Scott Watson reports from the Play Expo at Braehead Arena Glasgow…
Replay Events have been running the Play Expo series of gaming festivals across the UK for a number of years now, but this was their first visit to Glasgow with the event. It felt very much like they were finding their feet with it as well on reflection, perhaps to gauge interest from the gaming community here in Scotland before looking at bringing up a much grander event.
The Braehead Arena is home to the Braehead Clan ice hockey team, and the rink floor was essentially converted into the main area of the event. It was split equally into a gaming zone and trader zone, with various other smaller sections covering the likes of LAN gaming, rhythm games and the ever-present green screen photo booth but all of these felt difficult to find throughout the warren of areas outwith the arena.
Over the course of the two days the event saw over 4,000 people through the doors, which is a great start for this event on its first appearance in Glasgow. While it perhaps wasn’t the largest in scale, it did provide a warm and friendly atmosphere that was ideal for the throngs of parents and their kids I saw coming and going around.
As a gamer of a quite discernible age, it was wonderful to see so many kids show interest in the gaming platforms that I grew up with as a kid and beyond. Queues were never a problem as there seemed to be plenty of consoles or platforms around for those visiting to play. It was great seeing the old Atari 2600, Jaguar, NeoGeo and more recent consoles such as the Dreamcast, Saturn and N64 all seeing some love sent their way, but even if you’d had enough of playing on these retro consoles you could still find yourself turning to current gen hits on PS4 and Xbox One to take up your time, or hit up the Minecraft zone which was chock-full of kids at play.
Within the gaming zone as well was a wonderful collection of arcade and pinball cabinets that, for me personally, brought back a ton of memories. Games such as Dig Dug, Afterburner, Defender and Outrun to name a few all seemed to be constantly in play with no-one seeming to hog any cabinets or pinball tables (of which the Indiana Jones one for me was a total highlight). It was all very civilized indeed compared to the manic sprints seen at the likes of EGX. In fact, the only real queues I saw over the weekend were the demos for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive that were seeing a lot of interest.
If you fancied a change of direction from the games, the cabinets and the pinball machines you could take some time to visit the VS Scotland fighting booth and spectate or even take on other combatants in Street Fighter accompanied by running commentary to great effect. Cosplay was in good effect throughout the weekend too, although I was perhaps expecting more than were actually there. That being said, as always, the quality of costumes on display was nothing short of spectacular.
In terms of any new gaming experiences over the weekend, that was left to the indies in the We Throw Switches section and there was one particular standout for me; Ruffian Games outstanding multiplayer arena shooter Fragmental, a single screen top down combat arena with random weapon drops and traps that looked intense, manic and a lot of fun.
So that was Glasgow’s first taste of the Play Expo and it felt like a real celebration and education of gaming. Perhaps a bit small in scale but it’s a great opener to what I’m sure and hope will be a regular occurrence in the gaming calender up here in Scotland.
Scott Watson
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Originally published June 16, 2016. Updated April 14, 2018.
