As you may have noticed, the site has been on autopilot for about a week now. I've been busy. It happens.
So here is my coverage of PAX games, similar to how I structured last years events:
Games that I recall straight off the top of my head:
Old Republic: For how long I waited in line, it wasn't really that impressive. I love the way things handle but the machines they were demoing it on didn't feel right. The keyboard mouse set up they had didn't work right and it just didn't work for me. I tried out the Smuggler class and maybe it just wasn't my style, but hte cover system didn't feel solid enough. To the games credit, they had around 20 players going, at least half of which were on one server, and actually one level. And with this set up, I experienced no Lag, no slow down in frame rates. The game LOOKS great, but the game play felt pretty poor. The story portion also felt really rushed. Now it's possible that the actual game will fix itself by not being so combat focused. But when I played the run through I had about 30 seconds of story, and 14 minutes of combat and then another 30 seconds of story. It might be a demo, but I'm pretty sure we were seeing the beginning of the game. The HUD is the one from WoW. It works. But my enthusiasm for this game went down.
Fallout New Vegas: Did you like Fallout 3? Do you want more of that style but ina new location, new weapons, improved visuals, and an all new story? This is that. The upgrades are just enough to justify not calling it 3 but still calling it a full game. I'm excited for it. I'm buying it.
God of War Ghosts of Sparta(Or something like that)
Okay, So I've never played a God Of War before this, but I really enjoyed this. It is certainly on my psp wish list. If it has 8-14 hours of game play it will be well worth its cost.
Heavy Rain on play station move
It's new move controls. I being the biggest Heavy Rain fanboy on the planet so I'm excited.
Resident Evil 5 on move.
Um, so it's only for RE Gold edition. and it wasn't that good. So don't get pissy.
PS Move overall:
I checked out every game they had available for move. All of them. I'm sold on move. This has the reactions that are impressive. It has the tech to work. I'm really glad for it because its only required for some games, and many games are just going to have the move option, and more options are never a bad thing. I point to the hottest wii titles(Mario Kart, Smash) that have 3+ controler options, and as such everyone has their own choice. I'm really excited for Move, and as soon as I have the free cash, I am totally buying it.
Killzone 3
I got to try this game out in 3D single player. I've never played any Killzone before but I want to now. It felt stronger than Halo ever has and I felt like I really needed to use the cover system, but that certain weapons can be used to explode tanks. It was fun, and when it comes out in February, I'll be in line to pick this up.
Mortal Kombat: a return to the basics of the arcade games. If you liked Mortal Kombat in the 90's, you'll like this.
Rock Band 3: Its a natural evolution of the genre, but it didn't really break any new barriers.
Blink: its a bethesda game. Looked good, didn't play it.
Grind(A table top game): I wanted to check this out, apparently the set up Privateer press had for this game isn't the real board so I'm intrigued but we shall see.
Portal 2: No playable demo, but the video was cool and it looks like a true sequel.
Duke Nukem Forever:I'ma make this quick. Did you play DN3D? You did? This is that. But with better graphics. Ever underwhelming.
Epic Mickey: Mario Sunshine(my favorite mario game) plus Mikey. It'll be fun for at least an hour, but after that it's going to come down to how much innovation it grows throughout the game and how long the game is. The presentation was strong. I'd keep my eye on this game.
Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep: It looked like psp game. But they had the unforunate choice of blowing up the image onto bigger tvs and it looked terrible. We'll see. I still need to embrace this system so we will see what happens.
Dead Space 2
Dead Rising 2: Mmmm, Zombies. Okay, this may have been my best in show. As a X-box 360 hater, I never played DR 1 and so getting to play this on the ps3 was a dream. Now, the ps3 can actually process more than the 360 and while it is about the same, the ps3 build could obviously end up with more undead on screen. The demo was just a generic level where you had to do a challenge of kill 250 zombies. It really demonstrated the zombie killing. It focused on the customizing weapons. Oar+Chainsaw= fun. It was, very simplistic, and I must be a pure hypocrite for saying this but this was pure fun. Even though there is likely no story.
Final Fantasy XIV: okay this game is pretty, but really, what next gen game isn't? Nothing about this game is good. It's at best average. Everything else is terrible by the way. The combat was atrocious. The character builder bored me(and I love good character builders). Everything felt lifeless, and even the booth leaders bored me. They couldn't answer a single hard question I threw at them. This is Final Fantasy XI. Don't fool yourself. It's the EXACT SAME GAME. There is no redemption for this game, its time to just give up on this franchise. But because its on 14, this is a series that will just self perpetuate.
Kinect: Didn't work. the controls misfired more times than I tried to use it.
Assassin Creed Brotherhood: Didn't see anything new that impressed me.
Metroid Other M: Controls suck. Character is whiney. Skip it.
Guild Wars 2: There are alot of computers,anda 30 minute demo. And then Oh my goddess. It's like these people knew what I asked them to fix back with Guild Wars 1. Seriously. Almost every problem I had problem has been solved. This might be the best MMO to come out in the next year. This was impressive. I can't give this a good enough opinion. Check out spoonyexperiment.com for Noah Antwiler's coverage of this game and everything said in his video is accurate. I can't give you any new info that he didn't. We only differ on it being best in show. Top tier, certainly. But not best in show for me. No online fee just like GW1. :D
games I had to look up because I forgot they existed:
Dragon Age 2:I didn't personally play it,because I still haven't played Dragon Age Origins. But I'm told it is what you'd expect from a sequel one year later. It isn't an advancement but if you liked the first game, this game fixes some small bugs comparatively.
Tron(that parkour game, and that mini game one)
SW:Force unleashed 2: Super Smash bros but with star wars. The multiplayer rocked, and if you liked the first one, you'll like this one.
Fear 3: I didn't even know this was here.
Super Scribblenauts: MORE SCIRBBLENAUTS :D~~~~~~~~~~
Infamous 2: a big enough upgrade that it's a worthy sequel.
Halo Reach: already out at time of this posting, Kinda meh.
Fable III: didn't know it was there.
Sadly, there was nothing new for MONPOC this year, but there was a fun tournament where we played in the most outrageous game possible after.
I'll try to post my pictures up soon, but Its mostly just a vlog of my Monpoc day. So I think you are better off just checking Gamespot, IGN, and other news outlets for screens and video if that's what you need.
As a convention as a whole, I have to say...I was underwhelmed this year. There were entirely too many people there. It was worth it to have the two largest theaters off site because it kept down expohall space, but that isn't a huge detail. The problems that persisted was that media guests got place in front of the gamers. That is a fundamental butchering of what PAX is supposed to represent. The media shouldn't get to bypass lines. They shouldn't get special privilege. Not at PAX. PAX is for the gamers, not the guests. And it was such a determent to the expohall that it often resulted in that guy who waited for four hours, the expohall is closing and they send this guy home, who has been waiting four hours to play Portal 2 because he loves portal more than anything and its because they and to let a media member in. True story as I was leaving the expo hall on friday. Saw the whole thing go down. And it's terrible.
Think about this. Assuming that any given company can get about 8 players in per 15 minute period. So when there are 80 players in line for one game, you are going to be waiting a while. The big games like Duke Nukem, Portal, Dragon Age, Kill Zone, Old Republic, Assassin's Creed end up with lines of 200ish people by noon. This leads to the other problem, first 15 minute game play is too much time. The demo should last about 10 minutes. And then moreso there should be about twice as much space per game.
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