Tales From The Show Floor: Eurogamer Expo Part 1

Callum Petch

If you ever wanted a pure hit of weirdness whilst you were at the Eurogamer Expo, then all you had to do was wander over to the Just Dance 4 booth.  At any time of the day.  Seriously.

For some reason, every single model for every single booth turned up there to have a dance-along at some point in the day.  I saw an attempt at Michael Jackson boogying along to Jennifer Lopez.  My brother allegedly saw The Mask getting down to Britney Spears.  I got to witness the S&M Nuns from Hitman: Absolution (yes, they really did bring them down to Eurogamer…) synchronized to One Direction.

That last one threw me; particularly because Michael Jackson then got up halfway through to join them.  I was about to eat lunch at the time (more on that later) and was looking for a place to sit and eat.  The one area that had been set up for sitting was streaming the really boring developer session for Splinter Cell: Blacklist (a game that, very sadly, did not turn up on the show floor), but was also about 20 feet away from the Just Dance 4 booth.  Funnily enough, the Just Dance booth was louder and, thusly, gained more of my attention.

Funnily enough, my curiosity of what was going on at the booth did not actually make me go and try Just Dance.

Which was when I saw it.  The S&M battle nuns, grooving it out to some strange demented mash-up of The Time Warp and Yolanda Be Cool (it may have just been where I was sitting, but songs kept choppily switching out after about 30 seconds).  These nuns, representing everything I hate and despise about a game that, up until 2 hours ago, I had totally written off.  Shaking their butts off to some of the worst songs mankind has ever devised.

And, yet, I couldn’t stop watching.  Not due to the fact that I am a straight man, you understand.  More because the music was so loud, the alternative was so boring (by the time I finished my sandwich about 10 minutes later, I swear that the guy was still talking about getting a good performance out of a voice actor; something the Uncharted making-ofs get across in a far more interesting fashion in half as much time), and also because I was fairly certain that I was on drugs.  It was that surreal.

I didn’t take any photos at the event, I had games to be playing, so I only had my brother’s assurances that it really did happen and that my sandwich wasn’t laced with something.  But, whenever I think back to memorable experiences from that day, for some reason, the Just Dance area full of models and cosplayers is the first thing that comes to mind.  Always.

Also, I was exposed to “Call Me Maybe” about seventeen times whilst I was there, that day.  Thanks, Ubisoft.