The mFestival – coverage

This year marks the thirty-sixth I-series, and the first birthday of the Mfestival. After the success and enjoyment of last year’s event, I decided that it would definitely be worth attending again.
However, this year’s event was only have the size as last year, with fewer exhibitors and smaller crowds than last year.
On Friday, the show began with the opening ceremony, in which tons of freebies were given away. However, there was a pair of headphones that required somebody to go that extra mile to get them.  However, that person was not hard to find. The victim-I mean volunteer, had to do the World of Warcraft female night elf dance (google it). It was amusing, until he took his shirt of, and then it became…unspeakable.
The rest of the day mainly consisted of hundreds of freebies being tossed about the entire stall, from buckets of burgers to flying pigs, all were a sight to see at the mFestival.  The main freebies were the afore-mentioned free burgers and an unlimited supply of slush puppies. As were to be expected, their were more shirts than Gap and more pens than W.H.Smith.
The largest stall belonged to Codemasters, who were featuring their new games: Overlord 2, Jump-gate evolution and Lord Of The Rings: Online. Whilst the parts that I played were fun, Overlord 2 had kept having to be restarted, jumpgate’s server kept disconnecting and I was unable to play LOTR:Online.
However, there were loads of other games to play, so nobody was ever bored:
A Far-cry 2: multiplayer tournament
Wipe-out HD
Street Fighter IV
Rock band 2
Wii Sports
Counter-strike
And H.A.W.X.
As well as these games, there were two other things would should not go unnoticed: a representative of a group of universities attended the event, and was claiming that it is a lot easier to get into game development now than it ever has been, so it is now a serious career path to consider. The second thing was that at the kustom PC stall, they had nVidia’s 3D Vision on display, and put simply they were amazing, because unlike most other 3D systems, they actually work, and do not leave you feeling sick or dizzy. This point was definitely proven when I tried out left 4 dead using this system. Simply put: wow. Start saving though, as the glasses alone cost £70.
What was also loads of fun and just as popular as the Video Games was the Table football, which was getting more visits than some of the other stalls.
The i-36 Gamers paradise (basically 2000 people all taking part in LAN matches) was still massively popular, but would not be breaking any new records.
The overall event did not carry on the same atmosphere that was present last year. This could that the event was actually brightly lit (for most of it) compared to the brightness of last year’s almost non-existent lighting.
Also noticeable is EA’s extremely low profile (when the site claimed that EA were like furniture, I did not realise that was all they were providing), who were an integral part of last year’s mFest.
What has stayed the same is the food; yet again, the gamers diet seemed to purely consist solely of red bull, relentless, cola, pot noodle, chocolate biscuits and bacon.
Also missing are the outdoor events, all of which were (surprisingly) popular, but this could be due to the weather. Altogether, there was generally less of everything.
In fact, this did not go unvoiced, as another gamer commented: “I thought the £25 entry, unlike last year, isn’t justified. It’s just not value for money. I think that half that fee would be more suitable considering that there is only half the stuff.”
To conclude, whilst it was fun, entertaining and hugely enjoyable, like all events, the first one will always seem to be the best.

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