EGX vlog: you simply must play Shadows of Doubt

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Please enjoy this self-indulgent vlog about my first day at an expo in over four years. I wasn’t planning to focus so much on Shadows of Doubt, and I will be doing a proper preview in the coming weeks, but I cannot stress this enough – it’s brilliant. Rarely does such a bold vision enjoy being matched by its execution. It reminds me somewhat of Cloudpunk, which I really enjoyed, but I desperately wanted to have a less passive relationship with the city itself. With it’s striking sense of immersion and a commitment to granular interactivity built into the game’s core design, I feel like Shadows of Doubt very much achieves that aspiration for me. I can’t wait until the full version comes out next year. It won ‘UK Game of the Show’ at Gamescom a few weeks ago, and it’s blindingly obvious why from the second you start the demo.

It’s day two of EGX as I write this: yesterday was one of the nicest times I’ve ever had at a trade show. It truly feels like events are finally back, and it’s easy to forget how big a deal that is after months of relative normality following the pandemic. I say relative, because covid is, of course, still with us – I’m not ready to ditch my mask just yet – but I’ll take the sweetness of Relative Normality over the alternative of having no human contact outside of poorly framed webcams.

I didn’t really think about any of this in the run up to EGX. I’m pretty new in this job and I saw it as mostly a good opportunity to finally meet some of my VG247 colleagues in person (and how important it has been – I finally know what Connor looks like in 3D, and genuinely didn’t recognise him without the bevel of a laptop screen). But I found myself feeling genuinely affected by the sight of groups of friends, mostly in their late teens/early twenties, cutting about the show floor together, cosplaying, laughing at dumb jokes, buying Hatsune Miku t-shirts, and generally just doing normal stuff – something their generation was denied for a good 18 months, during some of the most pivotal developmental years in their lives. I hadn’t really considered this aspect of the pandemic until now. I’m nearly 40, I’m settled, my socialising days are comfortably behind me and I like sitting on my arse. I’m in the extremely privileged position where covid was an embuggerance more than anything else.

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