Fun at the Gamescom

I spent two days at the Gamescom in Cologne now, partially to do some interviews, but of course also to check out everything about new games, after all I am a hardcore gamer ;-) One thing is for sure, Gamescom is a much nicer place on non-public days, waiting lines are almost not existing, it is not that loud (and so far I thought Musikmesse Frankfurt would be loud...) but on the other hand the atmosphere is not the same. Of course there were tons of new games, but here is my personal top 5:
5: Rage    I had the chance to see the presentation of this game and it looks absolutely awesome. But well, after all this is what I expect from an ID shooter.
4: Torchlight 2   I love part one and the sequel looks awesome too, it finally offers a multiplayer mode, so I am really looking forward to that.
3: Star Wars The old Republic   Playing this one was great too, I was a bit disappointed about the graphics but the games definitely will be great, all the Star Wars atmosphere is already there.
2: World of Warcraft Cataclysm   Well, this is not a big surprise I guess, with WoW being my fave game I loved playing the beta. Can't wait to get the beta key unlocked for my account so I can explore some more parts of the good old world.
1: Diablo 3   YES!!!! Had the chance to play this for about one hour and the old feeling (and addiction) was back imediately, god, this will be so good :-)

The Wacken Diaries: Day Three

The last day of our Wacken trip has been the one with the most promo work, one interview chasing the other, with a signing session at the end of the (working)day. Since we have been doing all this press stuff from 1:00 to about 21:30 more or less non stop there was not much time left to watch some bands, but at least there were still 3 on my list: Immortal, Rotting Christ and Candlemass... Too bad they all played exactly at the same time, so I had to make a choice. Since I have seen Rotting Christ a few weeks ago already at another festival I watched a bit of Immortal and a bit of Candlemass in the end, hoping that next time not all the bands that I would like to see will be playing at the same time... Talking about next time, next year we'll be at Wacken again, this time to play ourselves though ;-)

The Wacken Diaries: Day Two

After having only a couple of interviews yesterday, day two was a bit different, we had some interviews, a couple of interviews, and after this some more interviews. Of course this was preventing me again to watch some of the bands that I had on my list (I would have loved to see Amorphis and Orphaned Land), but at least in the evening I was able to watch some shows. Arch Enemy have been cool and it was really nice to see Hansi on stage with Grave Digger, specially cause he was wearing a kilt :-) My musical highlight have been Slayer though, didn't see them live for quite some years and their setlist was great, only the sound was not really good unfortunately, but well, you can't have it all ;-)

The Wacken Diaries: Day one

Releasing a new album is of course always tied to a lot of promotion, and could there be a better place than Wacken? This year we'll be here all 3 days doing tons of interviews, but of course I will also try to watch a couple of bands. I already checked out who is playing, but unfortunately my interview schedule will prevent me from watching all the bands that I would like to see, but well, I can't change that. Day one has been pretty smooth, no big traffic jams on the way here, we already met some old friends and also the interviews that we did so far were all cool. On top of that we won a Metal Hammer Award for being the best German Metal Band, that was really cool :-) Concerning the interviews, my highlight of the day was a radio interview that was recorded not far from the main stage while Motley Crue were already playing... As you can imagine it was pretty loud, and on top of that tons of cars were passing by all the time, I am really curious about how this interview will sound like. But I am even more curious to see how it looks like... If you wonder how a radio interview looks like, well, it was also filmed, in 3D, using only one camera... yeah, I know, sounds very weird, thats why I am curious myself ;-) Another highlight was a weirdo on the festival area that wanted to start a fight with me cause I was blocking his sight. Lol, I explained to him that blocked sight is not really that rare at festivals, and that it was not my intention to block anything for him, that I just wanted to pass and leave, then he got even more pissed cause I wanted to leave before Maiden finished their set... strange world ;-)