So I missed the inaugural PAX EAST this weekend. It would have been nice to go but with all of the traveling and car repair lately it was just not financially feasible. I'm planing on going to PAX10 in the fall though. Hopefully I'll have a new job by then that isn't hourly so I don't feel each tick of my off-time like a stab to the wallet. No I don't get vacation time. No not sick leave either. >:-(
Anyway I am going to the Triangle Game Conference next week. I don't know what kind of people attend this thing but let me tell you, if you aren't a student be prepared to shell out for this one. I got a one day pass for $25 but that was with my student discount AND my IGDA discount. Without those I would have paid $120 for a one day pass! Well I wouldn't have paid that but that would have been the price.
Showing posts with label PAX. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PAX. Show all posts
Monday, March 29, 2010
Sunday, September 13, 2009
PAX09 For Realz This Time
Oh all right all right! Fine. I'll write a proper post.
Lets talk about games shall we? I only played one hands-on demo: Darksiders. It was pretty fun I guess. I walked away feeling like I had just played a next-gen God of War. You run around beating people with a sword and climbing things. The coolest part is that you can pick things up like people or cars. Grabbing enemies buy the neck and insta-killing them was pretty fun. So you're supposed to have a horse in the game but that wasn't in the demo. So... yeah, God of War.
Best demo I watched someone else play: Bayonetta. This one's been on my radar for about as long as Darksiders has. It's another third-person action hack-and-slash staring a... um, yeah the plot escapes me... she's a gun... witch? Whatever, she runs around killing stuff. The first guy I watched play the game was pretty good at it. I watched him take down two bosses. I think they were bosses; they were pretty epic. As she fought these huge monster things they destroyed the environment in ways that completely changed the battlefield. There were at least four "oh snap" moments in the 3 min of gameplay I witnessed. The shifting environment during the boss battles were half of them. The finishing moves used to kill the bosses were the other. Apparently the player's character has the ability to use her hair and clothes to turn giant beasties into piles of goo, and in a ludicrously spectacular manner. I'm not going to go into detail because you really have to just see it, but wow. Wow.
Also impressive was Brink. They had a big screen set up and a guy with an English accent was giving live demos every hour or so. The game takes place on this floating island and you play as a soldier from one of two opposing factions. Your goal is to complete missions, but the twist is that the missions are generated by the AI. Your character class can be switched around during the battle and your missions are assigned to you based on the class you are playing. You can choose which mission you want to do from a pop-up menu, so you're not stuck having to do one thing. I think this is especially cool because I hate getting stuck on one mission! To me this approach could streamline and maximize the fun factor. There is an RPG element with your character as well. It wasn't made clear to me exactly what you would be improving stat-wise, but he did go over a pretty robust visual customization system. As your character progresses he (or she?) will have access to more armor and regalia. Also cool is this action button they built in where your character can intuitively move around the environment, traversing obstacles, and just not getting stuck on stuff. It looks pretty slick in action, and I can imagine it will be pretty important because the environments I saw were tangled, jungle-like mazes of metal and debris.
So PAX was sweet. There were a lot of great games there but Bayonetta and Brink were the two that really caught my eye.
Lets talk about games shall we? I only played one hands-on demo: Darksiders. It was pretty fun I guess. I walked away feeling like I had just played a next-gen God of War. You run around beating people with a sword and climbing things. The coolest part is that you can pick things up like people or cars. Grabbing enemies buy the neck and insta-killing them was pretty fun. So you're supposed to have a horse in the game but that wasn't in the demo. So... yeah, God of War.
Best demo I watched someone else play: Bayonetta. This one's been on my radar for about as long as Darksiders has. It's another third-person action hack-and-slash staring a... um, yeah the plot escapes me... she's a gun... witch? Whatever, she runs around killing stuff. The first guy I watched play the game was pretty good at it. I watched him take down two bosses. I think they were bosses; they were pretty epic. As she fought these huge monster things they destroyed the environment in ways that completely changed the battlefield. There were at least four "oh snap" moments in the 3 min of gameplay I witnessed. The shifting environment during the boss battles were half of them. The finishing moves used to kill the bosses were the other. Apparently the player's character has the ability to use her hair and clothes to turn giant beasties into piles of goo, and in a ludicrously spectacular manner. I'm not going to go into detail because you really have to just see it, but wow. Wow.
Also impressive was Brink. They had a big screen set up and a guy with an English accent was giving live demos every hour or so. The game takes place on this floating island and you play as a soldier from one of two opposing factions. Your goal is to complete missions, but the twist is that the missions are generated by the AI. Your character class can be switched around during the battle and your missions are assigned to you based on the class you are playing. You can choose which mission you want to do from a pop-up menu, so you're not stuck having to do one thing. I think this is especially cool because I hate getting stuck on one mission! To me this approach could streamline and maximize the fun factor. There is an RPG element with your character as well. It wasn't made clear to me exactly what you would be improving stat-wise, but he did go over a pretty robust visual customization system. As your character progresses he (or she?) will have access to more armor and regalia. Also cool is this action button they built in where your character can intuitively move around the environment, traversing obstacles, and just not getting stuck on stuff. It looks pretty slick in action, and I can imagine it will be pretty important because the environments I saw were tangled, jungle-like mazes of metal and debris.
So PAX was sweet. There were a lot of great games there but Bayonetta and Brink were the two that really caught my eye.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Seattle Bound
So this week I'm traveling to Seattle for the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo. This will be my first time in the state of Washington and my first "con". I know it's an "expo" but con is pretty accurate. Nerd con to be exact. I don't know if there is a more general purpose meeting place for all things nerd. The primary theme is video games of course, but just like the comic for which it is named PAX is about more than that. It's about our culture (nerd culture). I mean it grew out of a COMIC so there is another nerd cornerstone right there.
Anyway I'm going and it's going to be fun. I had hoped to bring a working demo of a game to show people but laziness prevailed and I haven't gotten much done on it. I'll will be working as an Enforcer, the volunteer army that runs the show. I'm hoping it will help me make some new friends and gain some industry contacts.
Speaking of PAX I've heard some new music recently. Penny Arcade shared this link in their latest post: http://2playerproductions.bandcamp.com/ It's an album from the 2008 Blip Festival which is all about using unconventional hardware to make music. Hardware like the Gameboy. There are 32 songs and I listened to about 10 or so. It's worth a look. Also search for "Gameboy music" on YouTube to see some neat-o videos about the making of such things. So then later I was checking out Nuklearpower.com and he had a link to these guys: http://metroidmetal.bandcamp.com/album/varia-suite. Checking out THEIR site I saw that low and behold they would be playing at PAX! This is cool because as I discovered from listening to those three tracks, these guys rock my ASS!! I'm thinking of ordering the album because like Austin Powers, that sort of thing really IS my bag baby.
Anyway I'm going and it's going to be fun. I had hoped to bring a working demo of a game to show people but laziness prevailed and I haven't gotten much done on it. I'll will be working as an Enforcer, the volunteer army that runs the show. I'm hoping it will help me make some new friends and gain some industry contacts.
Speaking of PAX I've heard some new music recently. Penny Arcade shared this link in their latest post: http://2playerproductions.bandcamp.com/ It's an album from the 2008 Blip Festival which is all about using unconventional hardware to make music. Hardware like the Gameboy. There are 32 songs and I listened to about 10 or so. It's worth a look. Also search for "Gameboy music" on YouTube to see some neat-o videos about the making of such things. So then later I was checking out Nuklearpower.com and he had a link to these guys: http://metroidmetal.bandcamp.com/album/varia-suite. Checking out THEIR site I saw that low and behold they would be playing at PAX! This is cool because as I discovered from listening to those three tracks, these guys rock my ASS!! I'm thinking of ordering the album because like Austin Powers, that sort of thing really IS my bag baby.
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