Play.com Live: The First Day

We Really Were There

The first day is over for the unsexually named Play.com Live and despite assertions currently going on over on neogaf, Ripten really was at the event in Wembley Stadium. Hit the jump for the days events.

Gemma Atkinson wasn’t very impressive, and spent the whole day with her face buried in her cue cards. Obviously we didn’t *just* go for Gemma, but when she was practically the whole promotional campaign we had to pay her some attention.

This was the first occasion when the three of us (Patrick, John and myself) had ever met, so after swaggering in with our press passes, we spent the first hour ‘strategising’. This turned out to be somewhat foolish, because by the time we decided what we were doing the rest of the world had come in.

Nonetheless we got some serious hands on time with Haze, Bourne Conspiracy, Kung-Fu Panda and Soul Calibur IV. More on all of those to come. But the big news of the day is on Far Cry 2 – we had Patrick Redding from Ubisoft Montreal walk us through a demo, which, frankly, is hot shit.

It wasn’t all sunshine and roses though. Despite being greeted by the Ecto-1 and an inflatable marshmallow man outside the main entrance, Sierra’s Ghostbusters stand was offline for most of the day and when it finally decided to burst into life it was the same trailer. And the food made me want to cry. You’d think the £12 in meal vouchers we were given would be enough for a meal – well not when you pay £3.80 for a 275g pot of Minstrels.

We didn’t win anything, even though expensive cash prizes and cars were given away to skilled players – or at least the ones Gemma liked. Maybe we’ll have more luck tomorrow.

Source: Ripten