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PAX East 2011: No Dickwolves allowed...

classicdms

Neo Member
Ceebs said:
Did anyone go to the Poker Night panel? If so how was it?
Poker night panel was pretty interesting. Talked about how crazy the development for the game was and how lofty their goals were. Gave out prints to all attendees.

80 days to build that game. Kind of crazy.
 

bounchfx

Member
CitizenCope said:
I know. lol
I think he was referrng to my post on 3D.
bounchfx, I actually deleted the part where I mentioned I was having a hard time describing what I was and was not seeing. Sorry this is getting you all uptight.
I just know that the 2D versions of things like Avatar(the movie) and Crysis 2 look much better than in 3D for me. What that better is I just can't figure out. I don't know if it's the 3D technology or my eyes. You'll be the first to know when I figure it out.

Caught your smiley after posting. I guess your not too upset. :)

yeah I was posting from my iphone so I couldnt even see the quote haha. completely different from what was there when I clicked!

all I meant was that in life, you typically focus on one thing at a time, not multiple. when you're looking at your monitor, everything else at a different depth will "blur", and when 3D is turned on in games, you'll get the same effect because technically you're focusing in on objects of varying depth.
 

JackEtc

Member
Can't feel legs, but PAX was fun this year. I think I had a little more fun at last year's, but that was my first PAX, which would explain why.

I think my favorite thing I saw there was definitely Battlefield 3. Man, that made me crap myself.
 
I'm really tired. Highlights for me were the battlefield demonstration, portal video and crysis 2 in 3d/surround and on a 100+in lcd.

Oddly, battlefield reminded me more of crysis than crysis 2.
 

Ark Malmeida

Neo Member
Imperial Hot said:
Gunstringer(and sitting while playing Kinect): According to the guy at the booth, Gunstringer will be the first Kinect game that supports sitting. Curious, I decided to demo the game that way and it didn't really work well... The demo operator told me that they have been having problems all day with people sitting and playing mainly because there is so much stuff going on in the area around the demo station.

After fumbling around with the controls sitting down, I decided I'd give standing a shot. As soon as I started playing up-right the controls began to work as advertised.

Essentially the demo is broken up into two types of gameplay, on-rails sections and cover-based shooting. For the on-rails sections, the Gunstringer automatically moves forward and by using your left hand(marionette hand)the Gunstringer can be moved to the left, to the right, and can be made to jump to dodge various obstacles. With the other hand, you paint targets in a very Rez-like manner and then flick your arm like it's a gun and it shoots the painted targets. It's pretty simple mechanics, but it was surprisingly fun.

My favorite aspect is something most come to expect from Twisted Pixel, the tone and humor. It's all there, and it's all really, really funny. I laughed quite a bit during my demo, which is a pretty big feat for most games.

So yeah, Kinect players look out for that.

I played other stuff, but we are about to be let back in to the expo...so I got to go.

I watched Jessica Chobot play this sitting down for a IGN segment and the controls seemed to work as well as when standing. The only issue she had was when her own camera guy went and stood behind her to get a different angle and the game kept picking him up as the player instead of her.

I think that setup at the MS booth wasn't great because when I got my chance to play it it lost me several times. As you could imagine there was a lot of traffic around that area.

They also had it set up in the Twisted Pixel booth and it seemed to work much better there from what I watched. My son played through the demo there (standing - they didn't have a chair for it there) and it worked great, even when several people thought it would be a great idea to cut through the booth right in front of the TV.

Had a great time at the show. The lines seemed worse for a lot of the games than last year. Didn't get to try out Trenched, Orcs Must Die or Bastion because of the wait - didn't even get near Fez because it was neat the EA booth which was swarmed because of Battlefield 3. It actually seemed like it was more that people were playing longer than the lines being long.
For instance, both the Gunstringer and Child of Eden demos (which I did decide to wait for) ran for 10-15 minutes so you can imagine that it would take some time to get up there, even with a relatively short line.
 

Ark Malmeida

Neo Member
Nelo Ice said:
speaking of codes ive been checking twitter attemting to win a cole pax plushie to no avail =(

Did you manage to get one yet? I think that I have an extra. Let me know and I can check when I get home from work tonight.
 

Oppo

Member
The habit started by Rockstar last year of building an enclosed box for people to line up around has set a bad precident, methinks.

Last year it was just Red Dead that was like that (as I recall - maybe 1 other). This year, it was Darkness 2, LA Noire, Duke Nukem Forever, I *think* Skyrim....

That's bullshit. I get that you have to manage the players but most of the time I just want to SEE the game in action, beyond the rolling trailers. I don't need to play it. (Often don't even want to - I'd rather play the final, polished LA Noire for example). But don't hide your shit in a box with a 2-3h+ queue, that's just a jackass move honestly. You can tell that all the PR dorks were impressed with Red Dead's hype-building setup but it sucks quite frankly.

At least DNF had an open booth where you could see things happening, I'll give them that.

Had fun at PAX of course (as last year) but the bad nerd behaviour gets irritating. I just wanted to grab a glimpse of the 3DS in action and it was basically impossible unless you wanted to waste a huge chunk of your day. Even the "hidden" 3DS models in the Capcom booth were hard to get at as they didn't seem to be managing the traffic at all. I stood for a good 25 minutes at one point and the same dudes were playing the same games, no one got told to shuffle along, and of course these DS dorks will camp there all day if you let them. I guess I'm just getting too old for shit like that.
 

ultron87

Member
How was the set up for the concerts this year?

Last year they just opened the main doors at some point and you could just walk in and out. So the whole waiting in line/wristband nonsense wasn't really needed. And being at the back of the crowd wasn't a problem because it is comically easy to get near the front in that crowd just by saying "excuse me" a whole lot or by filling in the space when everyone stands back up after a break.
 
PortTwo said:
The habit started by Rockstar last year of building an enclosed box for people to line up around has set a bad precident, methinks.

Last year it was just Red Dead that was like that (as I recall - maybe 1 other). This year, it was Darkness 2, LA Noire, Duke Nukem Forever, I *think* Skyrim....

That's bullshit. I get that you have to manage the players but most of the time I just want to SEE the game in action, beyond the rolling trailers. I don't need to play it. (Often don't even want to - I'd rather play the final, polished LA Noire for example). But don't hide your shit in a box with a 2-3h+ queue, that's just a jackass move honestly. You can tell that all the PR dorks were impressed with Red Dead's hype-building setup but it sucks quite frankly.

At least DNF had an open booth where you could see things happening, I'll give them that.

Had fun at PAX of course (as last year) but the bad nerd behaviour gets irritating. I just wanted to grab a glimpse of the 3DS in action and it was basically impossible unless you wanted to waste a huge chunk of your day. Even the "hidden" 3DS models in the Capcom booth were hard to get at as they didn't seem to be managing the traffic at all. I stood for a good 25 minutes at one point and the same dudes were playing the same games, no one got told to shuffle along, and of course these DS dorks will camp there all day if you let them. I guess I'm just getting too old for shit like that.

skyrim wasn't at the show, they may have been the brink line you're referring too
 

Hostile Paradox

Neo Member
Wow, PAX East was a blast, wish I would have had more time to play all the things there. I actually had to leave the line for Duke Nukem just as it was about to be my turn, had my flight to catch and schwag to mail back to myself. Thank goodness for that FedEx store they had in there.

Wish I would have gotten a chance to play Brink, Duke Nukem, Shoot More Robots

The Arcade room from ACAM was amazing. Saw someone going for a record with a camera!
Spent a bunch of time playing:
Dragon's Lair
Space Ace
Pacman
Donkey Kong
Afterburner

At the show room floor I played:

Monday Night Combat (New map)
Gears 3 (Interesting Changes from GOW2)
Trenched (Awesome)
Bastion (Tried to like it, but just seemed like another dungeon crawler)
3DS Nintendogs/Cats (Mediocre)
3DS Card Augmented Reality (Awesome)
Toy Soldiers : Vietnam


Saw:
Battle Field 3 (on a 103" inch screen, AMAZING GRAPHICS)
Rooster Teeth Panel, Red vs. Blue Trailer
Escapist Panel

And on Sunday I competed in the MNC tournament, and won 1st place. Not too shabby for a controller jockey, considering it was a PC tournament :D
 

shawnlreed

Member
I had a great time at PAX East again this year.

The main theater was a bit smaller than last year, but the individual panel rooms were much larger.
The convention hall was ENORMOUS. The video game component only filled 1/3 of it. 1/3 was tabletop gaming, 1/3 was open tables, food court.

I have personally never seen this much tabletop gaming in one pace before. Amazing.

5526193597_c1feeb2961.jpg



Out of the panels I attended, the Videogame Antiques Roadshow one was by far the best.
Chris Kohler knocked it out of the park. Frank Cifaldi, Chris K. and Mike Mika were entertaining and very informative in equal parts.
I sincerely hope this show becomes a yearly tradition. It's too good to be a one shot.

5526775774_14366f7e33.jpg


All around amazing show.
12 seconds from my Iphone camera captures a little of the greatness to be had in Boston this weekend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rufXzZVglM
 

LM4sure

Banned
I had actually considered going this year, but glad I didn't. I'm like Cartman. I hate lines. Thursday night I was actually out with some buddies in the Faneuil Hall area and we were going to head to Bell in Hand for a few, but there was a huge line. Found out there was a PAX meet up there (the guys playing Pokemon in front of us should have given that away). Anyway, one guy was outside having a smoke and we asked him how it was in there. He said there was like a 10:1 guy to girl ratio, so we left.
 

A Human Becoming

More than a Member
Beer Monkey said:
They sold the last damned shirt WHILE I was playing the demo after waiting in line for 45 minutes Friday. I was going to go preorder the game right after the demo. Ugh.

I was lucky that the Child of Eden booth happened to be was the first thing I stumbled upon on Friday when the expo hall opened. I also snagged a pair of these flashing glasses, frag doll stress ball and Tom Clancy key chain for liking Child of Eden, Frag Dolls and the new Tom Clancy game on Facebook.

It's too bad I didn't go Sunday, as I was probably 75% done finding the QR codes for the PAX Exp key chain. I also forgot my Bastion handkechief and seemed to have lost the glow stick I got for playing Child of Eden. :(

Some of the lines really did suck, but if you just stuck to smaller games or went to the expo hall first thing on Friday (or probably any day) you could see what you wanted in < one hour. Strangely enough, the Homefront line was very short for me.
 

DarkKyo

Member
Damn, what a fucking awesome convention...
I enjoyed myself a lot more than last year because I stayed in the adjacent Westin hotel and didn't have to travel into and out of the city each day. Also, it's surprising how much Dickwolves came up during the Q&A's for being "banned". [face_laugh]


LM4sure said:
I had actually considered going this year, but glad I didn't. I'm like Cartman. I hate lines. Thursday night I was actually out with some buddies in the Faneuil Hall area and we were going to head to Bell in Hand for a few, but there was a huge line. Found out there was a PAX meet up there (the guys playing Pokemon in front of us should have given that away). Anyway, one guy was outside having a smoke and we asked him how it was in there. He said there was like a 10:1 guy to girl ratio, so we left.

Yeah 'cause the only reason to go to gaming conventions is to meet girls... :| it's not to demo new games or attend panels or get swag or see a sweet concert or view crazy competitions or embrace your random fandoms or anything like that.
 

Nelo Ice

Banned
Ark Malmeida said:
Did you manage to get one yet? I think that I have an extra. Let me know and I can check when I get home from work tonight.

i just got one from another kindly another gaffer thanks for the offer though =)
 

ultron87

Member
They made people play Ikaruga for the Omegathon finale? Fantastic.

I'll need to watch some Youtube of that when I'm off work.
 
ICallItFutile said:
Video of the Child of Eden t-shirt I got at the Ubisoft booth for pre-ordering it.

EDIT: Forgot to mention last time when I played Fez it crashed on me right as I got the ability to flip axises.

Potential game spoiler for the 1st 10 minutes, you've been warned:
that's part of the game, the guy's experiment went wrong. Look closely, you are still wearing the Fez when you wake up. A few seconds in, the guy's voice calls out to you saying something went wrong and only you can fix it. I fell for it too, but the guy behind me noticed the Fez
 

Ark Malmeida

Neo Member
ultron87 said:
How was the set up for the concerts this year?

Last year they just opened the main doors at some point and you could just walk in and out. So the whole waiting in line/wristband nonsense wasn't really needed. And being at the back of the crowd wasn't a problem because it is comically easy to get near the front in that crowd just by saying "excuse me" a whole lot or by filling in the space when everyone stands back up after a break.

They did a line, just like for any of the panels throughout the weekend. I got over to it about 9:10 (the concert was supposed to start at 9:15 but went off quite a bit later because of the awesome Jenga competition for the Omegathon) and was able to get in the concert no problem. Like you said it was easy to move up if I wanted to. I ended up just going to the front of the platform where they were running the sound. That was far enough to see well without being sandwiched in.
 
- bigger than the PAX Prime event in Seattle
- 69,500 attendees
- first PAX East event in 2010 brought in 52,290 attendees
- 2010's PAX Prime show in Seattle brought in 67,600 attendees
- PAX Prime to be held August 26-28
- PAX East 2012 to be held on April 7-9

Site apparently banned, shrug.
 

Oppo

Member
I will say that the Jenga Omegathon before the Saturday night concert was one of the craziest, tensest things I've ever seen. Anyone know if there is video of that?
 

Patryn

Member
Dechaios said:
Damn, what a fucking awesome convention...
I enjoyed myself a lot more than last year because I stayed in the adjacent Westin hotel and didn't have to travel into and out of the city each day. Also, it's surprising how much Dickwolves came up during the Q&A's for being "banned". [face_laugh]




Yeah 'cause the only reason to go to gaming conventions is to meet girls... :| it's not to demo new games or attend panels or get swag or see a sweet concert or view crazy competitions or embrace your random fandoms or anything like that.

I'm guessing the 10:1 was just the bar, because at the actual PAX, I was thinking it was closer to 4:1.
 

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
forgeforsaken said:
Site apparently banned, shrug.
haven't they sold out every PAX? seems like the limitation is just size of the space really. i think the reason it's such a big hit is that it encompasses all of nerd-dom and does so pretty damn well. for example, both years i went there with my wife pretty much just for board games and got more than my fill, even though half the people there probably don't even give a thought to tabletop, or think it's just D&D and Magic or something (it's not). then the fact that there's all the other stuff going on too makes it even more of an event and even more "worth" the trek over even if a more focused and smaller convention would not be. it's just a good concept.
 

Oppo

Member
Here's a pan I grabbed with my iphone, it should give you guys a rough idea of the size of the main expo floor.... and this was just the videogame side for the most part, there was an entire area of roughly equivalent size for tabletop gaming and it was packed as well.

paxeast2011_pan_small.jpg


(Click here for a bigger version.)
 

n8

Unconfirmed Member
Cromulent_Word said:
I'll be at the Ubi booth demo'ing Clash of Heroes HD. Come by and say hi.
What you told me sounds great, but all I need is the mutiplayer. God what did the world miss out on this great piece with the DS release. You shouldn't have a problem getting that strong community this time with the downloadable on the way.
Thanks again for the figurine. :)


PAX was fun yet again, but I've brought along 2 friends with us so they could have experience the magic. I think we spent a little too much time and the expo show floor where it's too cramped. I like to find the overlooked hidden gems of the place and try new things. But we had fun regardless because it's with friends.
 

Phloxy

Member
They really need to have some booths manage lines better. Star Wars having a 45 minute to an hour long demo. Stupid.

Brink letting you play multiple multiplayer rounds. STUPID.

Stuff like Gears, Socom,Fear 3, Red Faction etc, were nice and fast moving, you played one multi game, you are out, next group in, nice and fast. Everybody gets a chance to play without waiting in these huge 2-4 hour bloated lines.
 
Phloxy said:
They really need to have some booths manage lines better. Star Wars having a 45 minute to an hour long demo. Stupid.

Brink letting you play multiple multiplayer rounds. STUPID.

Stuff like Gears, Socom,Fear 3, Red Faction etc, were nice and fast moving, you played one multi game, you are out, next group in, nice and fast. Everybody gets a chance to play without waiting in these huge 2-4 hour bloated lines.

Yeah, the Gunstringer demo was 15 minutes long, which got painfully repetitive watching from the line.

It would have been nice if the booths were spread out more to use that entire third of the show floor. It would cut down on the congestion and give people a better idea of how long each line really is.
 

thefil

Member
Had a blast this year. Highlights:
* The entire fucking tabletop area. What a blast. Played WoW TCG, Weinhandler, Forbidden Island, Guillotine and many other things.
* Dropping by the arcade late Friday and being able to wander between games quickly
* Irrational panel
* Telltale panel
* Guild Wars 2
* Watching indie stuff being played
* Carrying a cardboard box to keep the posters from the Telltale panel safe, writing "Not a Sign" on it, and getting called liar and other names.
* getting a scarf

Things I want to do next year:
* Wait in line for at least one game on the show floor. Last year and this I was too lazy to do so. Missed my chances to try Bastion, Child of Eden, Guild Wars 2, etc.
* Go to the Idle Thumbs meetup. This year it conflicted with a panel my girlfriend wanted to see.
* Play a smelly hippie RPG demo. Last year I didn't know they existed till the last day, and this year I only got to that side of the tabletop area a few hours before I left.
* dedicate a long period to finding every indie game on the show and trying them out.

Honestly, when I look back and think about what I wanted to do at '10 and missed, I managed to do all of it at '11. I hope I can say the same next year.
 

sneaky77

Member
AstroLad said:
haven't they sold out every PAX? seems like the limitation is just size of the space really. i think the reason it's such a big hit is that it encompasses all of nerd-dom and does so pretty damn well. for example, both years i went there with my wife pretty much just for board games and got more than my fill, even though half the people there probably don't even give a thought to tabletop, or think it's just D&D and Magic or something (it's not). then the fact that there's all the other stuff going on too makes it even more of an event and even more "worth" the trek over even if a more focused and smaller convention would not be. it's just a good concept.


Some of those tabletop games seemed so intimidating lol.. I looked at some of the boxes on the stands that looked cool but.. damn.
 

A Human Becoming

More than a Member
Gryphter said:
Potential game spoiler for the 1st 10 minutes, you've been warned:
that's part of the game, the guy's experiment went wrong. Look closely, you are still wearing the Fez when you wake up. A few seconds in, the guy's voice calls out to you saying something went wrong and only you can fix it. I fell for it too, but the guy behind me noticed the Fez

I thought that might be the case, but when it went back to the logos, I assumed it crashed.


ncsuDuncan said:
Yeah, the Gunstringer demo was 15 minutes long, which got painfully repetitive watching from the line.

I don't think fifteen minutes is unreasonable. I'm willing to wait up to a half hour, possibly longer. The demo isn't that long anyway.
 

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
sneaky77 said:
Some of those tabletop games seemed so intimidating lol.. I looked at some of the boxes on the stands that looked cool but.. damn.
you were there? coulda taught you some! honestly, i played one "heavy" game all saturday -- and that was battlestar galactica. everything else i played you could learn in about 15-30m. that is the cool thing about eurogames is that you can learn them quickly and play them with just about anyone but they still have a ton of depth (see the games in the Gateway Games and Gaming for Couples sections in my BG thread for some examples: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=406418)
 
I loved PAX. Definitely returning next year. Video games I got to play are as follows:

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
Really enjoyed how the UFO controls. It's smooth and has a bit of weight to it but still responsive. The game can be relentless as enemies respawn relatively quickly, and lots of crap goes on at once.

Trenched
I met Tim Schafer and got to do the fanboy fawning of "I love your games." Sorry I couldn't think of something more interesting to say. Trenched is a cooperative mech tower defense game with all that entails. Apparently you can customize your mech with loot drops you pick up from defeating enemies, so its a cooperative persistent-mech tower defense game. The TV propogandist enemies have a cool staticy effect which has the benefit of making them easy to see.

Fire Pro Wrestling
Pretty cool that it uses avatars but I couldn't do much outside of the same few moves. This describes my experience with Fire Pro games though.

3DS
I'm glad I got in to play this before they made the giant line and cut of direct access to the booth. The system itself is smaller than I was expecting. 3D is nice but not mind blowing like some impressions make it out to be. The effect does affect the frame rate at least in all the games I played. Circle Pad isn't as good as a console controller analog stick but is better then the PSP slide pad. I'm slightly disappointed I guess overall. I was expecting more of a luxury product for the price point, but what is there is pretty nice for what it is. Still picking it up at launch.

Steel Diver
Only got to play the periscope mode, which is difficult when you are tethered. The waves make for a neat effect in 3d but unfortunately you lose that effect when you are spinning. Sitting on a swivel chair should make this part awesome though.

Pilotwings Resort
It's Pilotwings, made a little bit more friendly since you don't just fail a mission if you crash. Jet pack and biplane control pretty much like you would expect them to from the prior games. You are graded in more areas than in prior games and even stuff like flying through rings may have some smaller objectives in between rings worth a small amount of points.

Dead or Alive Dimensions
Definitely changes from 60 to 30 switching 3D on, but its sweet that it does it seamlessly. Solid version of DOA otherwise, controls wells, plays smoothly.

RE:Mercenaries
I had trouble with the controls so I did terrible. It is nice having your inventory on the touch screen, one touch herb or change weapons.

Fez
Only game at the show floor that made me feel stupid. The guy at the booth had ust gotten done resetting the system and told me there were a few game-breaking bugs. Played a bit then got to a certain point which I won't spoil and thought I hit a bug... but it wasn't a bug it was a feature. *facepalm* Really nice art and special effects. I can imagine the level design will become very crazy later on with how you have to manipulate rotating the environment to proceed.

Slam Bolt Scrappers
Very busy game but not too chaotic when you are actually playing it. Not sure how to defend against the other team double teaming your character hopefully I'll figure something out.

Shoot Many Robots
Another very busy game, twin-stick shooter/platformer. I only got to play the survival mode and not the traversal mode so I don't really have much to say about it other than I was fairly terrible at it. I did not shoot many robots.

Vindictus
I don't normally play MMOs but while waiting in line to see the Portal 2 video the combat in this looked fairly intriguing. Being able to actually dodge enemy attacks adds to my interest level apparently... I might actually download and play this.

Swarm
Little difficult to get the hang of when to time jumps and such (I wiped out my entire swarm running full force trying to jump an obstacle many times) but being able to expand and contract the swarm as appropriate felt really good. The boss tease at the end of the demo could have potential.

Fallen Frontier
As I said in the thread about this game I really enjoy how the level design accentuates the coop allowing for players to sneak around behind enemies by making wise use of the environment. The players control really well especially given the wide range of movement available with wall jumps and grappling. Grappling, pulling and shotgunning is also enjoyable.

Ms. Splosion Man
It's like 'Splosion Man but kicked up a notch. Lots of energy throughout the levels I played. Takes the cutscenes spliced through the levels like in Comic Jumper and adds them to the 'Splosion Man gameplay. Short video played at the Twisted Pixel panel showed some new stage gimmicks like a bouncing ball of energy that needs to be directed.

Battleblock Theater
The part I got to play was a coop platformer. Really required a lot of coordination to proceed by hitting switches or throwing each other through teleporters. Special abilities didn't seem to play a big part in the demo but I saw a throwing disc, grenade, and electric fan.

Brink
I think my impression of this game was dampened by waiting in a two hour line to play it. The demo didn't seem significantly different from any other team class based game. I had difficultly using the smart run feature effectively, but that might have been due to the controls being non-inverted when I am a inverted player. I did enjoy the introductory video prior to playing the game that explained all the features. Very well designed that.

The Fancy Pants Adventures
Nice multiplayer competitiveish platformer. Love the momentum your character can gather to launch off ramps and that the level design takes advantage of that. Scratches an itch similar to New Super Mario Bros.

Gatling Gears
An Ikari Warriors or Assault Heroes type of game. Insanely detailed graphics, blades of grass and power lines and such. Very colorful and nice lighting as well. Especially impressive how many effects were running without any slowdown: rain and lightning and energy and bullets and explosions. Boss took a long time to kill in single player but maybe I was missing something.

Bastion
Nice graphic style and the effect of the world forming around you is pretty nice. Combat is decent with a mix of short and long range and special abilities. The way the bow feels, requiring a short hold to fire properly but with some slight auto aim. I love the narration and music. Main character runs a bit slow for my taste... a lot of Zelda-esq rolling around to move faster was taking place.

Skull Girls
The characters (2 were playable) are very exaggerated which is neat... animation could use a few more frames but what is there is nice. I may just be spoiled by MvC3 in that regard. I'm not a big fighter person so I don't really have much to say.

EDF:Insect Amagedon
Pretty much like EDF 2017. Didn't play it long enough to notice any signficant differences.

Hunted
Combat reminded me a bit of Rune but much slower paced. You really have to anticipate your enemies attacks and block or dodge appropriately, just smashing attack will get you killed. Looks decent graphically but at least in the demo suffers from a case of the brown and grays.

Child of Eden
As awesome as it looks it is Rez with Kinect support. That should be enough to know if you are interested in it. Incidentally this was my first time using a Kinect.

Orcs Must Die
This one surprised me. Very polished gameplay. While the traps are really needed to cut down the attacking horde you are given a decent number of direct combat tools to pick off any straglers. The wind gauntlets(?) were especially fun, throwing enemies back into traps they just got across or throwing them off the stage entirely. And it's not at all like Tecmo's Deception :)

Gunstringer
Sort of similar to Child of Eden gameplay wise except you can control your character. Interesting motif of a puppet show and it comes across with the hand of god rolling boulders in your path or placing enemies in front of you. Love Wavy Tube Man as a enemy and really all the major enemies seem to be really interesting.

Dungeons
Not really the type of game to play at a convention. Looks like it has an interesting balance between making the dungeon appealing enough to satisfy adventurers without making it overwhelming for your forces.

Outland
Starts out as a decent platformer. Controls work really well when moving at a fast pace. The game seems to have some sort of context sensitivity/guidance in effect which makes movement very smooth. However when making tiny/slow movements it feels a bit clunky. Anyway the game eventually becomes this Ikaruga-esq color switching bullet hell platformer which was pretty freakin' sweet. Great style with the dark silhouettes and bright neon highlights. There were some really neat special effects further into the demo.

Dragon Nest
Like Vindictus not really my style of game but I was impressed enough with the combat in the demo to try the game at some point.

Gears of War 3
Only played one round of multiplayer. Didn't seem significantly different from Gears 2 but I haven't really played that in a while so I'm likely missing something. The lobby interface and process to get into the game was very smooth which I'm glad finally we are getting away from awkward transistions and such.

Warp
Apparently you can beat the game without killing anyone, which I only found out after brutally exploding every scientist I came across and heard the developer mention that fact. Undersea laboratory background is very pleasing.

Clash of Heroes
Last thing I did at the show. Got to meet Cromulent Word and beat someone I didn't know in a game I joined halfway through. Apparently there will be a 2v2 mode with a wider playing field and some mechanism that will require coordination to make the formations. The sprites are pretty!

I also played Burger Time (Which I did decent at, got to the third board) and Sinistar (Which I am terrible at, I think I knocked one section off of Sinistar) in the arcade game room.
 

DTJAAAAM

Member
Just got back to Seattle earlier this afternoon. I have to say, PAX East was a massive improvement compared to last year IMHO. The media badge I had this year was probably one of the reasons. It sure was nice to try out some of the 3DS games I've been eager to try like Kid Icarus and Street Fighter without waiting in the long line. I just wish I would have figured out how to properly do Pokemon Black/White surveying before the last hour of the expo!

I always take lots of pictures at these kind of events, so you can see my stuff from each day here:

Friday
Saturday
Sunday
 

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
DTJAAAAM said:
Just got back to Seattle earlier this afternoon. I have to say, PAX East was a massive improvement compared to last year IMHO. The media badge I had this year was probably one of the reasons. It sure was nice to try out some of the 3DS games I've been eager to try like Kid Icarus and Street Fighter without waiting in the long line. I just wish I would have figured out how to properly do Pokemon Black/White surveying before the last hour of the expo!

I always take lots of pictures at these kind of events, so you can see my stuff from each day here:

Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Nice pix. I don't really go to conventions other than pax and bgg.con but I thought there was a lot of good cosplay there for something that wasn't a cosplay or anime convention. Always makes for a fun atmosphere.
 

KHarvey16

Member
Had a great time all weekend at the show with a friend of mine. Caught a few podcasts and the game theory panel on Sunday and got a chance to check out LA Noire. Despite the brief tech issues(really bad pop-in when you arrive at the crime scene and a little glitch where the veteran the main character was on the case with wouldn't find his way back to the car) which I am confident can be addressed the demo was impressive. It seems like you'll have to pay attention and actually think about what's going on when you interact with people. Unless it's ruined by being made overly obvious or into a sort of guess-and-check gameplay there is really a lot of potential there. Given the facial expression technology I think, more than most games, this will be heavily dependent on actor performances(and is a rare case where "performance" doesn't just mean voice acting!). I agree with Alex Navarro though who said the animations below the neck are a tad clunky, made worse by their proximity to the excellence on display above it.
 
Just curious if anyone picked up any LOTRO swag while hanging out around the WB/Turbine booth (probably to play MK)? Couldn't make it this year and am curious what they were giving away...particularly in game stuff.
 
DTJAAAAM said:
Just got back to Seattle earlier this afternoon. I have to say, PAX East was a massive improvement compared to last year IMHO. The media badge I had this year was probably one of the reasons. It sure was nice to try out some of the 3DS games I've been eager to try like Kid Icarus and Street Fighter without waiting in the long line. I just wish I would have figured out how to properly do Pokemon Black/White surveying before the last hour of the expo!

I always take lots of pictures at these kind of events, so you can see my stuff from each day here:

Friday
Saturday
Sunday


Awesome photos, really enjoyed looking at them!
 
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