So here we are, week after PAX, and I’m spent. After it all I have learned a couple lessons. Number 1: don’t have to move, start a new job, and school right after you get back, as you can’t get anything done. Number 2: PAX is awesome, and everybody needs to go if they possibly can. The Penny Arcade Expo is the gaming event of the year to go to, and as it has full public access, you need to go. There is all sorts of types of gamers there, tabletop, hardcore, casual, and the vibe there is absolutely fantastic.
While I was there I got to check out a load of games, and a good chunk of one on one time with developers on a lot of them.
Mirror’s Edge
First game that caught my eye was Mirror’s Edge, the parkour inspired first person action adventure game that has had people captivated since it was announced last year. I’m sure many of you have seen gameplay videos, so you know about how you can follow the red to see where to go (but you don’t have to), how you run, jump, slide and climb all over, all done in first person, including the hand to hand combat. So, knowing this, I’ll leave all that out, and address my biggest personal issue with the game. Seeing all those videos, I always worried that it was a dev of the game playing, knowing where to go and making it look way to easy when a normal person plays it, it gets clunky, hard to find out where to go, and frustrating. After a play session with the dev, and never watching anybody play, it took all of about 2 minutes to familiarize myself with the controls and even make the developer laugh and say why is he even explaining how to do it, you’ve got it handled. The gameplay is smooth and intuitive, and I can’t wait till release.
Left 4 Dead
Next off I got to check out my personal favorite of the show, Left 4 Dead. For those who don’t know, Left 4 Dead is a co-operative first person shooter from Valve where you and 3 others play human survivors in a infected zombie world. The infected are the fast intense type zombies and not the slow kind most games have. The survivors can be human controlled or bots. The gameplay is intense, fun, and playing well with others is absolutely needed. The infected hordes come in waves, and in addition to the normal kind, there are other types of infected such as the boomer, that shoots out this liquid that attracts the horde, and believe me, you don’t want to get hit with it. There is the hunter, which climbs across walls and is very fast. The smoker has long whip-like appendages and grabs on to survivors and drags them away. The tank is exactly what it sounds like, a huge, noisy, and powerful infected, that throws cars and other objects, and takes a huge amount of damage before death. (I got pounded in to the ground by one myself.) Lastly there is the Witch, which doesn’t always come after you, you have to rouse it by accident, and if you do its bad news. It can take you down in one hit and takes lot of damage to take down.
My favorite moment from the 45 minutes I got to play it was when we came out of a building outside, everything was good, everything was fine, and then all of a sudden, they started swarming from windows, doors, around corners. We were all running backwards shooting, yelling, laughing, and swearing galore. Needless to say we barely made it, but had a blast in the process. This is a must buy when it releases.
Rise of the Argonauts
Rise of the Argonauts was the surprise of the show for me, as I really had not been following this game at all, and was I missing out. In it you play as Jason, who after your wife is assassinated, you go on a quest to find the golden fleece, the only thing in the known world that can bring back your bride. Problem is, no one knows where it is. It is an action RPG where you travel all around your world trying to find and get support in your quest to save Alceme. Unlike other RPGs where you level up just by destroying stuff, Rise of the Argonauts takes a different approach by using what they call a deeds system. You take the deeds you have completed and have the choice of dedicating them to one of 4 gods, who in return give you different powers. You can choose from Ares, the god of war, Hermes, the messenger god, Athena, the goddess of wisdom, and Apollo, the god of the sun. Each god gives powers according to their personality. Ares for instance, give Jason more straight ahead power type skills, attack first, talk later. Hermes will give Jason more dodging and cunning skills, and so on and so forth.
The other really fun thing about this game is the combat worked really well, and really made you feel like you were very powerful. While playing it, you can switch between a sword, mace, and spear, back and forth in combos if you figure it out. I really got attached to the beheadings and cutting bodies in half you can do. In fact, I got an achievement while playing the developer said he hadn’t seen anyone get all weekend (this was on Sunday, the last day). It was called “Severance Package” and it had something to do with getting a certain amount of beheadings. Some of the abilities you get later in the game really add to the strategy of what you are doing in combat as well, and I am looking forward to this games upcoming release.
Dead Space
Dead Space is the third person survival horror shooter from EA that has now been banned in Japan, Germany, and China, more than likely for its gore. In it you play as Issac Clark, a space engineer for C.E.C., a mining company with ships throughout the galaxy. He receives a distress call from the USG Ishimura and goes with two other engineers to meet up with the vessel, assuming its a mechanical failure. The ship if overrun by a hostile unknown race, and no people to find alive. Since he is an engineer and not a soldier, his weapons are pieced together, or stasis type weapons for the most part. In some parts of the game you are in zero-g environments, which creates for interesting ways you can move about the room, or get thrown off by debris.
The alien form, known as Necromorphs, aren’t really dead by just shooting them a certain amount of times. It works much better to take off certain parts of their limbs, which adds to the high level of gore. This is also needed because of the scarce amount of ammo on the ship, you need to be accurate. There is no normal hud, instead there is holographic type screens that pop out of and around Issac’s armor. It really does have a cool look to it as you can pan around all sides and it stays in front of Issac. All these things put together, plus some great art and sound direction made me feeling a little jumpy after a session with it, and loving every minute of it. Looking forward to playing this one in the dark in October.
Damnation
In Damnation, the civil war has been going on for 40 years, and a man named Prescott, who is the head of the military-industrial complex that has grown because of this war has decided to stop it. How you ask? By wiping out both factions and taking control himself. You are a man named Hamilton Rourke, a member of a rebel group against Prescott’s plans and set out to stop it. The biggest thing in this game is that the developers are calling it a vertical shooter, as you will be traversing up and down almost as much as forward and back. You are jumping, climbing, and sliding, and all the while taking on enemies as well here. There seems like there is more than one way through these stages, and there is no hud or map to speak of to tell you which way to go. You A.I. partners give you some vocal cues, but it only helps so much. In the end though, this is still a shooter, and at that it does a good job as well. There is no cover system, as they wanted the game to stay fast paced, and it seems to have worked. I’m looking forward to see how this game plays out and whether they can fully realize their vision for this one.
Puzzle Quest: Galactrix
Puzzle Quest Galactrix is set up to be a hit for anybody that liked the first, as most of the same gameplay mechanics are there, with one big change, the board, and the pieces are now in a hexagonal shape, and the direction they fall depends on gravity, and which way you matched up the pieces. There apparently is a much deeper set of systems in place than the original in things like your ships, and a diplomacy system, but we did not get to see much of that in action. From what I did see though, this will be an instant pickup for me.
Gears of War 2
Gears of War 2 is of course going to be a huge hit this fall, and an instant pickup for almost everybody, so I’ll keep this short. All we got to check out was the multiplayer, and it seems to be the same as the original Gears, without the bugs, some new weapons, and of course the dueling chainsaws. At first it seems almost lame that there isn’t much different, but the multiplayer is still a blast, especially without people using the bugs to their advantage all over the place. It also is good to note how good the first one was, and not a lot needed to change. Also, we still have yet to see how the single player works out.
Rock Band 2
Rock Band 2 was one of the hits of the show, as the line to play it was always huge. When I got the chance to play it, I wasn’t blown away but any new features really, but there are some. Like no fail mode, which will be good for when you want a friend brand new to it to play, or the battle of the bands mode, where you compete against leaderboard scores of your friends with your band to be number 1. But these aren’t the reasons people were swarming the booth. The reasons there were there is number 1, new awesome song list, and two, new, better, revamped instruments. The guitar feels better, and the drums feel much better, especially the reinforced drum pedal. No longer will I be snapping pedals every other time I have friends playing. I love my music games, so this one I’m obviously looking forward too.
There was also plenty of panels to go see, and way to many to go over here, and those are a great fun part of PAX as well.
The other part of PAX, the most important part really, is the community. Meeting all these people you have met online, and all sorts of new people as well, and all of them friendly game loving people, is fantastic. Ending up spending hours afterwards with people you had never even talked to before you got there, or playing games at the convention center till 3 in the morning, that is what PAX is really about. Gamers of all kinds meeting, playing, and socializing together, making friends that could last a long time. If anybody has been in doubt before, and hasn’t made it to PAX yet, I urge you, do everything you can to attend next year, you won’t regret it.
