CPC at M Festival

Posted at: Tuesday 12th August 2008 by Orestis Bastounis

We were treated to a feast of gaming at I34, including some time playing Spore and Red Alert 3

Custom PC spent this last weekend at the UK’s biggest LAN party. The latest in the ‘I’ series of LANs, I34 (or M Festival) is the biggest yet, and only the second that event organiser Multiplay has hosted in the new venue at Stoneleigh in Warwickshire.

We’d been to previous ‘I’ LANs at its old base, Newbury Racecourse, but the event was beginning to outgrow its old location. At the old venue, not all gamers could fit into a single room, and were spread throughout the Grandstand building. Now, one giant hall hosts row upon row of computers, which people have either brought with them or rented for the weekend.

The change of venue brings a change of name to 'M Festival', and it's hard not see a few similarities between I34 and an event such as Glastonbury. Both are places where people celebrate something they enjoy, whether that’s music or gaming. There are also some cosmetic similarities. One of the first sights to greet you at M Festival is the tents surrounding the venue. Like regular festival-goers, gamers play during the day and camp at night (or stay in the on-location 400 capacity hostel).

Another similarity is the loud rock music. Although events such as Glastonbury probably have the upper hand here, M Festival did feature a Guitar Hero contest at Samsung’s stand, not to mention a real band demonstrating the latest version of the Cakewalk synthesiser at Intel’s booth. We’d guess there isn’t anybody overclocking a computer with Liquid Nitrogen at Glastonbury though, and probably no more than a handful of people playing World Of Warcraft.

Renting a PC and monitor rather than bringing your own to a LAN party can be something of a necessity for gamers who travelled to the UK specifically to attend I34. We saw clans from Sweden, German and Denmark taking part, either to compete in one of the tournaments, join in with some more casual gaming or simply to meet other clans they may have know online.

THE VENUE

The hall at Stoneleigh Park is split into two rooms, one where the main LAN gaming happens, with the other dedicated to companies exhibiting products and promoting technology. Hosting all the gamers in one hall is a notable improvement over the last events held. Being surrounded by thousands of gamers and their PCs certainly feels epic. With the gamers fragmented around the building, some of the atmosphere of a giant LAN party becomes lost, but now that is no longer a problem.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have our own PC, so couldn’t get involved in the gaming and take part in the tournaments. We still had plenty to do and play on the stands though. MSI made a big showing, with both gaming laptops and their tiny Wind netbook PC playing Trackmania United. They were also showing off an overclocked system, using liquid nitrogen, cooled to -100 degress,  which they pushed to 6GHz. We had a chance to try out the Ultimate Gaming Chair, a motorised chair with speakers mounted in the head rest. The chair features 8 motors that react to audio, either from a game or a DVD. You can even set the chair up to give you a massage, if you so wish.

Electronic Arts was hosting playable versions of two notable forthcoming PC games: Spore and Command And Conquer: Red Alert 3. After a long summer devoid of quality new PC titles, it was exciting to play these hotly anticipated games in a near-final state.

SPORE

This game is shaping up too be something special. Although it's been in development for what seems an eternity, the release (and review in CPC) is right around the corner. We had a chance to play through the first three levels. Spore is all about evolution, guiding your planet’s creatures from small organisms in the sea, moving them onto land, into small tribal civilisations, all the way up to fully fledged galactic travellers. Each level corresponds to a different epoch in the history of your race of creatures.

After the first screenshots were released, it was clear Spore was going to use cute graphics and models, which initially put us off. Play the game for a while and there's plenty of fun to be had though, and the game is in no way solely aimed at a younger audience.

The tasks in each epoch aren't particularly complicated. Beginning as a sea based micro-organism, your main concern is physical growth. In the next stage, you determine both your DNA and your position in the food chain by either mating with other creatures or eating them. In the final epoch, decisions you've made in the early stages of your creature’s evolution affect how you will colonise space.

RED ALERT 3

We were initially dismayed when EA was demonstrating the Xbox 360, rather than the PC version of this latest Command & Conquer game, but it wasn’t long before they set the multiplayer beta up on a small network of PCs they had.

Red Alert 3 will be familiar to anyone who has played any of the Command and Conquer games. The developer has always maintained an ‘if it ain’t broke’ mentality when it comes to releasing sequels. One noticeable change is the graphics. There's now a slightly cartoony feel to the visuals -building and units are colourful and quite chunky, backed up by nice lighting effects and shadowing.

The armies are very distinct from one another, both in the way they harvest resources and how they look. As before, the USSR has access to the famous mammoth tanks but the Japanese have giant mecha robots. Although the armies look very distinctive, it appears as if EA has balanced the game with a rock, paper, scissors approach to the abilities of each unit, as many are the rough equivalents of each other. Every army has an anti-air unit, every army has artillery, and so on.

Although we now have the bragging rights to playing two pre-released games, we certainly can’t brag about our skills at Red Alert 3. Veterans who had played the public beta knew their way around the units and buildings far better than we did. Without time to practise we received a good shoeing from players at I34. We also got to meet Gemma Atkinson, an ex-Hollyoaks actress who will be playing the role of Lt Eva McKenna in the game's FMV scenes.

One thing that’s certain is that I34 reflects the growing popularity of gaming. I34 provided clear evidence that gaming in general, as well as attendance at events such as this, is becoming a lot more mainstream and now appeals to a wider audience, which can only be a good thing.