Today was a pretty sweet day. I was at CAPCOM's offices in Hammersmith for early plays of Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles and Monster Hunter Tri. Needless to say I had a good time.

There were quite a few people there. We had to sign up on a first-come-first-served basis on the CAPCOM Europe forum to do this. First up was Resident Evil. This one is another "rail shooter" like The Umbrella Chronicles. This one is following Claire and Leon. It was pretty funny when we first started as I spotted a typo on the loading screen of the demo. It said "Use Harb" (being RE is should have been "herb"). The game itself is pretty good and is shaping up well. The shakey camera is a bit of a pain as it can be difficult to hit targets. Also special weapon ammo is shared between players in multiplayer which just doesn't work. I did enjoy it. It was my first time using the Wii Zapper. Weird little add-on but at least it works. The great thing about going to this was getting alot of free pizza and drinks as part of the bargain. It was a really nice, informal atmosphere.

It was only a 2 hour session to play the game and they had to chuck us out while Monster Hunter was prepared. This meant wandering around Hammersmith for an hour. Saying hanging out with some of the other guys wasn't too bad. Monster Hunter Tri is a hard game but one cool thing was they had Wiis networked together. They were linking as a small LAN but it was great 4 player co-op. It took me a while to get used to it. The demo was made up of three missions of different difficulties. The easy one was going after a monster that could mimic the cries of other monsters and call them in to kill you. The damn things takes alot of hits and it was kicking my ass hard. I was getting pretty frustrated with it. After a long time and changing to a character with a weapon more suited to novices, I finally got him. The multiplayer game was great too. There was a lot of asses getting kicked and failing the mission (mainly because of running out of reward to lose when defeated). This is something I will have to pick up.

I got some pretty cool freebes from this event too. A RE T-shirt that has a zombie face printed on the inside for you to put it over your head (alot of these when around at E3 and such), a little MH Keyring and a PSP case that was signed by one of the MH producers.


Well, now it is on to Expo I guess. My costume for it is going OK. I just hope my wig gets here.