Date: 22/2/11 (If you switch the 11 to binary it’s totally 2).
Location: Waterloo, Sydney (Near Redfern).
Event: Killzone 3 Press Event thing.
When: 4pm – ~7pm
Why: General Awesomeness.
Mood: Tipsy
And so the day began…

It was a somewhat beautiful day when I awoke at approximately 10:30AM to take a shower. After the shower, the day was approximately the same. Anyways, so I go to get changed into the outfit I had planned to wear for the day when – ‘What the hell is this!?’ – I had discovered that some forward thinking smart-ass of a bird had left a bit of a crap on my jeans; I had to wash them. Then dry them. Three times. Evil flying flyer! Anyways, the jeans were dry and it was time to leave for the event.

So the time is now 1:45PM and I’m waiting for the bus. Because I don’t like to be too late to events and things; I try to leave early to account for any kind of obstructions to my travel. So I’m waiting there and, like, 2 minutes pass that were full of uneventful nothingness; so I whip out my trusty MP4 player and whip on some music. This trip would begin with the ‘Madworld OST’ that came with the Wii game ‘Madworld’. Its hip-hop derivative style was quite suitable for this rather uneventful bus ride. So I’m waiting for the bus and I check my phone. The time is now 2:08, one minute until the bus was to appear. I sat back down as it usually never comes on time… … …But what was this!? It was on time! ON THE DOT!  A first! In EVER! What is this madness!? Awesome madness, that’s what. Seriously, this is the first time that this has ever happened. Goodwill +10; Total Goodwill -90, yeah, the one time it comes on time does not outweigh the eternity of late arrivals.

I’m sitting on this bus when suddenly a group of super-ninjas jump the bus and hold it up for ransom or something. Wait, that’s not right… I could have possibly imagined that bit as well as some other stuff that I probably shouldn’t mention here. Seriously, there was nothing exciting enough to write about on this bus trip, but it happened, so it needs a paragraph to portray the event. I might sum it up in the next sentence. There was a bus, I was on it, nothing eventful ever happened and I was still rocking out to the ‘Madworld OST’. At the end of the ~20minute ride, the bus pulled into the train station and I disembarked from the machine and proceeded to the nearby 7/11 for bottled caffeine.

I emerge from the 7/11, bottled caffeine in hand, and notice that the train that I was supposed to be on had just pulled in and left before I ever got the chance to reach it in time. Curse you Caffeine, Curse you and your evil corporate family! I launch myself from the 7/11 and head towards the nearby train station at a heightened pace of walking speed (this is in comparison to standing speed). The stairs are slowly getting closer to me, as though my feet could feel their lift, but before I could be bothered ninjaing them; I noticed the escalator was working. Screw you effort, I’m being lazy! And besides, escalators are awesome. The escalator took me to an empty narrow walkway and straight into the train station where I was able to quickly and proficiently purchase a ticket and quickly head down onto the platform.

The train was due in ~15minutes and I had absolutely nothing to do during that time besides listen to my MP4 player. I’d normally whip out my DS and try and conquer a level or two on Megaman ZX, or Zero, Or Level up some pokemon or something, but I was unable to due to having lent out my device to my mates girlfriend to grind my pokemon to max level or something. Hope that they’re still recognisable to me in some way. Anyways, the ‘Madworld OST’ finishes and switches over to one of Galneryus’ albums ‘Reincarnation’; man that album is epic. The train pulls in and I board it. w00t!. The time is now approximately 2:45PM.

I find myself a rather comfortable seat in the lower cabin of the train, or was it upper? No, it was the upper-cabin. Yeah! I think. Maybe… Who knows? Anyways, So I’m sitting in the carriage and waiting for the train to travel to Redfern station. During the trip, ‘Reincarnation’ finishes and I change the album over to Galneryus’ latest one – ‘Resurrection’. After about four songs the train pulls into Redfern station and I disembark the train. Now, incase you’re wondering what Redfern is, it’s a suburb just off of Sydney (like, just off of it, you can walk into Sydney from there) that is notorious for being quite dangerous or something. Everyone that I told where it was that I was going claimed that it was likely that I’d get rolled on the way to this event. Luckily I didn’t, but the way I was dressed (and my various gaming related accessories) would have made me a prime target. So anyways, I exit the station and pull out my map. It takes me 2-3 minutes to work out where I am, due to my perfectly good vision which isn’t slowly dissipating or anything, and I take out my phone to check the time. 10 Minutes until the event starts. Total travel time according to the map: 18minutes. Challenge Accepted.

I totally would have conquered the challenge had I not taken a wrong turn at the roundabout and headed the wrong direction up the street the event was on. Seriously, I was like right in front of the event at eight minutes but turned the wrong way. Gah! I pulled out my phone and called Phil, who was also there, and he was able to direct me to to my destination. I almost got hit by two cars in those 50meters. I swear that I am unkillable or something, seriously, I’ve been almost hit by roughly 50 cars in the last 8 years. The Force must be strong with this one.

Anyways, I make it across to the building thing and Phil approaches. We greet each other and some of the Bouncers direct me into the inside of the event where I bump into this lady and she takes me to the desk thing to get my pass or something. I greet the counter ladies, who were both very nice and quite pretty, and pass them along my name and the place that I’m from (Capsule Computers) and they give me these Killzone 3 Dogtags and a group number. I’m a part of group two. With Phil. And two others from another publication. Anyways, I head in and Phil has mysteriously vanished, leaving me nigelated and alone to explore the showroom. After a quick exploration I noticed that each group kind of just stuck together and there wasn’t much inter-group chatter going on, usually there’s always that one other person who’s alone and you can go and talk to. Today there was none. Luckily Phil appeared and it was all good.

Killzone 3 = EPIC

After chatting for a bit one of the Sony reps got us to take a seat and Rebecca Rice from Sony took to the stage and welcomed us to the event. She would be the anchor of this Killzone 3 event. After a short speech she queued up the video and got them to play it. The video itself was of the developmental ideas behind Killzone 3, things like why they made the story the way that they did, why players can carry three weapons, new gameplay stuffs and multiplayer goods. The one thing that I was dissappointed with personally was that, according to the video, they removed the server browser from the game and replaced it with Matchmaking. While I understand the theory behind matchmaking, as a PC gamer primarily, I like being able to choose a game that I know will have a decent ping, has players that I get along with and more importantly, being able to lockout known disruptive players. With matchmaking, you don’t get that. It’s just a group of randomly selected dudes/dudettes thrown together with (often) some player with a poor connection or is across the world from you hosting the match. Of course, you can set up a pre-existing group to help make it more comfortable, which will probably be preferable for many players. That is really my only gripe with the multiplayer, though I’m sure that you can set up a private game with friends via invites. Aside from the matchmaking, the multiplayer looks epic. There’s this game mode that reminds me a fair deal of Unreal Tournaments ‘Assault’ gametype, where you have one team trying to complete a set of objectives while the opposing team must prevent them from doing so. It looks quite fun. Another game mode I was most impressed with is the one that is a mixture of all the game-modes together, it goes from one game type to the next in some kind of large battle which is quite unique (or atleast to me, I think there may have been another game that did something like it, but I can’t remember which and it’s likely that I’m remembering incorrectly) and interesting, also very fun. They also showcased two fan favorite maps from the previous Killzone games that will be available for free to players who pre-order the game, and for sale on the PSN (I believe) for everyone else.

The Commando!

After the video was finished Rebecca called out the Commando, Commando Steve. You may recognise him from ‘The Biggest Loser – Australia’ which is currently running on Channel 10 (we have a video interview with him, he’s a really nice guy, which will be uploaded to the site and linked in the video box below). He basically gave us a speech about how we have to prepare for some kind of obstacle course or something, which we all believed would consist of physical activity (which would have sucked as I’m certain that a fair few of us would have been so very out of shape judging by the groans heard from behind me), and he got us all to make our way down the back and assemble into our group order. Mine and Phils was two (remember, I spoke about this earlier). We all turned around and the curtains swept to the sides, unveiling the room behind… as well as the Helghast soldier ready to decimate us. Lucky for us, he was just a cosplayer or something and was quite harmless. Behind him laid the ‘Obstacle course or something’ from earlier, which was a whole lot less physical than we expected. Heck, there was even booze! ♥ Sony. Our group was marshalled over to the Playstation Move demonstration version of the game, which was frustratingly hard to get used to in the short amount of time we each got to play with it. I am not a fan of that control type, or atleast the way they had it set up in the gun peripheral, maybe if i had been able to use it nunchaku style like Red-Steel on the Wii; then I may have been more receptive to it. But after you get used to the setup, it is actually quite an entertaining way to play the game. Though, I don’t think that the compressed water/bubbly stuff that they were shooting at us helped with the whole Move sensor thing, which may have been the source of many of our problems. Also, it was in glasses 3D, which was pretty cool.

Shooting those DAMN Bubbles !!

After our group had a couple of goes on the 3D Move station the siren thing went off and we were quickly marshalled to the next station. Dubbed ‘Mess Hall’; it was a table of drinks, varying from beer to wine to non alcoholic drinks like water and orange juice. I went for the White Wine, because it’s my favorite and it’s yummy. I was mostly fine after that first one that I had. I started talking to one of the dudes running the station about games and stuff. He was actually a personal trainer or something outside of the event and only really played sport games, which we talked about for a bit. The conversation then turned to World of Warcraft somehow and when I explained that I hadn’t played it in five days (because of a hike I was on from Friday to Sunday, then on Monday I didn’t have the time to play it and I haven’t played it today either); everyone was quite surprised that I had no withdrawal symptoms. As I explained to everyone, the game needs to be played in moderation and I only play it for ~2 hours a day, usually, unless it’s the weekend, or I’m raiding. There was too much time standing around and drinking so our group and a few other enterprising groups jumped on the multiplayer booth in the middle and had us a game of team deathmatch. I don’t think that we were allowed to as the other side were kicked off while we were well on our way to victory. I had a 5 kill streak at one point. Go me. Anyways, after completing my drink and pointing out to everyone that the other team had left the buzzer sounded and we were whisked off to a shipping container or something.

This shipping container was air-conditioned to arctic climates, I swear it was so bloody cold. Inside the container they had a single player portion set up for us to get through while we were freezing our #$!# off. I didn’t notice the cold really (which is weird because anything that is room temperature or below is absolutely freezing to me normally), it was probably because I was distracted by the game and didn’t really notice. Phil, on the other hand, was incessantly whinging about the temperature and ejected himself at some point. So did one of our team mates. It was me and the lady reporter at one point, then just me. Man, I get so into games sometimes. I noticed that everyone was outside at some point and proceeded out. The Siren went off again and it was time for the next activity.

So we were marshalled over to the gun building station. I asked Phil “How is your guncraft skill?” to which he replied “Not that good.” So I took to the weapon building first and go it built in one minute ~flat~ IN THE DARK! Now, just so you know, the average time for getting it build in the light was ~50seconds. The dark was quite dark and it only took me a couple of groups of five seconds extra to complete the weapon. Phil took like ~35 seconds or something in the light, after watching me build it first. He also began to chat to the gun lady for an inordinate amount of time. (About Killzone 3 of course and his super guncrafting skills )

MasterAbbott and his Guncrafting Skills +10.

Shortly after catching up to the group the Siren went off and it was Multiplayer time. 10 Attendees were selected and pitted against each other in an online team deathmatch, which caught the attention of everyone in the crowd (with the exception of Phil who took the time to discuss Killzone 3 a little more with the guncraft lady). The winner was to be awarded the Collectors Edition of KillZone 3 (valued at approx $250 – buy here). Epic! Sadly, neither I nor Phil were participants in the match. I would have totally taken it home if I was in there, for sure. The winner of the match lead with upwards 20 frags, which was quite the effort. I believe he was from PALGN, so props to them 😀

After the team-deathmatch, we were required to attend any stations that we had not yet completed and get them done. The only one that I had not yet done was the kiosks to the left of the Multiplayer set-up. As I headed over, I grabbed another wine from a dude giving them out and drank a bit of it. Note: This was strong wine. Anyways, I picked up the Move Controller (this one was non 3D) to give it another go. After the practice from the first kiosk we visited, I found that the controls were much more easier to pick-up and use. It is certainly a practice makes perfect thing, but it was most certainly entertaining and not as bad as I called it earlier in this article. After messing with it for an amount of time that I have no idea of (seriously time is distorted while you’ve been drinking) I headed over to where Phil was and joined some chatter over there. It turns out that there’s some kind of social nodding cue where if you want to chat to someone you just kind of nod at them and if they nod back you’re all good. I swear, took me 20 years and alcohol to work it out, but I did and it was awesome. So I was talking to the Sony lady (I’m so very sorry about not remembering your name) and learned that she’s been in public relations for a while now and that she plays games and stuff. It was cool. I also got to talk to the winner of the multiplayer comp and gave him a ‘Gratz!’; and he didn’t ask me what it meant which is awesome, man I love gamers, you don’t have to explain your lingo to them because it’s their lingo too.

After chatting for a short while another rep began to try and marshall us out, but I’m certain none of us wanted to leave. Games! Socialising with other gamers! Will this happen again! This may be my only chance to make myself a household name. Worship me damnit! (Just kidding, but if you do, send me pics of your shrine at [email protected]). I finished my wine and started to leave when Phil managed to score an interview with Commado Steve. I was *supposed* to take some decent pictures, but Phil never told me to have the flash on in order to make the shots not blurry and so I’m fairly certain we have barely any usable photos from the interview. Totally not my fault, you want me to take photo’s, you teach me how to use the camera. Also, I was tipsy. Always blame the booze, heh heh.

All up, the event was awesome and I had a great time while not only playing games, but also learning a little about myself and humanity. Nodding = success.