Well I made it. After some initial travel difficulties, your budding reporter managed to get himself down to London's Docklands and into the Excel centre, home of this year's Game Stars Live and EGN shows. Game Stars is housed in a massive conference hall. Things are big, loud, bright and rather hot. The heat inside the building is impressive, but not as impressive as the size of some of the pavilions.

EA, unsurprisingly, have the largest presence here. They have a massive raft of titles on show, from sequels such as NFS: Underground 2 and the 2 to newer titles Goldeneye: Rogue Agent, and err, well just about everything they have on show is a sequel of sorts. Many of the other stands also have lots of games with numbers after the title as well as a lot of licences. have a big presence with their brands and the new Lord of The Rings title, The Third Age, is here as well.

Atari have a big stall with a couple of virtual rides where you can experience the thrills of the upcoming Rollercoaster Tycoon 3's virtual ride system. Young upstarts Digital Jesters have a nice stand too with some of the better looking ladies, of which there are more then a few throughout the entire conference floor, with the girls at the Vodafone stand clinching the babe through sheer force of numbers (and we said we were going to keep it 'high-brow' - Ed).

There are a few world exclusive games on display here. Pro Evo 4 is looking mighty tasty, as is Sid Meir's Pirates. But the real biggie is 2. have built a massive enclosure that looks a bit like a space freighter and the queue of eager young gamers patiently waiting to try the game out is horrendously long. I really feel for the two poor buggers who have to stand around in Master Chief costumes. I passed a Stormtrooper beside the Battlegrounds stand that looked decidedly un-threatening as well.

Nintendo have a massive area cordoned off which they have turned into a kiddie playground which whilst it has a few GBA stands and some titles on display is rather underwhelming. Although the helter-skelter looks like fun.

The finals of the European Online Gaming Championships are going on over the next few days here with a massive ATI sponsored gaming arena filled with hopeful gamers. Nokia are busily punting their mobile gaming system while the Playboy Mansion game stall is getting a large amount of interest too.

For a first time visitor (at a brand new show) to one of these events the first day has been rather overwhelming. Tomorrow I will be joined by another roving reporter (or two), who will aid me on tomorrows mission of playing as many games as our brains and fingers can handle. The full glamour and thrills of both the Game Stars event and the EGN will come to you in glorious Technicolor then (once we have sorted out our camera problems, ahem).

By Sam Gibson