PAX East: Gaming for the Masses

As we all know, Penny’s Arcade’s PAX and PAX East have respectively become some of the mechas for all things gaming, be them video, table top, board, card or other. Rooms and rooms of panels, discussions, performances, and of course people playing games. I have personally attended a local anime convention for the past twelve years now but going to that convention doesn’t seem to be scratching my con going itch anymore, and has an avid gamer it would be wrong of me to not going to not attend this convention at least once. So I saddled up from my hole in the ground in Cleveland and embarked on a magical journey to Boston MA to attend my first Penny Arcade Expo. Walking into the expo’s exhibition hall was nothing short of a mad house, just thousands of booths and big screen TVs and exhibits showing off what will be on its way soon. Here’s a small glimpse of what I could get my hands on or at the very least got to watch for a bit, so forgive me if I am lacking information.

SLEEPING DOGS: (XB360/PS3) -  Square Enix

As a unabashed fan of the Yakuza franchise, I naturally hit the breaks when I walked past a screen of Asian men beating the snot out of each other. From what I gathered from the demo I got to try, You play a detective in China who is very deep undercover. Not exactly the most original starting point but what do you want? The first thing I noticed about this game is there was no subtitles, and everything was spoken in English. Probably had the game set up that way for the expo but I think the game would look more natural if it was spoken in Mandarin with subtitles, but I digress. My character is at a table talking with his boss, finding out that some guy who has been paying them as gone to another gang for protection and I take to the streets of China to teach him a lesson. After a brief walk out of the restaurant I was in I was in the bright lights and busy streets of downtown china. Walking through what appeared to be a marketplace a chase began as I found my target.  Weaving in and out of pedestrians, hopping off vending machines and chasing him to the rooftops lead me into a trap. This is where combat started. The best way I can describe the controls is it plays a lot like the Batman: Arkham games. One attack button that you tap for light strikes and charge for a big finish, A counter button, a grab move to smash people into stuff. There are various weapon controls too but the demo never gets that far.  Game is fuckin violent as shit. Not like the Yakuza stomp you in the teeth kinda visceral. As I was punching and the crap out of baddies, I grabbed one of them and saw various parts of the environment glowing, since I appeared to be a near a vent I tried that, and watched the hero(?) smash his victims head right into an air condition van as chunks of his skull sprayed everywhere.  I followed this up by spiking another guys face off a lit grill and watch his light up a leaking gas pipe.  The combat was pretty fast and fluid and it was a lot of fun to play. The only problem is if you don’t hit the counter when the little counter icon shows up like in Batman, you stand there with your arms wide open for a few seconds and will probably take a hit. Perhaps its to discourage just mashing counter but I found it annoying. The game was pretty fun though and I Intend to seek this one out in the future.

THE SECRET WORLD (PC) – Funcom

This was one of the first things I tried simply because it was one of the first things to actually become available to play as we walked by. Now, me and PC games don’t often get along because I tend to be a console tard and they design to the controls to be as complicated as fuck so not to sully the game for the glorious PC gaming master race. That being said, the initial appearance seemed to be an MMO. I was playing some young woman brandishing a shotgun standing in what appeared to be a junkyard. As I learned the movement controls somewhat I wandered into a more open area of the junkyard and was approached by two Giant mecha’s that promptly set my dopey ass on fire. The remaining minutes was me scrambling around trying to figure out what to do and trying to pop off a shot with my shotgun. I was effectively wrecked in a matter of seconds. After looking popping to look at the 800 billion page Oxford English instructions for PC controls I decided to step back and just record someone else playing it.  The Strange World is and MMO set in current times, and it pertains to deal with kind of fantasy and myth lore. There are three factions of the Dragons, the Illuminati, and the Templars. Sadly I wasn’t around for one of the public demonstrations so I don’t know too much about the story other than its about regular people fighting all the urban myths we've come to learn. But the game seems to take place in a myriad of different locations so it was really hard to pick a theme. I am not a big MMO guy so I don’t know if I would end up getting it but it certainly caught my interest. I definitely leads into a concept that i have often through about for a game where people in a modern, current day lifestyle are forced into a fantasy situation. The Star Ocean series kind of touches on this but this appears to be one of the first games that actually depicts my vision. Should be interesting when its released.

PENNY ARCADE’S: ON THE RAIN-SLICKED PRECIPCE OF DARKNESS 3:

(PC, Mac, Xbox, iDevices, Android) – Zeboyd Games

I have never really been a fan of Penny Arcade’s comic. I never found it funny. I can totally respect what they do for the gaming community and support their causes such as their Child’s Play auctions, but I just don’t read the comic. So naturally, I didn’t play or even hear of the previous two chapters of this game. However, When we were walking by it almost looked like they had set up a booth for Final Fantasy 4 or 6.  The graphical style and play of the game seemed very familiar, and I don’t give a shit about what people think, I love JRPGS. I’ve grown up on them and some of the best games I have played are JRPGS. So I naturally gravitated to this game and lucky for our group one of them opened up. Its has some interesting mechanics that you recover your MP as the fight goes on rather than starting off with a lot of it. It looks like it plays just like the old Final Fantasy games did, I don’t know if I am going to have to go back and play the others, but this one has my interest.

WAKFU (PC) – Square Enix

I wish I had time to sit down with this one. I appears to be a Tactical JRPG that mixes the character design from Disgaea and the environment design of Bastion. From what I hear it seems to be a turn based MMO, which as far as I know might be the first of its kind on a major level, as I've never heard of another like that. Its also supposed to be free to play, so that is certainly a point in its favor. It overall looked very cool and interesting and seemed like something I would play. Sadly me and PC games don’t really get along as seen in the previous video, but I am seriously considering looking into this one further.  

ROCK BAND: BLITZ (PS3, XB360) – Harmonix

Honestly, rhythm gaming with large plastic instruments is dead as far as I concerned. Looking at the game play, it seriously looked like the only new addition was to add the PSP style of play to the current console versions. I really had no interest in checking this booth out, but then This happened.

These guys were seriously fucking everywhere, harassing everyone. It was hilarious.

CHARLIE MURDER (XB360, PS3?) - Ska Studios

I don’t really know my artists so comparing the art style is not something I feel I can do. The game has a dark grimy appearance that reminded me of some of the flash games on newgrounds like Alien Hominid . I don’t have any idea what the story is about other that it seems to be 4 fallen punk rock idols trying to get their band back off the ground. The two videos I managed a shoot seemed to be a mix of rhythm game and a side scrolling brawler a la Castle Crashers or Scott Pilgrim. My group really wanted to get our hands onto this one but we caught it early in the show and didn’t really want to wait around, (rookie mistake for PAX. The lines will NEVER be short. If you want to try something jump in line when you want to and don’t leave it.) The concept looked pretty cool and if I played more games online or had more friends it would be something I would look into. Although the company is Ska studios, and Ska music is terrible, so that does take away some my faith in it.

STEEL BATTALION: HEAVY ARMOR (XB360 Kinect) – Capcom

Yeah, This will save motion gaming. If you were dopey enough to buy the original Steel Battalion on Xbox you were treated to a massive control panel and a game so hard you would be gunned down in the first few seconds of play. They felt the best way to fix this was to completely remove what gave the game any sense of originality. I honestly couldn’t even pretend to care. Fuck Kinect, Fuck the Wii, Fuck Move. Quit trying to pander to a market of disloyal casual gamers and go back to making quality content for the people who fucking brought you to the mainstream to begin with, you assholes.

QUANTUM CONUNDRUM (XB360, PS3, PC) – Square Enix

This may have been one of the more difficult games to get to. When the founding members of Penny Arcade and Pax publicly take notice to a crowd of several thousand? There are going to be lines. This game appears to be a very cartoony looking first person puzzle game. This really strikes me as a game that is going to capitalize on the Portal  fan base because it definitely feels like it plays along that game. I remember a lot of the subtitles that popped up on the screen were very funny and the whole game had a very Saturday morning cartoon kind of charm about it. This game ended up winning one of the Indie Developer Best in Show award’s from the Convention Committed which seemed a bit odd to me because a game hardly seems indie in my book when you have a juggernaut like Square Enix backing you up. Still, the game looked very entertaining and is going to be one to keep your eyes on.

LOLLIEPOP CHAINSAW
(XB360, PS3) – Grasshopper Manufacture, WB Games, Kadowawa Games

I really wanted to get my hands on this one. I really did. Every trailer I see for the game looks hilarious and awesome. It’s a Suda 51 game so I know its going to do everything in its power to try to top the ridiculousness of his last game Shadows of the Damned. But I could not get anywhere near this fucking booth. It has a school bus set up and line formed behind it with like 5 or 6 consoles to try the game. But I jumped in that line and it didn’t move for like 30 minutes, and it was easily one of the longer lines at the convention. So sadly, I gave up on this one.

Interesting thing to note about this booth is they had a girl dressed like the game’s protagonist Juliette. She ended up being kicked out of the conventional hall on the first day. As it turns out, PAX has a pretty strict “No Booth Babe” policy. Basically for those who don’t know, companies hire models to come stand by their booths either in next to nothing or in the outfits of the characters in the game. But if you ask these women anything about the product, they can’t tell you a thing because they do not work for the company.  They did let her back in when she changed into a less provocative outfit (but not much less) but it was clear she was just picking up a check to look pretty. This to me is an interesting rule that I actually can respect because ultimately this is a convention like E3 or the CES that is for the fans. The fans want to play the games, and they want to learn about them.  Yeah, I’m not one to shy away from a hot cosplay (my facebook friends will probably hold a specific Chun-Li comment over my head for months) but I definitely can respect and agree with idea if they are going to be the to promote the product, then they should actually fucking know something it. I did a little more research and it turns out that the model in question is apparently known on the convention and cosplay circuit as Jessica Nigri, and to her credit she knew enough about the games premise and who is involved to hold up in some interviews so I am willing to cut her slack.  That being said, I didn’t to play the game so this might be one I have to take a leap of faith on and hope it pays off.  Guess you’ll find out in the review.

Ms Nigri posting her outfits to Twitter. It was the 2nd that got her in trouble

FINAL FANTASY: THEATERHYTHM (3DS) – Square Enix

As you can tell, I spent some time in the Square booth. This was another game the PAX heads (Mike, Specifically) really seemed to enjoy an made mention of. If there is anything that I enjoy about Final Fantasy games, it is the spectacular soundtrack that goes with them. The game seems fairly simple and I am curious to know if there is a story. The play is really easy. You just follow the dots as they approach and either tap, swipe or hold as they hit the main point. The game is broken up into a travel stage, fight stage, and a world map stage. So when It was my turn I formed my Final Fantasy dream team of Terra, Kain , Yuna, and Tidus and quickly moved right to the Final Fantasy 6 music, because 6 as we all know is the greatest one in the franchise. I was treated to Terra walking through a 2d countryside of notable FF6 locations and I found myself very easily tapping and following along. I easily A ranked the song  but probably could have got and S if I understood the controls from the go. I then went to the Fight sequence where I did the same thing only in much faster repetition. The chain breaks amongst the 4 characters so you have to follow it along but you have the whole bottom screen to tap so its not too bad This seems like something I would enjoy to play because its Final Fantasy characters, music, and a rhythm game. If I owned a 3DS I would strongly consider it. But the controls also seem like it would be a good fit for smart phones so maybe it will end up there. Fingers crossed.

I guess I will wrap it up here for now, I took videos of some other things but I didn’t want to go into some of the arcade stuff that has already been released. I would rather save that for reviews. PAX East was an incredible experience and I definitely look forward to trying to go again. Make me famous people and I’ll hold a Rage Quitter panel where I will just get angry at the first question and throw chairs. Or perhaps just famous enough to get a free press badge or something.  In any case, I will probably be going again next year. See ya next PAX East!

What a coincidence, I also have I wwebsite as on the internet