PAX Report 2009: Game Impressions
I just got home from Seattle yesterday morning. As most of you know, I attended my second PAX last weekend. This year, I did not spend all of my time in the exhibit hall like I did last year. So, I decided to give my game impressions its own post to avoid an obscenely long difficult-to-trudge-through report.
Shank
This is a beautiful, bloody, side scrolling, 2-D, beat ‘em up from a company called Klei. You are equipped with a pair of daggers, a pistol, and a chainsaw. It has good controls and smooth gameplay, but I believe is still early in development. The art style in this game is fantastic. One of the more memorable parts of the game is when you fight in front of a sunset. All you can see is the background, and all the characters are just black silhouettes.
I’ve never seen Desperado, but this game gave me that feel. Like some kind of Mexican Western thing going on. I played the last half of the demo, and ended up with a boss fight. He was, of course, 8x my size and the woman at the booth helped me get through it. I had to climb up walls when he charged at me, wait for a moment for him to stop, latch onto his shoulder (with my daggers), and then attack him.
The woman asked if I had any questions or suggestions. I asked if there was some sort of point system or if the game had some sort of number to tell me how many guys I mowed through. She answered and said they are still working that out, along with achievements. Unfortunately, this is the only game that I played all weekend that I had never heard of, but I definitely would like to play more of it.
Muramasa: The Demon Blade
I was really skeptical about this game when I first heard about it. I thought it would just have pretty artwork and that would be it. I started to read more about it on Kotaku, and became interested in playing it. Then I saw this http://kotaku.com/5347512/muramasa-ta-hits-the-big-time and was really interested. After seeing all this very adult-looking concept artwork, I was surprised to see how cutesy it the actual in-game graphics were.
This is a gorgeous looking game. Again, a side scrolling, 2-D beat ‘em up. The demo let me choose from Momohime or Kisuke, and of course I picked the pretty girl (whose kimono seemed to be missing most its bottom half). You can choose from different difficulty levels. I went through the tutorial, and the controls are some combination of random directions and A. Your sword has its own life bar, and when it runs out, you switch swords, pressing C. The other sword you just put away will slowly replenish its life. I ran around slicing things, and collecting glowie balls.
I actually had difficulty with running around and jumping too much (as you can jump very high), but I think that was just me not being so used to the Wii/nunchuck controller. I am interested to know the differences between playing Kisuke and Momohime. Also while playing this demo, I was also very pre-occupied with trying to see Momohime’s panties. Unfortunately, I never did. I will by the game and see if I can
Brutal Legend
I wonder what I can say about this game that has not already been said with all the previews and hype that I’ve been seeing for months now. I first found out about it while randomly coming across some incredible looking concept art for the game. Unlike Muramasa, the art got me interested in the game. I was able to watch the demo being played most of the way through a couple of times. I also played through a good chunk of it myself.
Well, Eddie has a battle-axe and a guitar. The battle-axe is for chopping up demons and the guitar is for putting them into some kind of electrocuted trance. At one point, I was running around in this crazy vehicle trying to run into parts of this monster thing. Of course the characters and the backgrounds were very dark and stylish. I liked the little doodle at the bottom that told you what song you were listening to (I am not sure what point of the game this was at, though). I am a slow person, so the controls (especially when I was driving around that car/truck thing) had a bit of a learning curve for me.
I think that Jack Black makes a huge part of this game. I was smiling and laughing a lot, not just through cut scenes, but through game play too. I was playing this demo on the 360, and I am curious to know the control/graphic differences for the PS3. I also plan on picking this game up. I am pretty sure for the 360, but I am not 100% on that just yet. Maybe I’ll wait for some reviews.
MySims Agents
I had never heard of this game. I am a big fan of the original MySims game and wasted a lot of time on it. I even sat through obscenely long and boring loading times for this game because nothing is better than being able to pick and choose who gets to live in your neighbourhood.
I saw this from afar and thought, “Ooh! MySims!” I ran up to it expecting to dress up my character in new clothes and build houses in more cute-themed neighbourhoods, and then it didn’t happen. I was pretty confused, aimlessly wandering around talking to NPCs and doing cute and useless things like making pizza. After I made my pizza, I laughed and said, “What is this? This is so pointless!” Suddenly, a developer appeared. “Do you have any questions about this game?” Yes, yes, I do. He guided me through how to play it and I realized it was a mystery-solving adventure game.
While I think this game would be great to play through with my nephew, I can’t see myself playing this on my own. I am really into life-simulation games like Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon. The first MySims was one of the games I got lost in, fantasizing that I could live my life telling people where to live, if they were allowed to live in my town, and building their houses. The original MySims was a pretty short game. When I heard they were making sequels, I was expecting something similar, but longer with more characters/neighbourhoods (and shorter load times ^o^). I’m interested to see where this is going, but will pass up on this game. I would still like to pick up MySims Kingdom, though.
Scribblenauts
This was a game I saw a lot of artwork/screens for, but didn’t know what it was about. I even watched some video with developer from this game talking about it, and still had no idea what it was about. It is yet another 2-D side scroller, but this time it’s a puzzle/platformer game.
I watched people play through different “levels”. Each level is made up of different obstacles or problems. You write nouns to make that word materialize into something that will help you get through the obstacles or solve problems. You can pretty much write anything (except for maybe “penis”). I had Fristle write “President” to see if he looked like Obama. Alas, the president that appeared was some old white guy in a blue suit.
The puzzles available for playing were really short. I can imagine them getting longer and more difficult as the game progresses. Funny enough, the puzzle I remember the most was not one that I played, but one that Fristle played. There was a kitty stuck in the tree, and you had to get him down. He wrote, “Tuna.” It was a large tuna that flopped around on the ground and kitty did not budge. So, he wrote, “cat food.” The cat food appeared and the kitty jumped down from the tree.
I played a level where you needed to hold two buttons down on the ground to make a door open for you to leave. There were lots of high places, so to get around, I wrote “Jet pack” and then wore it. Then I typed “rock” to place on the button. It was too small, so I wrote “boulder.” I wrote it twice and got both buttons covered.
Anyway, it is an extremely creative game and must’ve taken forever to program the tens of thousands of nouns in the game. I can see why it is such a big deal, and will definitely be picking it up.
Tekken 6
The last Tekken I really played was Tekken 3. I do remember enjoying this little Streets of Rage section of the game, that I thought was kinda fun, you know, back in 1998. So, instead of just displaying the actual main fighting part of the game, they had the Tekeen 6: Campaign Mode running. It looked like that little Streets of Rage thing in Tekken 3.
I was Xiaoyu, of course. Her moves still work the same. I was playing along side that new pink-haired character, who looked like she might have been really cheap considering she doesn’t run around. She flies around using some crazy-ass jet pack. Anyway, this mode sucked. I played as Xiaoyu for the only the first part. It was not an evironment you could fully utilize. There was some weird confined 2.5D thing going on, making moving around incredibly annoying. Like, you think you can move all over the street. It looks like it, but the game won’t let you. Then when that level ended I had to be some huge, slow robot thing in the street. Wait what?
Anyway, it sucked. Maybe I will eventually pick up Tekken 6, but definitely not for that mode. In the mean time, I’ll be on it at Gameworks.
Left4Dead 2
Okay, so when this was announced at E3, I, like everyone else, had a lot to say about it, but you can IM me if you want to hear all about that. Of course there was this huge L4D2 booth with 3-4 hour waits to play, but I was lucky enough to just accidentally run into the game at the Microsoft booth. I waited maybe like 20 minutes to play it.
I played through a level in “Dark Carnival”. I didn’t like that I couldn’t hear any of the characters talking, which is how you get to know the characters. I did hear the guns of course. I wasn’t really interested in the new guns or melee items. I think that might be because of my specific preferences for weapons in L4D. The level I was playing through had lots of carnival booths and rides that would be really good for hiding in during a versus match.
The new special infected were cool to see. You know what to call out when you get boomed or smoked, but being “charged”? I just made miscellaneous panic sounds. It seemed pretty easy to avoid a spitter. I wonder what difficulty level the game was set at. The jockey was also interesting because no one had to necessarily help you out. You just ran around like a 5-year-old after eating a couple of bowls of Fruit Loops.
I think it’s really unfortunate that I feel obligated to buy this. I don’t think this a completely new game. While I like new environments and clown zombies, I don’t like having to spend another $60 on something I pretty much already paid $60 for.
Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days
There is always some new Kingdom Hearts game coming out. I only played through the first one. Despite its extremely annoying camera angles and hearing “Under the Sea” for hours on end, it is a game that I love very very much. I played through Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, and it was actually pretty disappointing. I got addicted to it anyway, but never got around to Kingdom Hearts 2.
Here I was trying very very hard to play this demo. I don’t know anything about the game. I was one of the Organization XIII guys (that look like girls) and I had to use magic to defeat fire plant heartless. Too bad I never got the hang of using magic. When you attack, you just select attack. When you use magic, you select magic, and then press a button for a shortcut to a spell. It sounds simple, but really slowed me down. I don’t remember it being so annoying in the original game.
I played this demo for a good 20 minutes. I even tried to get one of the booth guys to help me out, but he was completely useless. I was hoping for a level to be playing on, but it was just these little arenas full of Heartless. Was this just a bad demo, or is this just a crappy game? I just need to go back to Kingdom Hearts 2.
Pixel Junk Shooter
I am a fan of these Pixel Junk games. They are simple, and have cute, colorful graphics. The only one I really played was Pixel Junk Monsters, which is a tower defense game. I love it and recommend it to anyone with a PS3. Anyway, I had never heard of Pixel Junk shooters until Fristle had pointed out that he wanted to play it.
This was my 4th 2-D side scroller of the weekend! I am used to these shooters where you point in one direction and move around. This time you move around and point your gun. I actually had great difficulty with this. The game really utilizes co-op as you have to get passed frozen or hot areas. You work together to get through them. For example, one person has a lava gun that melts ice, and the other has a water gun. So, if the other ship starts to overheat, you can shoot water at it. When you get through the areas, you save guys along the way.
I would have liked to have gotten a better grip on the controls. I knew it was just me because Mike and the guy I was playing with before hand were just fine with them. I’d like to play it more, but it’s definitely something you need to be playing with someone else. Maybe I will download the demo and see what my brother thinks of it or I’ll just stick with Pixel Junk Monsters.
Anne playing My Sims Agents
Originally uploaded by Fristle
I look so...into it... Hey, did you see my hat? It's AWESOME.
I don't have any deep insight into the games. How much can you get from playing a game for only 20 minutes anyway? Though, for future PAXes, I might carry around a little notebook so I can remember more of what I thought about the games I played.
Shank
This is a beautiful, bloody, side scrolling, 2-D, beat ‘em up from a company called Klei. You are equipped with a pair of daggers, a pistol, and a chainsaw. It has good controls and smooth gameplay, but I believe is still early in development. The art style in this game is fantastic. One of the more memorable parts of the game is when you fight in front of a sunset. All you can see is the background, and all the characters are just black silhouettes.
I’ve never seen Desperado, but this game gave me that feel. Like some kind of Mexican Western thing going on. I played the last half of the demo, and ended up with a boss fight. He was, of course, 8x my size and the woman at the booth helped me get through it. I had to climb up walls when he charged at me, wait for a moment for him to stop, latch onto his shoulder (with my daggers), and then attack him.
The woman asked if I had any questions or suggestions. I asked if there was some sort of point system or if the game had some sort of number to tell me how many guys I mowed through. She answered and said they are still working that out, along with achievements. Unfortunately, this is the only game that I played all weekend that I had never heard of, but I definitely would like to play more of it.
Muramasa: The Demon Blade
I was really skeptical about this game when I first heard about it. I thought it would just have pretty artwork and that would be it. I started to read more about it on Kotaku, and became interested in playing it. Then I saw this http://kotaku.com/5347512/muramasa-ta-hits-the-big-time and was really interested. After seeing all this very adult-looking concept artwork, I was surprised to see how cutesy it the actual in-game graphics were.
This is a gorgeous looking game. Again, a side scrolling, 2-D beat ‘em up. The demo let me choose from Momohime or Kisuke, and of course I picked the pretty girl (whose kimono seemed to be missing most its bottom half). You can choose from different difficulty levels. I went through the tutorial, and the controls are some combination of random directions and A. Your sword has its own life bar, and when it runs out, you switch swords, pressing C. The other sword you just put away will slowly replenish its life. I ran around slicing things, and collecting glowie balls.
I actually had difficulty with running around and jumping too much (as you can jump very high), but I think that was just me not being so used to the Wii/nunchuck controller. I am interested to know the differences between playing Kisuke and Momohime. Also while playing this demo, I was also very pre-occupied with trying to see Momohime’s panties. Unfortunately, I never did. I will by the game and see if I can
Brutal Legend
I wonder what I can say about this game that has not already been said with all the previews and hype that I’ve been seeing for months now. I first found out about it while randomly coming across some incredible looking concept art for the game. Unlike Muramasa, the art got me interested in the game. I was able to watch the demo being played most of the way through a couple of times. I also played through a good chunk of it myself.
Well, Eddie has a battle-axe and a guitar. The battle-axe is for chopping up demons and the guitar is for putting them into some kind of electrocuted trance. At one point, I was running around in this crazy vehicle trying to run into parts of this monster thing. Of course the characters and the backgrounds were very dark and stylish. I liked the little doodle at the bottom that told you what song you were listening to (I am not sure what point of the game this was at, though). I am a slow person, so the controls (especially when I was driving around that car/truck thing) had a bit of a learning curve for me.
I think that Jack Black makes a huge part of this game. I was smiling and laughing a lot, not just through cut scenes, but through game play too. I was playing this demo on the 360, and I am curious to know the control/graphic differences for the PS3. I also plan on picking this game up. I am pretty sure for the 360, but I am not 100% on that just yet. Maybe I’ll wait for some reviews.
MySims Agents
I had never heard of this game. I am a big fan of the original MySims game and wasted a lot of time on it. I even sat through obscenely long and boring loading times for this game because nothing is better than being able to pick and choose who gets to live in your neighbourhood.
I saw this from afar and thought, “Ooh! MySims!” I ran up to it expecting to dress up my character in new clothes and build houses in more cute-themed neighbourhoods, and then it didn’t happen. I was pretty confused, aimlessly wandering around talking to NPCs and doing cute and useless things like making pizza. After I made my pizza, I laughed and said, “What is this? This is so pointless!” Suddenly, a developer appeared. “Do you have any questions about this game?” Yes, yes, I do. He guided me through how to play it and I realized it was a mystery-solving adventure game.
While I think this game would be great to play through with my nephew, I can’t see myself playing this on my own. I am really into life-simulation games like Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon. The first MySims was one of the games I got lost in, fantasizing that I could live my life telling people where to live, if they were allowed to live in my town, and building their houses. The original MySims was a pretty short game. When I heard they were making sequels, I was expecting something similar, but longer with more characters/neighbourhoods (and shorter load times ^o^). I’m interested to see where this is going, but will pass up on this game. I would still like to pick up MySims Kingdom, though.
Scribblenauts
This was a game I saw a lot of artwork/screens for, but didn’t know what it was about. I even watched some video with developer from this game talking about it, and still had no idea what it was about. It is yet another 2-D side scroller, but this time it’s a puzzle/platformer game.
I watched people play through different “levels”. Each level is made up of different obstacles or problems. You write nouns to make that word materialize into something that will help you get through the obstacles or solve problems. You can pretty much write anything (except for maybe “penis”). I had Fristle write “President” to see if he looked like Obama. Alas, the president that appeared was some old white guy in a blue suit.
The puzzles available for playing were really short. I can imagine them getting longer and more difficult as the game progresses. Funny enough, the puzzle I remember the most was not one that I played, but one that Fristle played. There was a kitty stuck in the tree, and you had to get him down. He wrote, “Tuna.” It was a large tuna that flopped around on the ground and kitty did not budge. So, he wrote, “cat food.” The cat food appeared and the kitty jumped down from the tree.
I played a level where you needed to hold two buttons down on the ground to make a door open for you to leave. There were lots of high places, so to get around, I wrote “Jet pack” and then wore it. Then I typed “rock” to place on the button. It was too small, so I wrote “boulder.” I wrote it twice and got both buttons covered.
Anyway, it is an extremely creative game and must’ve taken forever to program the tens of thousands of nouns in the game. I can see why it is such a big deal, and will definitely be picking it up.
Tekken 6
The last Tekken I really played was Tekken 3. I do remember enjoying this little Streets of Rage section of the game, that I thought was kinda fun, you know, back in 1998. So, instead of just displaying the actual main fighting part of the game, they had the Tekeen 6: Campaign Mode running. It looked like that little Streets of Rage thing in Tekken 3.
I was Xiaoyu, of course. Her moves still work the same. I was playing along side that new pink-haired character, who looked like she might have been really cheap considering she doesn’t run around. She flies around using some crazy-ass jet pack. Anyway, this mode sucked. I played as Xiaoyu for the only the first part. It was not an evironment you could fully utilize. There was some weird confined 2.5D thing going on, making moving around incredibly annoying. Like, you think you can move all over the street. It looks like it, but the game won’t let you. Then when that level ended I had to be some huge, slow robot thing in the street. Wait what?
Anyway, it sucked. Maybe I will eventually pick up Tekken 6, but definitely not for that mode. In the mean time, I’ll be on it at Gameworks.
Left4Dead 2
Okay, so when this was announced at E3, I, like everyone else, had a lot to say about it, but you can IM me if you want to hear all about that. Of course there was this huge L4D2 booth with 3-4 hour waits to play, but I was lucky enough to just accidentally run into the game at the Microsoft booth. I waited maybe like 20 minutes to play it.
I played through a level in “Dark Carnival”. I didn’t like that I couldn’t hear any of the characters talking, which is how you get to know the characters. I did hear the guns of course. I wasn’t really interested in the new guns or melee items. I think that might be because of my specific preferences for weapons in L4D. The level I was playing through had lots of carnival booths and rides that would be really good for hiding in during a versus match.
The new special infected were cool to see. You know what to call out when you get boomed or smoked, but being “charged”? I just made miscellaneous panic sounds. It seemed pretty easy to avoid a spitter. I wonder what difficulty level the game was set at. The jockey was also interesting because no one had to necessarily help you out. You just ran around like a 5-year-old after eating a couple of bowls of Fruit Loops.
I think it’s really unfortunate that I feel obligated to buy this. I don’t think this a completely new game. While I like new environments and clown zombies, I don’t like having to spend another $60 on something I pretty much already paid $60 for.
Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days
There is always some new Kingdom Hearts game coming out. I only played through the first one. Despite its extremely annoying camera angles and hearing “Under the Sea” for hours on end, it is a game that I love very very much. I played through Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, and it was actually pretty disappointing. I got addicted to it anyway, but never got around to Kingdom Hearts 2.
Here I was trying very very hard to play this demo. I don’t know anything about the game. I was one of the Organization XIII guys (that look like girls) and I had to use magic to defeat fire plant heartless. Too bad I never got the hang of using magic. When you attack, you just select attack. When you use magic, you select magic, and then press a button for a shortcut to a spell. It sounds simple, but really slowed me down. I don’t remember it being so annoying in the original game.
I played this demo for a good 20 minutes. I even tried to get one of the booth guys to help me out, but he was completely useless. I was hoping for a level to be playing on, but it was just these little arenas full of Heartless. Was this just a bad demo, or is this just a crappy game? I just need to go back to Kingdom Hearts 2.
Pixel Junk Shooter
I am a fan of these Pixel Junk games. They are simple, and have cute, colorful graphics. The only one I really played was Pixel Junk Monsters, which is a tower defense game. I love it and recommend it to anyone with a PS3. Anyway, I had never heard of Pixel Junk shooters until Fristle had pointed out that he wanted to play it.
This was my 4th 2-D side scroller of the weekend! I am used to these shooters where you point in one direction and move around. This time you move around and point your gun. I actually had great difficulty with this. The game really utilizes co-op as you have to get passed frozen or hot areas. You work together to get through them. For example, one person has a lava gun that melts ice, and the other has a water gun. So, if the other ship starts to overheat, you can shoot water at it. When you get through the areas, you save guys along the way.
I would have liked to have gotten a better grip on the controls. I knew it was just me because Mike and the guy I was playing with before hand were just fine with them. I’d like to play it more, but it’s definitely something you need to be playing with someone else. Maybe I will download the demo and see what my brother thinks of it or I’ll just stick with Pixel Junk Monsters.
Anne playing My Sims Agents
Originally uploaded by Fristle
I look so...into it... Hey, did you see my hat? It's AWESOME.
I don't have any deep insight into the games. How much can you get from playing a game for only 20 minutes anyway? Though, for future PAXes, I might carry around a little notebook so I can remember more of what I thought about the games I played.