PAX ’11: The Official, Overkill Wrap-Up
Video game debuts, rolls for initiative and grown men in tunics: the total-nerd ecosystem of this year’s Penny Arcade Expo served an estimated crowd of 80,000, its biggest yet. The house seemed to hold 80,000 games, as well, and my goal to play every single one of them went unmet.
Still, by skipping meals and forgoing sleep, I racked up a decent gaming tally. In the days since the fest’s closure, I’ve split my time between sleeping and cataloguing my every move at PAX, playing equal parts big-name games and indie sleepers; the result is as much a look at the biggest public games show in the nation as it is a state of the union in games. Don’t expect brevity.
PAX’s logistics: The three-day show maxed its square footage, thanks to a new third exhibition hall, a presence at the nearby Paramount Theater, and a total takeover of the Washington State Convention Center’s annex building. Even local titans Nintendo needed more space, spilling over into the show’s famed beanbag lounges. If there was ever such a thing as too much fun, PAX earned that achievement.
Even while bearing that load, PAX finished out with nary a disaster or even annoyance. Thanks to great mapping and planning, fans didn’t have to deal with endless walks, ridiculous delays, shortages in the freeplay zones or even lack of nearby food options. Outsiders often remark on the show’s annual sell-outs and massive, passionate crowds, assuming the whole thing’s a clustercuss to attend. PAX’s all-volunteer core continues to blow that assumption out of the water and deserves commendation; no American con does it better (and, for ticket-buyers, more cheaply).
But the time crunch proved more brutal than ever. It’s time for PAX to expand its exhibition hall hours; even one extra hour a day would make a big difference.
Borderlands 2, Guild Wars 2, Star Wars TOR: I touched upon these already at The Daily. To save you some time: good, great, poop.
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: The quest game’s demo was the same I saw at E3, only this time playable. I started down a hill into a village, then up a snowy mountain; no introduction or helpful guide. Knowing I didn’t have much time, I ignored the village’s chatty occupants (other than a quick stop to, uh, smith some swords) so I could find some caverns and combat. I made my character a cat-man before delving, by the way; my orange, fluffy tail whipped about through chain mail, so that’s authentic, I guess?
The game pares down well to an Xbox 360 controller. You control the weapons/spells in your left and right hands with the respective trigger buttons, and you can pull up side-of-screen menus to swap gear at any time. In emergencies, tap the Xbox’s d-pad for one of four last-ditch things that you assign, like health potions. I was lousy at triggering these if my six deaths were any indication. To be fair, I fooled around with a variety of weapon combos: two axes, sword and shield, a huge spear, a dagger and a spell, or two spells.
Skyrim’s two-spell mix-and-match system isn’t unique to the genre, but it’s a good fit for the game’s huge world and feeling of “boy, I can do anything here.” Combine fire and wind for, uh, fire-gusts? Stuff like that. Sadly, PAX didn’t allow players to equip anything other than the simplest fire and cure spells; I sure set things on fire—roasted some trolls like marshmallows—but hopes to mix didn’t pan out. The timing in weapon combat proved hard to make sense of, and I had no clear idea about where I should go, thanks to a total lack of paths or guidance. Such is the scourge of a 30-minute demo for a 40-hour game.
People seem to be deadset on loving the latest in the Elder Scrolls series. Open world. Tons of RPG tropes. Maidens that are apparently coated in gasoline, awaiting your dark cinders. In some ways, Skyrim is review-immune; people who are averse to the Elder Scrolls formula will speak such a different review language, creating a conversational chasm. Some people just want to be led by the hand through their quests; others want a substantial puzzle element. Elder Scrolls says pfffffft to both of those. Run around and cause your particular brand of ruckus, glitches and accessibility be damned.
Rage: I read other writers’ gushing thoughts on this game and shake my head. Am I on a different planet than these people? We’ve played this game before, and it was better as Borderlands. To review: You wander around a desert apocalypse in first-person perspective (Borderlands). You receive quest objectives, then drive to a point and tear through an instance to complete said objective, only to return to your quest giver to receive better gear and cash (Borderlands). You do this all by yourself (compared to Borderlands allowing 3 buddies to join). You’re limited to the id Software standard of, like, nine weapons (compared to Borderlands’ hundreds of crazy guns).
id would surely counter that this game’s more beautiful and has smarter AI than Borderlands. Well, I suppose. Enemies crawl and hide and strafe and leap as they approach in a 60-frames-per-second world. On an Xbox 360 controller, these guys are difficult to aim on because of their weird side-to-side hops–tuned for a mouse, not a joystick–but it doesn’t matter. Once they leap directly at you, boom. One shotgun shell. Fancypants is dead.
This isn’t like Borderlands’ combat, which at least pumps its weapons full of giddy stupidity, nor Halo Reach, whose AI foes swarmed, surrounded and punished you for bad strategy, yet victory against them felt fun. Instead, Rage is yet another id game with cramped corridors and out-of-nowhere spawns, where victory over your foe is an inevitable, good-looking tedium.
Game industry, please stop kissing id developer John Carmack’s incredibly, incredibly intelligent ass. He can make a dandy of a game engine, and things go splat and heart rates go up as baddies show up and yell “BOO!” But some of those years spent making an engine should instead change the games we play. The FPS genre is too crowded for anything less.
Torchlight 2: I appreciated the first Torchlight, mostly because I understood it as Diablo for dads. You could jump right in, lose 20 minutes to a simple, loot-filled grind, then jump out. But fans who didn’t hear that pitch had good reason to complain–after all, Torchlight’s makers created the original Diablo and fetched some high expectations–and the sequel, so far, appears to have heard all those complaints. Dads, stick to the first one.
The original’s three characters were too rote–big guy, generic magician, speedy archer. Within seconds, I was pleased to notice that the sequel’s fighters feel more overpowered in very specific ways; that is to say, the new EmberMage character can’t clear a huge crowd of foes by default and will either need to play smarter or team up with a different-powered friend. For a game that attracts 50+ hours of grinding combat, that nuance means the world. The hub world’s far more open this time, and the monsters I encountered were enjoyably overpowered. But my demo was pretty short; I’m optimistic, but I’ll withhold judgment until the game launches. Three different reps insisted the game will come out by year’s end. I’ll believe it when I see it.
League of Legends Dominion: UTTER BIAS. TOO ADDICTED TO LEAGUE OF LEGENDS TO SAY ANYTHING COHERENT. If you don’t know what the acronym “MOBA” stands for, skip ahead.
LoL’s first real break from the MOBA formula has been tuned for shorter matches, and my time at Riot Games’ booth bore this out; games averaged 15-20 minutes, compared to the usual 40, which will hopefully tame the fanbase’s notoriety for ragequitting.
Your team of five now competes to claim and control five turrets spread around a circular map. MOBA games normally send streams of minions at your opponent, which you hide behind as you advance upon your foes, but Dominion’s wimpy helpers proved a lot less crucial to pushing your opponents. Heck, dying wasn’t so bad, either; the mod’s lead designer, Richard Hough, stood over my shoulder and watched me suck at the game, yet he continually pointed out that by dying, I “bought time” for my teammates to grab other towers.
I had a good time losing in this one. But unless Riot tweaks this new mode to empower minions, your favorite characters–particularly ones tuned for “jungling” (clearing out minions to earn in-game cash)–may prove more useless than Hough cared to admit. That could be a dealbreaker for folks who paid either time or money to nab their favorite LoL champions.
Spelunky HD: As an Indiana Jones wannabe, you descend through a 2D, treasure-filled cave armed with a whip, ropes and bombs. The deeper you go, the better the treasure gets. Might sound familiar if you’ve played the free PC version from a few years back (go git it); just like that one, every level here is procedurally generated, meaning no two sessions play the same.
The HD update transforms the old retro graphics to beautiful, hand-drawn ones, and as you descend, new, lush environments pop up (including, yes, the cliched ice world), but so do new foes and structures, making this the definitive Spelunky, not just a flashy update. Too bad about the game’s disappointing take on deathmatch. Four spelunkers whip at each other in far-too-tiny rooms, muting the normal game’s sense of wonder and exploration. Oh well.
On the bright side, creator Derek Yu was on hand with a bunch of sweet Spelunky figurines, and he was kind enough to give me the mascot one. Thanks, Derek!
PAX 10: Puzzle-platformer Fez has been drooled over by the press for years, and as a PAX 10 entrant, the game finally made its public debut. Sadly, its most special feature–a “rotate a 2D world in 3D” puzzle mechanic–didn’t come with interesting puzzles attached, thanks to its baby-sized demo. I wound up drooling over The Splatters instead, which I’ve dubbed “Angry Birds if developed by Mensa.”
Each Splatters puzzle is a single screen, but instead of birds and pigs, you get googly-eyed blobs and gooey targets. Launch your blob-people, which are already strategically placed within the puzzle, at targets to make them explode, and take advantage of ramps and bumps to maximize your blob launch speed and angle. It’s that latter stress on geometrical physics (and the ability to re-launch blog-people in mid-air) that gives this game so much more precision and intelligence than Angry Birds and its ilk. The developers are aiming this game at Xbox 360. I told them they were goddamned fools and should release it on phones and tablets instead. I was not slapped for saying this.
Word Fighter, a combination of Boggle and Puzzle Fighter, seems like a win on paper–Scrabble combat! Woo!–but it was PAX 10′s biggest disappointment. Combatants get the same grid of letters, so it’s too easy to screencheat and steal words, breaking the game on a basic mechanical level. Phbbbt.
Games like Atom Zombie Smasher and Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony are both already available for purchase on PC, so my praise would be redundant, but it was nice to see them fetch big PAX 10 crowds. (I’m hopeful that the latter sees Xbox 360 release someday; its four-player shmup co-op is too hard to pull off on a computer.) The most popular of the unreleased PAX 10 games was Antichamber, a first-person puzzler that allowed players to truly solve puzzles however they saw fit. Thanks to its long lines, I never got a crack at it. Frowny face.
PAX 10′s neighbors: In my dreams, I dwell in PAX’s 6th floor hall for all eternity. There, Jonathan Blow and Tim Schafer take turns feeding me grapes.
Monaco, a retro-styled heist game, was perhaps the most polarizing title in this year’s gallery. Four pixelated thieves break into buildings, each using different strengths–computer hacking, disguises, lockpicking–to get in, steal something and get out. Developers have been gushing about this one for years, but PAX’s more casual crowd struggled to pick up on its mechanics, strategies and visual cues. Hopefully, its sole developer, Andy Schatz, paid attention to fan frustration. I personally like the progress that the game’s made over the past few years, and I like its criminal mission variety; even with the looks of an Atari 2600 game, it already looks smarter than GTA IV.
Retro/Grade has seen tons of previews lately, particularly a nice playthrough at Giant Bomb (above). You control a spaceship backwards through time; instead of attacking enemies and dodging their shots, you have to move your ship to the chiptune soundtrack’s beat to recreate the past. Get it wrong, and you rip the space-time continuum a new one. Now that I’ve played the game–complete with Guitar Hero controller–I can tell that its glowing previews have ignored a key flaw thus far: the timing. You play along to the game music’s beat, but my clicks of a Guitar Hero controller didn’t trigger to either the beat or the visual cues; they were about a millisecond between, which will drive rhythm game fans nuts.
Last year’s PSN sleeper, Joe Danger, launched with expectations of an Excitebike clone, but that comparison never quite took. Yeah, there were 2D motorcycles, but Joe Danger was more about thrilling stunts and navigating obstacle-loaded courses than pure racing. The sequel, Joe Danger: The Movie, turns the game into a series of movie-themed sets, which makes more sense for what the game stresses. Along with motorcycles, you’ll hop on skis and jump into mine carts, forcing players to really buy into the stunt-heavy premise.
I took the Seattle-developed Skulls of the Shogun for a spin a few months ago at a local indie games party, and I appreciated its cute, turn-based combat–a breezy, multiplayer take on Final Fantasy Tactics–but PAX’s crowds didn’t care for the interface and controls thus far. See above thoughts on Monaco, then multiply my level of concern by 10.
Nintendo: Super Mario Land 3D was the same as its E3 demo: a tinier version of Super Mario Galaxy. I appreciated the attempt to break Galaxy into bite-sized chunks, but it’s not smaller enough, if that makes sense. In 3D Mario games, aiming and timing things like jumps can be iffy enough on a full TV screen; I consider myself a Mario expert and struggled almost immediately with how much Nintendo tried to cram on the 3DS’s small screen. I won’t be surprised to find that the final product is a rushed retread, considering it launches in, what, November? Mario Kart 7, set for a December launch, also felt underwhelming in its “sure, I like this franchise, I’ll buy it” kind of way. Nintendo’s desperate to sell some 3DS units, I guess.
Didn’t play Zelda, didn’t play Kirby, didn’t play Star Fox 64. I came to PAX to play new games.
Sony’s piddly booth: Speaking of. I walked past Sony’s zone twice and didn’t see anything other than Resistance 3, Uncharted 3, Twisted Metal, Ratchet and Clank and the Ico/Shadows of the Colossus reboot. Let’s be clear: Uncharted 3′s refined, cinematic take on multiplayer is a must for PS3 owners, and I’m hopeful that the new Twisted Metal will carve itself a stupidly fun combat niche, but Sony put more effort into propping up its old hits than to tantalize with new content.
(Starhawk’s an exception, but I didn’t get any time with that online land-and-space battle game, which I regret.)
Also MIA: any compelling Move content, and any demos of the coming-soon portable Vita system. In Vita’s case, I got confirmation from Penny Arcade reps that Sony’s Japanese bosses instituted an asinine rule: no public Vita demos for the USA yet. Uh. Doesn’t the system launch in three months? Don’t they want to build some goodwill and momentum from hardcore fans?
On the Move side, all Sony did was allow players to use the Move wand to aim guns in standard gun games. This runs concurrent with my all-along theory: that PS Move was a kneejerk release with no long-term software strategy in place. A blockbuster game typically takes 2-3 years to hit the market, and Move launched roughly one year ago. Based on that timeframe, PAX 2011 would’ve been the ideal time to announce any “coming very soon” Move exclusives. News flash: Sony doesn’t have any.
Xbox Live Arcade: Microsoft actually gets this part of PAX right; its Xbox Live Arcade and Dream.Build.Play kiosks were plentiful and loaded with odd content. Some of it was a bummer–ew, a War of the Worlds movie game? I didn’t know farts came in digital form–but debuts of the new Trials and Trine games tantalized, and indie hit Retro City Rampage–an 8-bit homage to Grand Theft Auto–arrived for its Xbox 360 debut. Within my first two minutes of RCR play, I took down pixelated versions of the Ninja Turtles and the A-Team. Target audience: met.
Dance Central 2: Rules. I already said that at E3, but really, two-player Kinect dance battles are where it’s at. (I didn’t touch Kinect Disneyland, sorry.)
Halo Fest: I stopped by the Ikea of Halo fully prepared to poo-poo the whole thing, but Jesus damn, Microsoft’s 343 division has poured thick vampire blood into the Halo 1 HD remake. It’s aliiiive! The redone art transforms the old, single-player quest (and, weirdly, so does the optional 3D support, which works much better with Halo’s lasers than with Killzone’s bullets). More importantly, I cackled–hell, I HOWLED–while replaying old versus maps in the Halo Reach engine. Before Xbox Live, Halo was meant for couch combat–tight, frantic levels with plenty of sneak-attack potential, yet no space or time to camp. This is the Halo I think of fondly, and I’m happy that the newer games’ mechanics–like jetpacks and invisibility—have been poured successfully into the old arenas.
(Word on the street is, 343 has two dedicated teams cranking out tons of map packs, redoing classics and sculpting new ones alike. As far as I know, they’ll all be compatible with Halo Reach.)
Board Games: The only reason I’d want a full, fourth day of PAX would be to play more of its selection of free board games. Local nerd shops like Uncle’s brought hundreds of boxes for fans to check out, library-style, and I teamed up with my hometown D&D friends to play a few.
Penny Arcade: Gamers Vs. Evil seemed appropriate to test out at PAX; the brand-new card game boils down to a simplified, streamlined take on mega-hit card game Dominion. The folks I played this with, who detest Dominion, appreciated the tweaks, but I could see this one wearing out its welcome after only a few playthroughs.
Power Grid: Factory Manager, which is two years old, has compressed the auction-based strategy of Power Grid into a snappy, 45-minute game. That’s an insane achievement. You don’t get to interact with foes through map takeovers in this one, though; the competitive jabs come from what each player snatches in auction rounds, but that can be devastating enough. A cool alt to the hit game.
Battleship Galaxies drew the most lookie-loos in the tabletop section—and for good reason. Hasbro handed its classic game to designers from Wizards of the Coast (D&D, Magic), who turned it into an epic sci-fi battle game, and it’s a curious transformation. Instead of hiding your ships behind a screen and guessing each other’s locations, players take to a massive hex-grid map, on which they place ships and send them off to destroy each other or accomplish mission tasks. My group of friends despised the confusing rulebook and the dice-roll attacks—roll a letter and a number, then call it out and see if you hit the ship in question. As such, smaller ships are harder to hit than bigger ones. Me, I liked that twist on combat, along with the use of missions to spread out how armies battle each other, but I’m not sure if the asymmetric factions—humans versus aliens—make for a balanced game. Seems like the aliens have the edge, and as such, I’m tempted to wait for Wizards to tweak the balance again before shelling out $50 for the remixed game.
The PAX ’11 trend: PAX exhibitors tend to fear showing off mobile/iOS products, which is the exact opposite of shows like GDC and Casual Connect, where phones and iPads rule all. Nobody wants to come off as a non-hardcore company, after all. One company tried bucking the PAX prerogative by launching a geolocation-battle game for Android on day one. This backfired when PAX’s masses logged in, crashing the game’s login servers. The game deleted all my progress not once but twice, so I refuse to even name it.
But the other game-biz buzzword, “freemium,” has fully entered the hardcore world thanks to League of Legends—whose booth was absolutely slammed the entire fest, and attracted the most interesting cosplayers to boot. As such, companies are pumping more money into freemium titles, particularly the advertising onslaught for Firefall, which means gamers might finally get more than what they pay for in the freemium space.
I’m a huge fan of this industry transition because it levels the review playing field. I hate the old cycle: game is smothered in NDA, game gets press previews, game launches, game vanishes after three months. When the community gets first dibs on a game—and when people like me pay to review the game in question (which I’ve totally done w/ LoL)–then the conversation turns more organic, the game lives much longer, and the game receives perpetual smoothing and upgrading. It removes the phony sense of “journalism” from the games review process. Fuck scoops. Long live freemium.