A late invite to see Master Chief awaken from his slumber at 8am this morning meant that it was a rather long day for me.

Early this morning I joined a throng of representatives of the gaming press to witness a rather petite Master Chief step out of a cardboard “cryo tube”. The 3/4 scale Master Chief posed as dry ice was hastily pumped out by a chap behind a black velvet curtain. After wowing the gaming press mini-Master Chief stepped outside, into the gaze of the assembled great unwashed, to rapturous applause. It was time for the 2012 EB Expo.

I’m being a bit harsh on Microsoft for their effort with Master Chief, it was fun and it got me out of bed and to the show in plenty of time. What did piss me was the fact that or my media pass, the EB powers that be had decided to rechristen me “Gamethirst Price”, which did have an oddly Viking-sounding ring to it, but was, nevertheless, wrong. What made it worse is that I’d given considerable thought to what I was going to wear in order to not look too much like a game dork. Having a media pass that suggested my first name was Gamethirst, undid my efforts somewhat.

The opening show was full of all the lights and action one would expect from an outfit like EB Games. It had leather clad dancers, freestyle motocross guys (that I was sure were going to smack their heads on the ceiling) and a nifty video celebrating 15 years of EB games featuring a selection of games for each year. The presentation was rounded off by the Assassin’s Creed III trailer on three ten foot high screens whilst a fella dressed as Altair climbed a bit of scaffold and did a leap of faith. Sounds shite, but was actually pretty cool.

After that we were all shepherded out into the hot sun. I wasn’t even outside (and it wasn’t even 10:30) when a smell my first bit of heinous B.O. Why the fuck don’t some these guys wear deodorant? It’s such a bloody cliche.

The main hall was remarkably spacious, allaying my fears that the event would be oversubscribed- a credit to the organisers. Whilst there were ridiculous Disneyland-style queues to play games (and visit the EB Games shop!!??!!), I did get to sample quite a few upcoming games myself. I’ll save the details for another time. In the meantime, please check out my Expo story about Master Chief published on Shane the Gamer here.