After being royally ignored countless number of times, Bangalore finally got its first and much deserved gaming expo in a long time. After wowing the gamers in Mumbai, the PlayStation Experience (PSE) in Mumbai, it moved down south to Bangalore, much to the delight of us gamers here. Held at the Kormangala Indoor Stadium, PSE boasted of an impressive set up that allowed the general public access to a lot of PS3, PS2 and PSP titles, some already out in the market and some just waiting to hit the shelves. The show floor was divided into different zones showcasing different genres of video games from the PS3’s roster.

The Shooting Zone showed off KillZone 2 (KZ2)’s LGC-build, besides letting us have a go at the critically acclaimed Dead Space and Resistance 2. Surprisingly, unlike the Mumbai event, most of the attendees gravitated towards Resistance 2, much to our delight, letting us hog KZ2 for as long as we wanted without getting any mean looks. Dead Space also managed to grab quite a lot of eyeballs as well. So much so that even one of the booth babes was tempted enough to give the game a try, setting up Issac for a gory death at the hands (?) of a Necromorph. The booth babe in question was also sweet enough to tactfully steer a 10 year old away from the game when we pointed out the rating of the game. That she helpfully suggested to the kid to go play Resistance 2 instead is a whole different story all together.

Most of the crowd, as expected, veered towards the Racing Zone which was showing off Motostorm 2: Pacific Rift, Ridge Racer 7 (!), GT5: Prologue and the crowd favorite Need for Speed: Underground. It was actually quite disturbing to see the Racing Zone crowd enjoy NFS: Underground so much while we were appalled by what Black Box has churned out in the name of an NFS game. No wonder the game still sells even after it’s decent into mediocrity started off with NFS: Carbon. Motostorm 2 was another game that hardly ever saw any empty couches, what with people lining up to get as much as possible of the split-screen racing mayhem. Anush and Arun in particular were quite unabashed and absolutely refused to budge from the place, racing against each other in Motostorm 2.

The PSP section, modeled along the lines of the Mumbai event, resembled a roadside café complete with a ice-cream vendor. You could see a lot of people crowding around this place but we suspect it was more because of the fact that this was the only place to find comfortable chairs to sit on. The mattresses and cement blocks used as chairs and couches in other zones sure left you yearning for a comfy bean bag. It’s really a shame that a good opportunity was missed in PSP zone when the decided to go ahead with showcasing as many PSP titles as possible instead of letting people go against each other in one-on-one matches. We searched in vain for any two PSP’s that were running the same game that allowed multiplayer gameplay but then in the end had to settle for a single player game of the PSP version of Buzz.

Sports Zone was another section that posed quite a healthy challenge to Racing Zone as far as getting the crowds in was concerned. Spontaneous eruption of cheers with each successful goal in FIFA ’09 was norm of the day in this section. Predictably, Cricket ’07 (or was it Cricket ’08) was quite a crowd puller even with its subpar graphics that would make a DS proud. Thankfully, neither did we have the inclination, nor the obligation to venture anywhere near. Infact, we were quite good in pretending that the game did not even exist. A couple of rounds on FaceBreaker were a good stress buster but by the end of the session, our fingers were complaining after the repeated button mashing. So we decided to move on to the next section.

The Action Zone was quite happy showing off God of War 2 on the giant screen while 12 year old duked it out in TNA Impact. We were just happy to plonk ourselves down in front of Mirror’s Edge, which incidentally happened to be final retail copy. This enabled us to try out a lot of levels other then the demo level that we have been playing multiple times over since the demo released. The reaction to the game was mostly mixed, with some liking it and others hating it. The word, “repetitive” was heard being thrown around quite a lot in the general vicinity of the game. While personal opinions sure would have loved to make a healthy, passionate debate out of that, good sense and respect for others opinion stopped us from doing that. Instead, we spent most of our time trying to find more and more innovative ways past the corridors and roof tops with Faith. Thankfully, the game didn’t turn out to be as disorienting as we had feared it would be. Do keep a look out for the review of the game on TAP.

The other zones had LittleBigPlanet, Blu Ray movies, Singstar and Eye Toy games on display. It was indeed a pleasure to see an octogenarian with his little grandkid playing around with the adorable Sackboy. Sadly, most of the crowd was giving this section a jump, missing out on all the goodness of LBP. Their loss! Singstar also kept attracting wannabe singers to the central dais from time to time though we must admit, Arun was much more tolerable then the others. Thankfully, the setup crashed before he could have a go at a Hindi number and we used this opportunity to sneak out and steal a few lines with Mr. Atindrya Bose, Country Manager, Sony Computer Entertainment India. Even though we managed to have a video interview with him, the ambient noise of the venue makes it almost impossible to make out what is being said. We will soon be posting a detailed transcript of what we talked about and maybe even the video itself for those not afraid to give their ear drums a good workout.

All in all, Bangalore’s tryst with Playstation Experience was delightful indeed. A little bit of more focus on proper advertising would have resulted in an even better crowd turn-out. We surely are not complaining here. Sony India deserves all the kudos for taking this one of a kind Indian Gaming Expo from the confines of Mumbai, out to Bangalore and Delhi. With the Mumbai and Bangalore events behind it, the event moves on to the capital city this weekend. Hopefully, there will be many more cities to cover the next time around.

See more pictures from the event:

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• Cheezespread Says:
  Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 07:58 pm GMT +5.5 at 7:58 pm

  Was there too…and still found PS3’s controller not to my liking !

• Abhinav Pattanayak Says:
  Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 01:33 am GMT +5.5 at 1:33 am

  We should have met then.

• Cheezespread Says:
  Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 07:44 pm GMT +5.5 at 7:44 pm

  might have ..Was there the whole day infact though they mistook me for some media person