Gamescom (in case you were interested)

Well as the end draws near I suppose I should babble on about the highs and lows of the week and how the event compared to last time out.

To be honest the whole week seems to have flown by, whereas last year seemed to last a lot longer for some reason. Perhaps you can attribute that to the fact it was my first big event last time out whereas this time things seemed a little more familiar and I could be a bit more relaxed about everything.

I only managed to miss one appointment too, which was Mortal Kombat, but the good folks at Warner were kind enough to let me just turn up later on and scope out the presentation anyway. In my defence it was only because their FEAR 3 demo was delayed that I was late at all, ha ha. I think the main thing I learnt this year is that, with a press pass, the developers and publishers will bend over backwards to help you out. Obviously that will only get you so far - as getting time with the gems on offer (like Bioshock etc or some juicy interviews) will require extensive PR work. For those wanting to see the basics though you can expect everyone to be amazingly helpful.

The show floor was packed as ever, though my schedule was that hectic that I really didn't get to spend much time out there until the weekend. A shame really as it meant missing out on some decent shows and hands on experience but I'm more than happy with what we saw and what I hope to write about.

Biggest surprise had to be From Dust (formerly Project Dust) by Ubisoft. The game looks like an absolute stunner in terms of scope and presentation. All this from an arcade title too - it really puts a lot of the other things on show to shame. I strongly suggest you check it out when it does land as I guarantee that you will not be disappointed.

Biggest disappointment had to be Kinect (shock) which was roundly lambasted by every single member of the press that I spoke to. The games look pretty woeful at this moment in time, especially the god awful Harry Potter title. MS really needs to tighten up the camera recognition before launch or they are going to have a bunch of disgruntled customers on their hand. I'm not saying it cannot be great - I'm just saying that, right now, it is looking pretty unlikely.

Obviously a lot of other stuff falls somewhere inbetween, but these are the extreme differences in quality on show. I'll also give an honourable metion to Portal 2 as even though the presentation was fairly bog standard it did whet my appetite for the game nonetheless.

In the last couple of days we managed to snag a bunch of photos from the show floor which you can see HERE.

We'll also be posting up our top 10 games from this years show, so I'll slap up the link a bit later on.