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"Gamers' Day 2003 is this Saturday"

Held at Sony's top secret HQ in London. A select bunch of gamers and a few left overs are invited to spend a whole day playing the new releases for Christmas, getting stuffed with beer and pizza at Sony's expense, being taken out for a meal on Saturday night, 2 night's accomodation and all travel expenses paid.

Call me lucky, but this year they had a spare slot and I got an invite :)

If I could write the word 'Woot!' in 10-mile high letters I would be doing so right now. I'll let you all know what it was like when I get back on Sunday night.

*Shakes fist*
Curse you FM.

First the online trail shiznit and now with all the fancy freebies and special treatment. Some people get all the luck.

Well, I'm getting PoP at least. And for free.
Beat that!
No, actually don't bother. We all know the outcome.

*Plots a certain notables downfall*

Damn, sounds like a fantastic time was had and it involved games, the thing I love most! :)

Excellent. Will be getting SWAT then and probably underground too if the student loan can support it.

Just need to find the time what with my final years project to do :-)

SWAT has full USB headset support but I was too busy shooting things with another player in co-op mode to try it out :) There's also online deathmatch mode and a host of other modes included.

Same goes for Need for Speed, it's online compatible. Not sure about USB headset support though, might look into that.

Sounds like you had a fantastic time.

Did you get to use the headset with SWAT? If so did it work well with it?

Oops, forgot to add that we all got a goodybag at the end of the day which contained:

Demo version of Beyond Good and Evil
Midway RoadKill Zippo lighter
Full version of Fire Warrior
Autographed Jade postcard from Ubisoft
Rise to Honour artwork
Gran Turismo 3 keyring
WRC watch
XIII videogame press kit
SplinterCell pen (glows green when you use it)
Syphon Filter 3 badge
Kingdom Hearts playing card set
Tidus figurine from Final Fantasy X
PS2 t-shirt
True Crime shirt
PS2 cap
PS2 keyring
PS2 pen (glows blue when you use it)
'Day of the Black Sun' XIII comic
Swedish do-it-yourself extension kit (Oh, wait, sorry, it's a full-sized Ratchet and Clank 2 air cannon)
Full version of Ajax Club Football
Full version of Judge Dredd: Dredd vs Death which I'm off to play later
PS2 carryall to hold it all in

Spoilt rotten and loved every minute of it :)

I survived it! Just got back home about 20 minutes ago and am still suffering from a mighty hangover from trying to drink a couple of Danes under the table last night in a pub up in Soho. (The Danes won, then Agent47 from the PS forums proceeded to drink the whole pub under the table).

Very briefly: If you ever get a chance to go to a Sony Gamers' Day, go. Cancel everything to get there if you have to.

Games you should buy because they're surprisingly good:

Need for Speed: Underground (Makes Midnight Club look very bland indeed and has more customisation options than Gran Turismo 3. The gameplay is excellent too, top game of the day imho).

KILLZONE: Yes, we got to play it :) Yes, it's as good as everyone says it will be. Bearing in mind the code we played was old, i.e. only brought out September 2003, and bearing in mind its still got another year of development ahead of it, it still plays like a true 'must have' game. They could release it today and you'd be relatively happy.

In the version we played there was a firing range where you could test all the guns out. There was a grenade launcher - you fire a grenade, then point the laser at where you want the grenade to go, and the grenade will leave a curving smoke trail behind it as it curls around to meet the target. There was a firing mode whereby you could fire off several grenades along a path, then fire a detonating shot and watch a string of explosions occur. There was a long range assault gun that could hit positions on a mountain ridge about a mile away in the distance with explosive shells. That was just the firing range.

We then played through a few of the levels as ISA troops vs the Hellghast forces, those guys are tough! But the levels look sufficiently huge enough to please the most ardent explorers, and the AI, even though it hadn't been fully implemented yet, shows great promise. And just wait until you see how they've used their new layer effects for the graphics. Start saving up for this one now and get it on release day.

S.W.A.T. - Another surprisingly good game. The guns all feel sufficiently 'meaty', and infiltrating a bank with another player in co-op mode to take out a bunch of armed robbers is very exciting.

Prince of Persia - We got to see this running (as with Killzone) projected up on a wall with full surround sound support. Looks absolutely stunning so have another replay through the OPSM2 demo of it from last month's mag and then buy it if you like platformers.

Other games I had a fiddle around with were Battlestar Galactica, Dragon Ball Z 2, EyeToy Groove, THUG, XIII, LOTR sequel, RoadKill, Ratchet and Clank 2, Ghost Hunter, MOH: Rising Sun and Beyond Good and Evil.

I'd buy them all except maybe RoadKill which nobody seemed to enjoy much.

It's w00t, FM, remember the 00.

*Sigh*
The yoof of today, eh?

Last year's event:

http://uk.playstation.com/features/featureStory.jhtml? (SPACE) storyId=102849_en_GB_FEAT&linktype=FTI

You are going to have to go to a lot of detail because this sounds like a lot of fun. I wish I were going.