Day one of my experience at the Eurogamer Expo is in the bag, and it has been something of a long day. I was on a bus from my flat at 10am to the city centre to get a National Express coach at 11am over to London. On arrival in London I took a walk to my hotel and was checked in by 2.30pm and walked into Earl’s Court for my first day at the show.

The show is taking up even more room this year than it did last year as nearly the entire first floor has been taken over. The ground floor has the stands for the console manufacturers and Call of Duty along with the various shops and stalls. Upstairs was the Rezzed indie collection, developer sessions and the 18+ area.

My first trip was to find some food at one of the extortionatly expensive cafes within Earl’s Court itself. Going forward I plan to take some time away from the show to visit a local pub for lunch. It will probably be cheaper.

Once I was suitably stocked up on food, a trip through the Rezzed indie section was in order, I glanced at many titles and made a mental note to take a closer look at Mike Bithell’s Volume and Tom Francis’ new game. I did make some time to jump onto Gratuitous Space Battles 2 from Positech Games and had a blast making some ships and blowing others up. How I never got around to playing the first, I don’t quite know.

This was followed by a brisk walk to the developer sessions queue…I quickly realised I was unlikely to make it in to the reveal of the new Total War title, so I took a seat in the viewing area to watch a stream of the session.

My live blog of the reveal <a href=”http://thereticule.com/eurogamer-expo-new-total-war-revea/” target=new>can be found here</a>, but I will say that I am slightly disappointed to see what is in effect a continuation of Rome 2. I know it is called Total War: Attila, but this really feels like an expandalone of Rome 2 with some neat tweaks to the campaign map along with some new features during battles. I was hoping for a new Medieval title, but as Attila kicks off during the 4th Century and the crumbling ends of the Roman Empire, I think this poses as a nice segue into the Dark Ages that we will hopefully see more of with a new Medieval in a few years.

After this I took a walk around the 18+ area and paid the Assassin’s Creed: Unity hub a visit. Here there was a nice presentation from the Ubi team showing off a cinematic trailer and then an in-game sequence around Notre Dame. I’ll have some further thoughts coming soon.

You can expect further words on Far Cry 4 soon as well, I’ll be honest that I was somewhat disappointed with this demo. It was simply an assault on an enemy encampment..but with elephants. If you’ve played Far Cry 3, you will know what this is all about.

After the show and a quick food-stop at Subway I took a trip to a local pub for an indie games show-off event. I had a few drinks, bumped into ex-Reticule writer Ben Borthwick and played Iron Fisticle (which I will definitely play when I return) and a fun dungeon escaper called Tiny Keep, which I might check out further another time.

That was day one, look out for more words from the show soon.