Euro Trip Part 6 of Many

GamesCom
Laura enjoys some video games, but Troy LOVES many video games. And the largest video game convention IN THE WORLD happened the weekend after the Olympics, in Germany. Just a couple countries over from England. How could we not go?

Laura dressed up for the occasion. Here she is, just finished getting ready, as Joanna Dark from Perfect Dark Zero.

For comparison, here is Joanna Dark.

Joanna's hair is flipped out, but when Laura tried curling her hair, the curler burned the hair off! Apparently the voltage in the outlets is a different strength than in the U.S. It got so hot it melted the tip of the curler, also. See it's all wonky looking? It melted!

On our way to GamesCom! There were flags and signs like this around town celebrating the convention.

The car we took to GamesCom. Just kidding. Haha. I think this was a prize car for some contest/give away thing.

SO MANY PEOPLE. GamesCom was HUGE. If anyone has been to Comicon, or has seen the San Diego Convention Center: imagine that place, full of people. Now, multiply that by 6 and you have GamesCom. It might even be bigger. It's ginormous.

Aw, gaming really is for everyone. Look at that cute old couple.

Troy dressed up too! For 8 seconds. Also, a Mario photo bomb.

Ever tried playing pool using soccer balls? Me neither. We just watched.

Oh no! Look out Troy!

Laura fits right in. More or less.

This is made out of Legos.

We hung out in the Wii U Lounge for a little bit. Played some Rabbids Land. Admit it, you're totally jealous we played the Wii U before it's out.

2 other games we stood in line to play: Dead or Alive 5 and Sacred Citadel.

Waiting in line.

Laura: "Bo-ring" Troy: "Awesome!"

This was pretty fun, once the guy explaining the game explained it in English (instead of German).

A promotion for ZombiU: a bunch of zombie girls that wandered around the hall, taking pictures with people as they pretended to almost eat them.

Team Raptor waiting in line to play a game.

This game, to be specific. It was a long wait, but the experience was 2-part: a 10-minute video explaining the game, what went into it (it's supposed to be the most realistic co-op fighter game, as close to actual combat as possible), and then we went and played the game for a while. Laura hated it (she doesn't like first-person shooters). Troy liked it so much, he pre-ordered it as soon as we got home.

A sticker we found on the floor while waiting in line to play Medal of Honor. That's right, queues: Suck Less!

These guys found a way to make lines suck less - lawn chairs!

In every hall, there were at least 2 stages with big screens to show the action on stage. There were all kinds of different things happening on the different stages, give aways, contests, etc. There was one stage of just dancers, and then some 8 year old kid got up and started breakdancing. I don't remember what's going on in this picture, though.

We waited an obscenely long time to watch someone play this game. We weren't allowed to play it ourselves. The game was pretty intense, and is nominated for Best Game of the Show.

While we waited in line to watch someone play The Last of Us, PlayStation was nice enough to put some entertainment in the queue. We played a little All-Stars Battle Royale while waiting.

And then Kratos walked by!

There he is again! (Top left corner of the screen: 1P)

A game we played about the members of the Justice League gone bad. It's a fighter game, "Mortal-Kombat" style.

These guys also had the lawn chair idea for lines.

Another game we played. When we came back home, we started watching Sherlock (the tv show) with our friend, Meg. One episode explained that "rache" means "revenge" in German. So when we were looking back at these pictures, we were able to translate "rache ist bitter" = "revenge is bitter".

There were also some professional skateboarders doing their thing. Why not?

It's odd to me that "WC" is the sign for "bathroom", even in countries that don't have English as their official language. Because "WC" stands for "water closet", which is a British term for bathroom. But why is it in Germany, where they speak German (and almost always refuse to speak English)?

This lady picked up a Minecraft ax.

The water droplets had a message for us!

It was mesmerizing watching the water form into words and pictures, but it was also kind of disappointing. Like in "A Christmas Story" when Ralphie is able to finally decode the message from his Ovaltine boxes, and the message says to "drink more ovaltine".

Cosplayers
For those who are unaware, a "cosplayer" is one who cosplays. Which means they like to dress up in costume for conventions and other stuff (normal day life, maybe). Some people get really into it - with super intricate and detailed costumes, and some play the character they're dressed as. And there were PLENTY to see at GamesCom.

Can you tell who the cosplayer is and who's the statue?

Her hair is so pink! And so long!

A character from Naruto wandering around. Where's her dog, though? Those characters are from the dog clan, and always have their personal dog buddy with them.

A couple of Fat Princesses.

Green goblin lady!

Not sure who she's dressed as... but her character probably doesn't smoke. For shame, breaking character like that.

I don't think she spoke English, but she was nice enough to pose for a picture when Laura asked (in English).

Some soldiers defending ...the area.

Some fox lady in the background. And some lady carrying a gun umbrella in the foreground.

There was even a cosplay contest!

We had seen some of these folks walking around the convention.

The Mad Hatter?

Ken (from Street Fighter) made eye contact with Laura as she was trying to sneak a picture. It was weird.

Lara Croft waiting for someone to get out the bathroom.

Some lady, looking a little lost.

?

??

That costume looks uncomfortably hot.

A Naruto character next to... a pirate?

She is the one, SAILOR MOON!

She was downright creepy. Good job, lady. And she walked around barefoot.

3DS-ers
Troy loves his 3DS. And so do lots of other people around the world, apparently. The 3DS is a lot of fun to play. And, it has a feature called "street pass", which allows your little avatar to show up on someone else's 3DS and vice versa if you pass someone who has a 3DS. You can see where they're from, and collect little items from them. Troy was anticipating to up his street pass count from 25, and was not disappointed.

Almost as soon as we entered GamesCom, Troy had his 3DS out to check for street passes. You can only store 10 unviewed street passes at a time, and then it stops accepting new street passes. So at an event like this, Troy had to constantly check his 3DS because there were so many other people with 3DS's.

Again, checking for street passes. Troy strategically sat next to an escalator to rack up as many street passes as he could keep up with.

A nice couple from Holland that joined us for a few minutes to gather street passes. When they saw Troy's avatar pop up on their 3DS, the lady said, "Whoa!! You're from California??" A few minutes later, she exclaimed, "Tokyo?! I got one all the way from Tokyo!"

How many 3DS's can you find? The lines got boring, so out came the video games.

Our Last View of GamesCom

Laura's last view.

Troy's last view.

By the end of our GamesCom experience, Troy had around 400 street pass tags. And lots of maps to look at (to see where the other avatars were from). 

And Troy had his driver's license back. It fell out of his wallet the first day we were there, probably when we had to take our ID's out to play ZombiU. Neither of us noticed it was gone, till Troy needed it to get into The Last of Us the next day. He used an old ID, and we assumed it fell out of his wallet in the car, earlier that day when we had to pay for parking. Nope. An hour before closing, 2 GamesCom employees approached Troy and in broken English asked if he was from California and lost his "card". They told us to go to the Lost Office to reclaim it. Amazing! And even more amazing, nobody could give us clear directions to the Lost Office. It took us till closing to find it.

In the end, we were sold on the WiiU, Troy decided he wanted a couple new games he didn't before, and Laura decided she loved cosplaying.