Well, well, well, what have we here? A wrap-up for an event? That took place already?! X09 you say? It’s already over?! Sadly, yes it is, but overall, it was a blast.  Now, there was a lot that happened at the event, so I’ll try to cover it all, or as much as possible.   Here’s how we’ll do it:

• Intro – Where the event was held, pictures of the venue itself
• Games – Ones that were shown, ones I won’t be covering, and parts that will be coming later
• Special Thanks – Mentions of people that made the event awesome
• Read to the bottom for the last one, it’s a surprise (I wouldn’t want to spoil it early would I?)

Stick with me on this post, it’s a long one, and no, I won’t split it into pages to make you click around to read the whole post. That’s just not cool. (I will be giving some games and things their own posts, but more about that later.)

Side note: Any pictures from the event were taken with my iPhone so they’re not of amazing quality, but they still capture the moment, because of course, the only thing I managed to forget was my camera. Swag pictures were taken with the camera.

Intro

As I found out during X09, X0 events as they’re called, have actually been running since X02 (in 2002), and luckily we here in Canada have had an X0 event every year since then.  While this year’s X09 was a bit subdued compared to last year’s X08 (read at your leisure, long post as well), it was still a blast to see quite a few of the new games coming out this holiday season.  And that is really what the X0 events, at least in Canada, have always been about. So here are some details about the event.

• Official Name: X’09 Canada (I’ll be using X09 for simplicity’s sake.)
• Location: This Is London Nightclub, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Media Portion: 11:30am to 4pm
• Community Portion: 4pm to 7pm (Media was allowed to stay for the community portion, so the lucky few of us that fit into both could still interact with our friends who were considered community)

A “panorama” of This Is London

And as a final note to the venue, Xbox Canada got Audi to bring in an R8 (the V8 version) and park it outside the event, which was a highlight for myself.

The beautiful Audi R8

Games

Let’s start off with games that were there but I won’t be covering:

• Halo 3 ODST (Out already, our reviews are up)
• NHL 10 (Out already, demo on XBLM)
• Sam & Max (Only had about a minute with it)
• The Beatles: Rock Band (Out already, our review is up)
• DJ Hero
• Tony Hawk RIDE

Next, here’s the stuff that will be coming in separate posts the next couple days as I get the information up.  This is because it’s just too much detailed information for one post. Keep your eyes peeled.

• The Ballad of Gay Tony – Hands-on with 2 missions
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – Spec Ops mode preview
• Splinter Cell Conviction – One mission preview
• Forza Motorsport 3
• X09 Swag – I couldn’t miss this could I?
• Dashboard Update – Twitter, Facebook and Zune Marketplace

Oddly enough, looking at my notes, only two games were really left after taking out all of the previously mentioned. And these would be Left 4 Dead 2 (L4D2) and South Park Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! So they will both get their own sections in this wrap-up.

South Park Let’s Go Tower Defense Play!

There’s not too much I can say about this other than I saw it in action while someone was playing it. It looked relatively easy to control with access to 4 characters while they’re on the screen along with placing turrets to kill the old folks that are trying to get into the house. It looked fun, but since I’m not too much of a fan of tower defense style games, I didn’t actually play it.

Left 4 Dead 2

Left 4 Dead 2 Campaign Lobby

Initially, this seemed like it was the same demo we played at E3.  Upon actually playing it, I quickly realised that this was not the case. It was still the Parish level from E3, but it had some of the melee weapons available, had all of the new special infected, the Jockey, the Charger and the daytime Witch, and even the riot police “uncommon” infected.  The incendiary bullets from the E3 demo weren’t available.

L4D2 Protip: When the riot police infected attacks you, melee it until it turns it’s back to you, and then shoot it in the rear end.

The Parish loading screen

The only real problem with the game (other than the bugs, which are expected for a non-retail build) was not really anything specific to the game.  The event was fairly loud, so in a game where communication is essential to survival, communication was greatly hindered by the other games at the event.  But I can’t really complain, because the game is looking and playing better than the original. And I still stand by my initial statements about the game: this is too big to be an expansion pack and it should be released as a separate game.

Special Thanks

I’d like to take this chance and specifically thank the whole Xbox Canada team for all the hard work and dedication the poured into making this event such a success. Once again, you guys have brought our community closer together than ever before, and for this, I and the community would like to send a huge thanks to all of you, even the ones that couldn’t make the event.

To the community, you guys are just awesome, and it was a blast meeting the vast majority of you, I wish I could have met everyone!  Keep building our community and we’ll only grow stronger together. And remember, this is not the last time you saw these folks!

The infamous Red Signed Controller. More on this in the Swag post.

In Closing

This event was simply a blast, and I enjoyed every minute of it.  Keep your eyes peeled here as we’ll have a lot more coverage of the stuff.

Last but not least, I did manage to get some things at X09 that I’ll be giving away soon.  While it’s not as big as the 3 t-shirts from last year, some could consider these prizes more interesting. I’m sure you won’t want to miss it!