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Omega Sektor - UK Gaming Centre Launched, 400+ PC's, Free this weekend
LewieP
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, those of you in Birmingham are lucky lucky folk.
Omega Sektor (that spelling irks me)
Tonnes of stuff I couldn't copy and paste about it on the official site.
The centre has -
400+ DirectX10 gaming PCs (320mb nVidia 8800GS) in a high speed LAN with internet access.
PS3 room
Xbox 360 room,
Nintendo Wii Cinema Room,
Mp3 Cafés (whatever one of those is)
Bar
It has just opened in Birmingham, Corporation Street (Google Map of location) and is free entry this weekend, so pretty much tomorrow.
This thing sound just like what I would like as a semi-disalusioned PC gamer sick of the horsepower arms race. I would love to hear firsthand what it's like, and would definately be interested in paying a monthly subscription for it (although it seems to be done on a pay per 3 hour session at the minute)
They say that if you aren't near one then there are 'more in the pipeline' - so if you know anyone in the Birmingham area that might be interested, I suggest you tell them about it, the more successful it is the more likely there is to be one in your hometown. They even seem to be tagetting people who have yet to play a game in their life, which can only be good.
Them serving alcohol and having group specials = me knowing what I want to do for my 21st birthday.
Omega Sektor (that spelling irks me)
Tonnes of stuff I couldn't copy and paste about it on the official site.
The centre has -
400+ DirectX10 gaming PCs (320mb nVidia 8800GS) in a high speed LAN with internet access.
PS3 room
Xbox 360 room,
Nintendo Wii Cinema Room,
Mp3 Cafés (whatever one of those is)
Bar
It has just opened in Birmingham, Corporation Street (Google Map of location) and is free entry this weekend, so pretty much tomorrow.
This thing sound just like what I would like as a semi-disalusioned PC gamer sick of the horsepower arms race. I would love to hear firsthand what it's like, and would definately be interested in paying a monthly subscription for it (although it seems to be done on a pay per 3 hour session at the minute)
They say that if you aren't near one then there are 'more in the pipeline' - so if you know anyone in the Birmingham area that might be interested, I suggest you tell them about it, the more successful it is the more likely there is to be one in your hometown. They even seem to be tagetting people who have yet to play a game in their life, which can only be good.
Them serving alcohol and having group specials = me knowing what I want to do for my 21st birthday.
LewieP on
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Words cannot describe my jealousy. If any of you European fucks ever complain about the cost or the availability of new games over there, I will kick you in the junk.
That is all.
Birmingham isn't near all of Europe.
Like it's not near Stockton...
I know what I'm doing next week..
Will take pictures.
XBL/PSN/Steam: APZonerunner
Awesome, I was hoping to have an on foot reporter
;-)
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
You're allowed to drink and play games at work?
Where do you work I am awesome at doing both those things, and need a job.
(I am totally serious by the way)
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
Totally... totally serious?
XBL/PSN/Steam: APZonerunner
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
Oh, and LAN places like that can be a lot of fun. Back when I had a shitty connection, I would go downtown to one every weekend and play. Great group of regulars to play with and would often have tourneys and over-night competitions. Good times.
But, but... what of the merely nosey?
Ok, on- topic: the gaming centre sounds awesome but it's nowhere near me so bah humbug
Poking around I discovered the same company is opening one under the same name in London. Apparently.
XBL/PSN/Steam: APZonerunner
I appreciate the bar though. Maybe the bar will drive traffic to the LAN games?
Oh, awesome.
Maybe they'll buy the Trocadero and put it where Sega World used to be
£3 for 1hr
or
£5 for 3hrs
very very reasonable imo.
If I were nearby, I'd try it.
But I'm not.
-sob-
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
Take photos! Drink beer at the bar! Find out which 20-something managed to persuade his rich Dad to invest in a "sure-fire" hit in an industry his Dad knew nothing about!
It will have lots of beardy fat guys, or pimply teenagers.
Or neither, and it'll just be empty.
It's a realy cool idea, but making it sound like sometihng from a 90s X-Men book scares people away. Christ, I wouldn't go, just for fear of the sort of people that would go.
Sounds great!
Right, you all go on, I'll meet you there.
After I've finished cutting myself, because good god that sounds like hell.
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
Very, very snazzy.
The first thing that struck me when I looked through the threshold of the place was how... well, posh it looked.
Tinted black windows, neon-blue/black/white colour scheme inside, it kind of looked like a new-age casino.
When I got in there I filled out some forms and got my membership card. £5 got me in for the whole day.
When you're in, you land in the "Family Sektor." There's PC games on here like Spongebob, Surfs Up, Shrek and so on. It's not all bad, though - there's stuff like Worms and Serious Sam down here too. Just over 100 PCs down here. To your right is the "OS Club" room. You have to pay more to get in here, but it's basically VIP treatment. You get drinks/food bought to you if you ask for it, the PCs are of a higher spec with expensive hardware and bigger monitors. Keyboards in here were space-age, and the manager (who was giving newcomers a tour) said to us 'if it ever surfaced' Optimus Keyboards would almost certainly be placed in this room. One Giant screen dominates the center of the room. Today it was showing Advent Children. Later when I walked by it was showing Street fighter: The Movie, and even later DOA The Movie.
Upstairs is better. To quote the manager, it's "where all the good games are." Any games with a rating more than (but not including) 12 are upstairs. Up here, there's 3 main gaming rooms with a shitload of PCs in. The main room is the competition room. It has a stage with (I think) 12 PCs on it - 6 on each side of the stage. The players and their PCs face outwards to the rest of the room. Above each player is a large screen showing what their monitor currently shows. In the middle of the stage is a giant screen. During touraments this screen can flick between players and show what each is doing, or show individual replays to show off the best kills and skills.
Consoles can be mounted up onto the stage screens, too. The first night they had a Guitar Hero 2 360 bracket-style tournament with a top prize of £500 and the UK's first 360 elite provided by Microsoft. Second night a PC was up for grabs in an open Call of Duty Tourament - you could just grab a PC and play regardless of experience with no entrance fee. Even if you don't get onto the stage, you could connect in using another PC.
This room is sponsored by Activision. Sponsorship is gonna change every few months (I was told), but right now the room is set up to have the feel "of a warzone". Off the stage the general PCs are surrounded by bits of rubble and masonry, and sandbags surround certain PC stations. All this is to promote Quake Wars and Call of Duty.
The next room is sponsored by Square-Enix, and is branded to hell with Final Fantasy XI. This room again features loads of powerful PCs, with a focus on the FF game. Coming up in this room supposedly is a "Final Fantasy Museum", where Square is going to show off some Final Fantasy artefacts. Whatever that means.
The next room is sponsored by THQ and STALKER. There's barrels everywhere with fake toxic goo leaking out of them, and the room has lighting to match. One thing I can say is that the whole place is lit extremely well.
The "OS Lounge" is.. as the name suggests, the lounge. This room is kinda split into two. The first half of the room as you walk in is dominated by a giant screen hooked up to a Wii with plenty of soft futons and cushions placed in front of it. The reason the Wii is in this room becomes aparrent very quickly - the second half of this room is the bar. The bar isn't open yet (still being fitted), but the guy said it'd be open within the month and would serve alcohol, spirits and everything else. This room can be privately rented out for parties, conventions or whatever else (did think to myself it'd be an awesome place for a UK PAX type event) - and if you want the room changed (ie if you wanted some PCs in there, or a 360,) they'd edit the room to fit your needs.
Similar to the bar is the Conference Sektor. Basically this is for businesses. The manager said they were looking to take on paintball as the king of corporate "team building" tasks. The idea is businesses (or anyone, gaming clans, bands, families, or whatever) can rent out this room for a comperable price to a day of paintballing. They get to team build in any of the games avaliable, but can also do work-related stuff in the room too. The room features 20 or so PCs and one big plasma screen. The plasma screen can show gameplay and whatnot like the one on the stage, but the example the manager gave was if a company came they could team build and have fun for a few hours, then show growth statistics or other work related stuff on the big screen before going back to blowing each other up - thus having a 'fun meeting'.
Then there's the Xbox 360 room. Sponsored by Microsoft and branded as such. This place has about 35 360 consoles and 35 Games for Windows PCs. In here they had a selection of games, but today they had on Pro Evo 6, Gears, Rainbow 6 Vegas, Tiger Woods, Forza and (strangely) Oblivion. This room was the most incomplete room that was open. Basically they're currently running on core systems, as they've got to wait until the elite comes out over here (2 weeks time.) When it does, MS is gonna kit them out with Elites and connect them all to Live so that people can recover (or bring in) their gamertags, or play for free online with the preset ones, or do network play with the other Xboxes/PCs.
That's it for rooms. We were told there's 3 rooms they haven't even touched yet, and one of those will become a PS3 room, and another "probably" a Wii room. The third? Dunno yet. Time will tell.
So, gameplay. I managed to nab a CD with press releases on, and at launch (which was this friday just gone) the following were avaliable:
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
Quake 4
Quake 3 TA
Day of Defeat
Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil
Fantastic Four
Madagascar Mini Mayhem
Madagascar
Over the Hedge
Shrek SuperSlam
Shrek The Third
Spider-Man 3
The Movies: Premiere Edition
Transformers
World Series of Poker: Tournament of Champions
Monsters, Inc. Minigames
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Micro Machines V4
Overlord
ToCA Race Driver 3
Worms 4 Mayhem
Avatar the Legend of Aang
Crazy Frog Racer 2
Defender Of The Crown: Heroes Live Forever
Driver: Parallel Lines
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Pacific Storm Allies
Ragnarok
Silent Hunter 4
Sims 2
Top Spin 2
Unreal Tournament 2004
Warcraft 3 + TFT + DOTA
Starcraft: Broodwar
World of Warcraft + Burning Crusade
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Anniversary 2007
Battlefield 2
Battlefield 2142
Battlefield 1942
Command & Conquer 3
FIFA 07
Battle for Middle Earth 2 + expansion
Need for Speed Carbon
Need for Speed Underground 2
Black and White 2
The Sims + expansions
NHL 2007
Pro Evo Soccer 6
Lego Star Wars 2
Star Wars Battlefront 2
Star Wars: Empire at War
Halo 2
Guild Wars + expansions
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Medieval Total War
Counter-Strike
Aliens Vs Predator 2
Two Worlds
Final Fantasy XI Online
Company of Heroes
Supreme Commander
Stalker
Titan Quest
Lord of the Rings Online
Prince of Persia 2 Warrior Within
Prince of Persia The Two Thrones
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
Heroes V
Tom Clancy Rainbow Six: Vegas
Devil May Cry Special Edition
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2
F.E.A.R.
Flat Out 2
Trackmania Nations
EVE online
SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom
Most notably this place has got a few exclusive games here that they're getting early - he particularly boasted that they'd be the only place to find Two Worlds and Enemy Territory before release. This list seems about right to me, though there were actually some games there today not on this list, and some on the list I didn't see today, so assumedly the place is growing all the time.
The best thing about this place for me was the level of connectivity. Apart from games rated over 12 in the family area, you can play ANY game on ANY computer. Even in the licensed Call of Duty area, you don't have to play Call of Duty. I sat playing Outrun 2 in the STALKER area. Just exit out of the game, open the "Games" folder on the desktop and take your pick from the genres/titles avaliable. In line with this, every PC in this place is linked. Doesn't matter which room (or even floor) you're on, you can play with any other PC in the building. Which is great. There were huge games of Call of Duty and Unreal going with people on the other side of the building as well as those 2 seats away. Every computer has a headset with a mic so you can still chat to them. Every PC is connected to the net, too, so if you don't fancy a local game you can pop onto there, or browse the net. Or play the single. Whatever. The world is your oyster and all that.
As for the people, I was surprised. The staff were pretty much normal people, not uber nerds or anything. Some of the clientelle were, though - the British Champion of Unreal 2004 was in for part of the time I was there, and was annihilating everyone he played against. There were also a few other Pro Gamers who I was told play for a living. Aside from that it was just pretty normal people - none of the strange antisocial MMOers you sometimes get in these places, just a lot of normal guys, mostly in their early 20s currently jobless in their holidays from University. Nice guys, too (at least the one I played with). Yelling stuff across the room to each other, be it tactics or swearing at the guy who just got them. They just seemed like normal guys to me.
There were about 80 people in there at the peak of the day, and from when I arrived (12:30) and left (7pm) the amount of people didn't seem to drop below about 60. If this is due to the fact it's new and if this is good or bad I couldn't say, Im just estimating what I saw. It seemed to do a high turnover of people, too, as there were a lot of different faces throughout the day.
So.. the place wasn't finished, but it sure as hell gets a glowing report from me. Get that bar finished and I'll certainly be going back. It's reasonably priced, and hell.. it's just awesome. I hope it does make a profit and lasts, however unlikely that may be.
No kids allowed in without parents, nobody allowed onto the upstairs floor without ID - meaning no annoying Xbox Live teenagers there, and no screaming kids being left by parents while they shop - even downstairs. And I think the bearded weirdos were driven away by how swish the place looks. As it really does.
So... I thought it was awesome. So there. And I'm not even a PC gamer. Can't wait to see it finished. Can't wait to get in that god damn bar.
XBL/PSN/Steam: APZonerunner
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
MineCraft: Menetherin
Steam: Vloeza_SE++
XBL/PSN/Steam: APZonerunner
The most impressive thing to me is the fact that whole thing is presented in a smart, sophisticated, mainstream way.
Hell, it might actually make these kinds of activities look legitimate and socially acceptable.
Ew.
Still, I might end up going.
Yeah, I mean, outside of London, I don't know that you'll have a large enough clientele for it to work. Particularly as they seem to have overlooked console gaming, which could have brought in a wider spectrum of players. It might well be awesome, but that's a shitton of money they have to recoup now, and you wonder how they'll manage it over a long stretch.
I still think it sounds like a 20-something whose rich Dad funded it.
Honestly though, although that sounds amazing I really, really enjoy the LAN parties I have with just my friends.