You can almost smell the excitement in the air!!

I didn’t really know much about the MCM Expo before I left Manchester early Sunday morning and started the long train journey down to London. All I knew is that Capcom were there promoting Monster Hunter Unite and that was good enough reason to me to make the journey.

When I finally got to the Excel Centre in London 5 hours later (damn you British Rail) I learnt a new word, “cosplay”. Maybe I was pretty naïve heading to an expo on manga comics and media, but I really didn’t expect to be surrounded by thousands of pale people dressed in home made cardboard outfits carrying plastic swords. I was a pilgrim in an unholy land.

Still, I ducked and dived my way through the throngs of pale fan boys and fan girls, who were offering free hugs and swine flu, like a ninja dodging nerdy samurai until I reached the Capcom stand. The chill out area was a very welcome sight, a load of bean bag type chairs scattered in a square stand, fenced off from the hoards of plastic wielding fanatics.

Sadly though the promotion of Unite was severely lacking in my opinion, apart from the display boards on the stand the only other display was the running of stock MHFU footage on two crappy plasma screen TVs in poor resolution. Only existing fans of the series seemed to be taking any interest, there was nothing to engage those who’ve yet to discover the pleasures of dispatching nature’s mistakes with unfeasible large weapons.

Given the nature of the show and the large numbers of people in costume I would have expected Capcom to have some cute girls dressed as the Guild Ladies, or a Felyne Fighter wandering about or some of the fun they put into their Japanese promotions. They didn’t even have playable demos of the game unlike the other video game stands, and not a scrap of merchandise. They even ran out of the free t-shirts just as I arrived, how’s that for poor planning?

I stayed and played a few quests with some of the other monster hunters there, cut a tail off a Teo, had my arsed handed to me by white fatalis and then failed miserably as a group as we tried to teach a girl new to monster hunting how to kill dual plesioth.

After a while I decided to have a look around. The Capcom guys were mostly playing quests among themselves, so I took my leave and took in the rest of the show. It was pretty manga intensive with lots of stalls selling plastic Final Fantasy imitation swords for £40 (that’s $65 for non-brits). The highlights for me were the Ford Mustang painted up like Bumblebee for the new Transformers film and meeting Linda Hamilton of Terminator fame.

On the whole I came away a bit disappointed. I really thought Capcom would have made much more of an effort in their promotion of Unite, and of course I was gutted to come away without even a t-shirt to show for the 10 hour round trip.

The only real news I could squeeze out of the guys on the stall is that the planned Gathering Hall opening in London this summer is a trial and other drop-in centres maybe on the cards if it is a success. Though unless Capcom pull their fingers out of their arses and really start to seriously promote the series outside of Japan they might not get the numbers to justify the cost.

A few lame virals really aren’t doing this amazing game justice guys, please put some effort into it!

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