The October long weekend is usually an opportunity to kick back and enjoy some fun times with friends, but this year it took things up a notch with the 2014 EB Games Expo in Sydney.
With many of this year's top games playable for the first time on Australian soil, there was always going to plenty of amazing stuff to see and do at the show. Now that the dust has settled, we've come up with our five favourite moments from the show floor.
1. Escaping the Evil Within
If Bethesda wanted to scare us, it could have just given us a controller and a copy of The Evil Within. Instead, it kicked things up a notch, creating a small maze of horrors to unlock the fear glands in visitors to the EB Games Expo.
Strewn with hanging corpses, madmen with hammers and the all-around spookiness of the upcoming game, the maze only lasted about 90 seconds, but it felt like a lifetime.
If you missed it, there's a bigger, 12 minute version open at Movie World on the Gold Coast at the moment, although how anyone's heart could stand 12 minutes of white knuckle terror is beyond us.
2. Riding elephants in Far Cry
Funny story – there was a big long queue to check out Far Cry 4 on the Ubisoft stand when we were at the show, but hidden away at the back of the Playstation booth were a couple of consoles showcasing the game.
And any game that lets you climb on top of a wild elephant, then use that elephant to smash down the door of a Himalayan fortress before taking out an army of enemies using a crossbow is going to be trumpeting good fun.
3. Bloodborne hands on
The spiritual successor to Demon's Souls has a lot of hype around it, and for good reason. As Dark Souls tragic and Australian editor of PC Gamer explained to TechRadar after a hands on session, "It's terrifying; more gothic and faster than previous Dark Souls games, but with a sawn-off shotgun."
Which ultimately sounds both depressing and exhilarating, and we can't wait to see the game launch early next year.
4. Homegrown Gaming
If you ever needed proof that Aussies are a talented bunch, checking out the Homegrown Gaming stand at a show like the EB Games Expo is a good way to find it.
Between titles like the cyberpunk GTA-inspired Metrocide to the first-person shooter without guns S.W.A.P., there was an more creative talent in that small area of the show floor than in some of the AAA studio booths combined.
5. Jumping Jetpacks in Call of Duty
If it's good enough for Titanfall or Destiny, it's good enough for Call of Duty. The next instalment of the franchise, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare adds a vertical axis to the maps, and the changes create a whole bunch of multiplayer mayhem.
As OXM editor Paul Taylor told us, "It feels amazing. It is the massive reinvention that the vocal minority have been shouting for a long time.
"If you go in expecting Titanfall you'll be disappointed, but what it delivers is something that is very refreshing, adding a new dimension to the game without sacrificing the tightness that CoD is famous for."
Want more EB Games Expo? Click through to the next page to discover what we expected from this year's show.
