Gamescom - Day 1
Well, Gamescom started yesterday but today was my first day and I thought I'd post my impressions on it.
I went there with a buddy of mine and we arrived there at around 10:40 A.M.. After a long walk through the main hall we decided to go into Hall 8, pretty clueless of what to expect there. There were stages to play Guild Wars 2, Medal of Honor, Crysis 2 and a lot of other games. There was also the huge staging area for the pro-gaming matcvhes of Quake Live and StarCraft 2. After some roaming around we decided to wait at the Crysis 2 line. We waited around 30 minutes until they let our group of ten in. When playing I was immediately dissapointed. I expected some cool single player scenario where I could fight aliens in a demolished New York City. Instead we got to play 10 minutes of what looked like a flat Counter-Strike copy. Classes, objectives and all that shit. It was nice in itself but not the stuff I waited for in line.
We really didn't want to force ourselves into any lines, we also left out many other halls for the days to come, so most of the time we just continued roaming aroun through Hall 8 and Hall 9. Hall 9 was most prominent for the Blizzard stage, stuff from Square Enix, and the very crazy Razer and Bigpoint stages.
A big sing flashed at the Blizzard stage, advertising a contest in SC2 Challenge maps. My friend and I mistook it for the 'In Utter Darkness' map, where you have to kill off as many Zerg as possible before your forces die. He convinced me into participating in the contest and we got so psyched up talking about the one strategy the would help me beat the mission. This contest was scheduled for 1:30 P.M.. It then got postponed to 3:00 P.M. and soon after to 4:00 P.M..
My friend and I had planned to watch all of the StarCraft 2 matches live at the stage but we missed a good amount of them due to these contest problems. Well, just minutes before the contest started I found out that we weren't supposed to play 'In Utter Darkness', but instead the Challenge mission where you control a fully built Protoss base and have to kill as many zerg as possible in a set amount of time. So all the psyching up for this map was for nothing after all. I also got nervous because I found out that we were going to play the german version and I was afraid I couldn't manage to control my army because I was used to english hotkeys. Luckily this german version had english hotkeys preset.
Six of us were led on stage at 4:08 P.M. While the moderator was explaining the map and the rules to the audience we had time famliarizing ourselves with the Challenge mission and set up the control groups for my army. After a while the moderator gave us the go to start. While I will not explain what exactly I did in this map, we ended up being 4(!) of six players with exactly 158 kills each of us. So pretty much a draw.
So next we had to prove ourselves with the first Terran Challenge mission. The one where you set up your groups of preset units against zerg waves. I remember that two of the six people (probably the ones who didn't get 158 kills in the previous map) lost the first round because they lost too many units compared to the rest of us. I lost one marine. The second round I also lost one marine. In the third round of this map I didn't lose a single unit, while my strongest opponent lost 7. So, I won the Razer Imperator which is a mouse for right handed people. I am a lefty
Anyway, like all other contestants I also go the german version of the book I, Mensgk. A SC2-T-Shirt and a strategy guide. Some of these things may actually find their way onto E-Bay. Finally, I got interviewed. I was asked about my SC2-competence, what league I play in, and if I had any ambitions of becoming pro and how often I play. My answers in short: Some. Diamond. No. Little.
Anyway. I thank my buddy for convincing me into participating. He got jealous that he didn't do it himself
After that we returned to watch some more StarCraft 2 pro-games of Idra bashing DeMusliM and left the building at around 7:00 P.M.
I'm looking forward to more contests tomorrow