Tag: PAX

Categories
Games

PAX East 2014

Civilization: Beyond Earth logo

I went to PAX East again this year, and although I didn’t see quite as much as I would’ve liked (and forgot a few things I meant to check out), I still had a great time and found some interesting new games.

Favorite Not-Game: Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth Reveal
Firaxis announced Beyond Earth during a panel, and it’s basically Alpha Centauri 2. (Unfortunately, Firaxis doesn’t have rights to the Alpha Centauri name.) I loved Alpha Centauri and have wanted a modern reimagining for some time, and this looks like it will be exactly what I want. And the best part: it’s scheduled to come out later this year. (Fingers crossed.)

Favorite Game: Distance
This was apparently the first time Distance has been playable at a show. I backed it on Kickstarter way back in Oct. 2012, and while the screenshots and videos they’ve been releasing in updates have looked gorgeous, I always wondered how it played. The guys at Refract Studios have done a great job of making a game that’s beautiful, plays very well, and is extremely fun. The ability to fly makes it possible to create your own shortcuts on levels, and it looks like there’s actually a story – something I didn’t expect in a racing game.

Games
Darkest Dungeon
I never backed this on Kickstarter, but this is an Roguelike RPG that looks amazing and seems incredibly difficult.

Gods Will Be Watching
I’m not sure entirely how to categorize this one, but it’s another difficult game that requires a player to keep a number of things in check to prevent everything from falling apart and losing.

There Came An Echo
I backed this one on Kickstarter as well, and I was most excited to try out the voice recognition. I was impressed that the voice recognition worked incredibly well, even with the din of the show floor in the background.

Invisible, Inc.
A stealth turn-based strategy game where your agents attempt to break into corporations to steal secrets. I didn’t play it at the show, but bought a Steam early access key, which they were selling on the show floor.

Orcs Must Die: Unchained
I’m not sure how happy I am to see one of my favorite co-op MOBA-like games go full-on competitive MOBA, but hopefully there will be a co-op mode I can enjoy.

Soda Drinker Pro
Upgraded with new levels for an even better virtual soda drinking experience.

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
Didn’t play it, but this looks really interesting. It’s a 2-player local co-op game where you fly a spaceship and have to move around between different consoles in the spaceship to control weapons, engines, shields, etc. Hopefully they add an internet co-op mode, because I’d like to play it, but local co-op isn’t going to cut it.

Transistor
Made this the first thing I did at the show because the lines got long fast last year. The time-stopping mechanic is fun to play with, and as will all Supergiant Games, it looks fantastic.

Hack-n-Slash
An RPG from Double Fine where hacking into enemies and the environment is a major piece of the game. It’s still early, but it wasn’t very fun – just very boring and lots of block-moving puzzles. Plus, I managed to get myself stuck in about 5 minutes and had to restart the game.

Extrasolar
A browser-based game where you manage an expedition to another planet. Everything plays out in real time, so if it takes 8 hours for a signal to get sent to your rover, that’s how long it takes in real life. It’s an interesting idea, but probably not the sort of thing I’m interested in.

Aaru’s Awakening
A platformer. It’s got a nice art style, but it’s relatively generic. I felt like I had played it before and it wasn’t a lot of fun.

Galactic Strike Force
This one’s a card game from the guys that made Sentinels of the Multiverse. Like Sentinels, it’s a co-op game where all the players team up against a villain. It was fun, but the guy demoing the game obviously didn’t understand the rules well enough, so everyone was confused about what to do.

Lichdom: Battlemage
A nice-looking game where you play a mage with three schools of magic (ice, fire, bio), and can create new spells. It was fun to play but I didn’t understand what my health was, so I died just before defeating the demo boss.

Mewgenics
A game about breeding cats from Team Meat. Looks good, but didn’t get a chance to play it.

Hotline Miami 2
It’s more Hotline Miami.

Summary
There were plenty of things to see. PAX is quickly becoming indie-focused, with several big publishers a no-show this year: Nintendo wasn’t there at all, and Sony had a tiny “PlayStation Community” booth in the corner. This isn’t a bad thing – the indie games are interesting and new, whereas a lot of the big games are just the same stuff we’ve seen before. Wolfenstein was there, which I have absolutely no interest in; Titanfall had a booth, but I didn’t enjoy that game, either. Unfortunately, PAX East has also become huge, with way too many people there.

Categories
Games

PAX East 2013

Keeping with what I did last year, I decided I’d do a quick roundup of what I experienced at PAX East this year.

Games I Played
Spaceteam
Spaceteam is a free iOS party game that’s already available. It’s about you and a group of friends shouting technobabble at each other, like “Set the fusenipple to 3!” or “Flush the flux dynamometer!”. Each player is given a control panel with random controls on it, and each player is shown a task. Sometimes it’ll be something the player can take care of themselves, or sometimes they’ll have to shout it out and hope the person with that control is paying attention. If you miss too many tasks, your ship is consumed by a supernova. If you succeed long enough, your ship will warp away and everyone gets a new control panel. Once things start going wrong, you’ll have panels swinging out of place or ooze seeping around panels. Then there’s the random anomalies like “Translator Malfunction”, where your controls are labeled in an alien language and you have to figure out what they do along the way. It’s quick, easy to play, and a lot of fun.

Luftrausers
A crazy 2D shooter where you get to customize your plane and pull off some fantastic moves. It’s amazing to watch in motion.

Dropchord
What appears to be a pretty catchy rhythm-action game is hindered by its reliance on an awkward motion controller.

Soda Drinker Pro
The most advanced soda drinking simulator on the planet. I got to drink soda at the beach.

Games I Saw
Divekick
Right next to the Double Fine/Capy booth, I ended up watching a lot of this game. It involves jumping into the air and divekicking. That’s it. It looks glorious.

Watchdogs
I hadn’t heard anything about this, but it looks like a modern-day (or near-future) Assassin’s Creed, which means I want it. Using a smartphone to control your environment sounds really fun.

Panels
There weren’t many interesting-sounding panels this year. I only went to two.

Mass Effect Retrospective
There were a few bits of interesting information, but it was mainly a BioWare circle jerk.

Terrible iOS Games
One of the best panels I’ve been to. It was entirely about really bad iOS games. Very funny.

Who I Met
I enjoyed being able to walk up to several people and say, “Hi! I backed you on Kickstarter!” Hopefully it came across as the “I support what you’re doing and wish you the best” that I meant it as and not “I gave you money! Give me stuff!”

I got to meet the entire team behind Castle Story and get them to sign a poster. They seemed like really nice guys and I got to claim my free hug. When John commented on liking the Bricktron design because it looked like a smiley face come to life, one of the devs said it’s not supposed to be a smiley face – “Since our AI is kind of dumb, we wanted them to look like they were confused.”

I got Tim Schafer to sign a bunch of my crap. I wish there was time to chat with him about stuff, but there was a huge line waiting to get stuff signed and I already had him signing far too much stuff.

I got to meet a dev from Strike Suit Zero, tell him how much I loved his game, and leverage my Kickstarter backer status to get a free soundtrack.

I got to talk with the dev on Edge of Space. It still looks really early, but it’s come a long way from the last time I played it.

Categories
Games

PAX East 2012

I thought it would be fun to do a “roundup” sort of thing about what I saw/played/liked at PAX East this year. I’ll start with my favorite stuff, so you can quit reading or skip ahead if you get bored.

My Favorite Game: XCOM
I knew there was a strategy XCOM coming, but I haven’t been keeping up with game news, so I knew nothing about it. Seeing it at PAX (both on the show floor and in the XCOM panel) got me extremely excited about the game. I loved the style of the turn-based combat, with extra animations as things were going on. The “ant farm” base looked awesome, too. It was also great to see that they’re drawing so heavily from the original – I can’t wait to play it when it’s released later this year.

My Favorite Not-Game: “Day in the Life of an Indie Dev” Panel
I mainly liked this because it reinforced everything I’m already doing in the development of my game, which was mainly “Just make a game.” They even mentioned Unity several times, so I’m happy with my choice of tools. I only attended “part 1”, but it made me feel good about the path I’m taking with my game, so it’s all I needed.

What I Played
Monaco
I knew a bit about Monaco, but after playing it, I know it’s a day-one purchase. Even though we crashed the game, it was so much fun, even when I kept screwing up and alerting all the guards. My favorite moment: Matt saying “Don’t bring them toward me!” as an army of guards was chasing me.

Guacamelee
This was probably my biggest surprise at PAX this year. I had heard nothing about Guacamelee, but it’s a fun platformer that looks gorgeous, has good writing, and has a neat “dimension-shifting” trick.

Bloodforge
A God of War-like action game that’s pretty generic, but really fun to play. It has really nice graphics, which was apparently part of the goal of the game – to create an XBLA game that looks like a AAA game.

Trials: Evolution
If you’ve played Trials, you know how this plays. The multiplayer was really fun, though.

Star Wars Kinect
The more I see of this game, the more I want it, even though it’s just a collection of different game styles. I played the Rancor destruction game, and it was fun, mindless destruction.

Go Home Dinosaurs
This is a neat tower defense game for Chrome (NaCl), where you play as gophers who are trying to save their barbecue from dinosaurs. The “towers” are shaped like Tetris pieces, so you have to arrange them in the open area of the maps. It’s also got a kind of “deck building” feature, similar to Plants vs Zombies.

Raiderz
I got a free mug and bag for playing it. That was the best part.

What I Saw/Watched
Assassin’s Creed 3
Looks amazing. I’ve always loved the AC games, and I’ll likely buy this one right away.

Antichamber
I played this a while back as a UDK demo, but it’s come a ways since then. It still looks like a great FPS puzzler that encourages a lot of outside-the-box thinking.

AirMech
I wish I took the time to play this. It looks beautiful, has transforming jets, and looks really fun.

Mark of the Ninja
This looks like a cool Metal Gear Solid-style stealth action game. I wanted to play, but media badges got in the way and I was tired.

Crimson Dragon
A Panzer Dragoon clone that plays like Child of Eden. Child of Eden was hard to play with Kinect, but hopefully this is a bit better. It has dragons, so I think I am required to buy it.

Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor
This looks cool, and the Kinect controls seem to replace the need for the giant controller. I’ll have to play a demo before I buy it, though – the Kinect controls seemed to be having some issues, though that may have just been because of the crowd.

Novus Aeterno
An MMORTS that looks a bit like Homeworld and I’m a sucker for RTS games with space ships. According to the devs, it’s $30 with no subscription, so it might be worth it. I’ll at least play the beta coming up later this month.

That’s all I can think of for now. I might add more later.