the Bioshock trailer and felt impressed, although also non committal in a GO3 kind of way.

Mortal Kombat Wii looked laggy and had Sega Megadrive graphics and every other preview was just a short CG movie with no game play footage. Just because Sony got away with this stuff for a few years, there's no reason for everyone else to start the bus and try sell off CG intro movies as game play. If Sony jumped off a cliff would you all follow?

The presentation went on for long enough for me to regret not going to the toilet before it started. I crossed my legs and held on as the overlong CG movie for "Vin Diesel in The Wheelman" ground to its unexciting conclusion. It's a video game, its also a movie, they would sell it to you in POG form if you were stupid enough to buy it. Vin Diesel in "The Bad Game / Bad Movie Retail Sting" coming soon from Midway.

The fake game "movie movie" ended and I ran for the toilets. They were hidden behind the main stage on which a presenter was offering old issues of Atomic to anyone willing to answer some questions regarding Mario's sexuality. Actually, that wasn't the question, but I still answered with "Swings Both Ways" to anything the man asked which eventually won me the October 2006 issue. The toilets were good, but didn't have that paper ring that sometimes fancy places have that you can place on the seat to stop other peoples crabs jumping onto your furry bum when you sit down.

I continued to explore the expo floor for a while, looking at the various retail stands and wishing that I had some money to buy tee shirts and action figures of Anime films that I would never see. The crowd buzzed with excitement over the news that their was absolutely no news from the expo. There was no exclusive announcement from any speakers, there were no exclusive games on show and there was no way I should of sat on that toilet seat because my arse was now itchy.

I did what anyone would do in my position and went home.

DAY THREE
FINALLY A DAY WORTH ATTENDING

Ok, I lied. Day three was just as uneventful as the other days, so I went to the pub.

I went to The Queens, which is this fancy pub down near the Planet Video Store. I had a burger, and it cost about $20 but it was really nice. I had some beer too, some Redback, and it came in this long glass that was kind of like a test tube except it was bigger, more like a KFC bucket.

A few hours later I headed back to GO3 to pick up Yug and Matt. The Cosplay crew spilled out into the foyer and outdoor area of the convention centre, mingling with the University Graduation taking part next door. The boys looked absolutely hammered from 3 days in Perth and Matt had taken to talking yibberish with only the occasional reference to Fury being interpretable.

"MattgosleepnowclowncomingFURYhelpmecardiganAURANwhyyugsmellbadFURYchickenpie"

We took my green dragon corolla over to the Hotel to pick up the podcast equipment, then drove half way to my house, then back again to the Hotel to pick up the power supply for the podcast equipment that Yibberish Matt had forgotten.

Back at BrettWorld we hooked the equipment up to Yug's borrowed laptop. I reassured Yug that I wouldn't mention that he borrowed a friends laptop and took it to Perth without her knowledge. Yes, I'm definitely not mentioning that laptop Yug, you can trust me not to tell anyone that you took your friends laptop to Perth without permission.

The podcast went spectacularly well. We had to wake Matt up a few times but apart from that it was fantastic. I'm sure that commercial radio stations will be approaching me soon with work offers.

I took the boys back to the Hotel for the third time and took some final pictures, none of which turned out particularly well but in its own weird way it was indicative of the whole GO3 weekend.

COMPLETELY SLANDEROUS AND POTENTIALLY STUPID RANT

When I was a boy, supermarket chain food was called Homebrand, or maybe even Black and Gold. You knew it was a cheap knockoff product, sourced from a country that you never new existed where the farmers were so poor that eating dog is perfectly fine. Hell, what you were eating was probably dog, but canned meatballs don't come any cheaper than 22 cents and the product was packaged so poorly that you could never be confused as to what you were getting yourself into.

These days you have this Premium Selection or Australia's Choice packaging. The price is slightly higher, and the packaging is misleading to the point where you may think that the Nachos you're buying might really be corn chips and not rolled and dried earwax from Panamanian farmers. It's a con of course, a glossy exterior designed to trick the unwary. The nachos do contain earwax or dog or maybe even a poor beggar child's legs, depending on the country of manufacture.

GO3 for me was the Australia's Choice of gaming conventions. They had the glossy webpage, the important sounding speakers and the hype, but inside was a vacuum of nothing, like a cheezel.

Will this MSG laden event come back better and stronger next year? Perhaps so I think, and if it does, then rest assured that Peter Molyneux will be on the VIP guest list and ready to give you all the inside gossip. Until then I ask you all to visit this EBAY link, and bid, bid and bid some more.

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