PAX Prime 2011 - A virtual tour, Part 3

I've been meaning to finish this off for awhile, so here is the final part of my tour of PAX.

A costume contest was being held, televised on a big screen. Unfortunately, I was waiting in line for Aliens: Colonial marines at the time, or I would have gotten much better shots.

It's Lollipop Chainsaw, the crazy game where you play as a cheerleader with a chainsaw that saws up zombies!

This game truly is ridiculous. Take a high school cheerleader, equip her with pom poms, a chain saw, and a severed head as her keychain, then throw in a good measure of zombies, zombies, and more zombies, then stir it to perfection. I played a 5-10 minute demo of an action sequence of the game, where I beat up oodles of zombies as well as a sub-boss. Various moves allow you to use your chain saw to decapitate the zombies and do other nasty things to them. Other moves allow you to do less damage to the zombies, but push them away so they can't attack you as easily so you can set up for another combo. If you were able to decapitate enough zombies at a time, you'd get a special move you could trigger to wipe out a large mob of zombies easily.

The game flowed really well, and was fun to play for the little time I had with it. It's a little hard to say if the game play will scale well to full size, but as of right now it's going on the buy list.

Lollipop chainsaw high school lockers. What do you think they had in the lockers?

That's right, Styrofoam chainsaws! Naturally. The chainsaws were a must have at PAX; everyone wanted one.

In the same area, 'Gotham City Impostors' was being demoed, the 'Bats' versus the 'Jokers' in a duel for domination!

An area shot, with 'The Songbird' from Bioshock: Infinite in the background. I was able to go through the line and get a snazzy poster...

...which I was able to get signed by some cool people who are involved with the game. In some fashion. Sadly, I don't know who they are, but they're still cool.

Seen on the skybridge at PAX, where a vendor was selling wooden weapons in the shapes of swords etc. "In Case of Kraken"

More "In case of" weapons. "In case of Nazi," "In Case of Omnipotent Alien Blowhard," "In case of Gorgon."

General scenery in the main exhibition hall.

More cool art from a game I know nothing about.

A robot thingy-majigger. Yeah. I identified that thing real good.

Valve's only exhibit at PAX - Counter Strike : Global Offensive

I sat and watched the exhibit on Counter Strike for some time, since I've played the original to death, for years and years. Sadly, I watched them play yet another remake of de_dust with reskinned graphics and weapons. I've already played the game and that map to death, so I wasn't terribly excited by more of the same, even if they had opened up a few alternate routes in the maps. You'll have to do better than that to capture my attention, Valve.

The facade was all metallic goodness, just like the style from the movies.

I sat and watched a fifteen minute presentation on this game, wherein we were shown a video of the actual game play. We were told that the game studio had gotten in touch with the people who had worked on the original Alien movie, and they were able to get environmental designs that were made for the film but were never used. Their goal, they claim, was to get back as close to the feel of the original films as possible.

From what I saw there, I have to say that they seem to have accomplished it. The aliens are scarier than ever, able to fit themselves into impossibly tight spaces as they close the distance to their prey. I watched as an alien squeezed itself between two crates dynamically. It looks like the AI and the capabilities of the aliens have gotten much better.

We were also told that the game focuses on the marines, as trying to make three complete stories is more difficult to do. While I agree with this in principle, since the last Aliens vs. Predators game felt unpolished, quite frankly playing as an alien has always been the most fun part of playing these games for me, so I'm sad to hear that we won't be able to do that here. Fortunately, it does look like the game will have everything you'd want in a xenomorph horror fest - good weapons, authentic sound effects, and a butt load of evil aliens who want to eat your face off.

Prototype 2! There was a competition on where you could win something if you did an awesome job pretending to kick the helicopter. I didn't do that, but I was able to see a fifteen minute presentation on the game.

The first game did a lot of things right - freedom of movement, mind bending capabilities, utter destruction. Unfortunately, what the game also had was a main character who was an ass, whom you couldn't sympathize with whatsoever. Supposedly, in this game your task is to hunt down the character you played in the first game, because he's an ass. That's a goal I can get behind.

Beyond that, they appeared to have retained the values that made the first game great - graceful movement, crazy unlock-able skills, and, oh yeah, upper cutting a helicopter. Additionally, it appears that you'll be able to combine different skills together to come up with new outrageous combinations, something you weren't capable of doing in the first game.

'Free hugs' people were roaming the halls at PAX. I took this photo, smiling at their energy. I intended to move on, but was told that the price for taking a photo was a free hug. I was then unceremoniously mercilessly hugged by them all. It was a real nice way to wrap up PAX.

And there you have it. PAX, the virtual tour in a nutshell. I hope you enjoyed it!

PAX Prime 2011 - A virtual tour, Part 2

Continuing on...

Upstairs people were kitting themselves out as zombies. They seem pretty jolly, for zombies.

These are new characters from 'Super' Monday Night Combat. Monday Night Combat is yet another game I sadly haven't tried yet, though I do have a copy via a Steam sale (so many Steam sales!)

Step just a little closer...

It looks like it would be hard to clean that pistol. Maybe it's powered by unearthly energy and doesn't need to be cleaned?

Jurassic Park! From Telltale Games! It's coming November 15th.

Jurassic Park games in progress. I DID get a chance to play this one.

From everything I saw before PAX, I thought the Jurassic Park games were just QTEs (Quick Time Events), albeit QTEs in the style of Heavy Rain, whereby missing one QTE wouldn't kill your character outright. This is true in some areas, but not in others. Thankfully, the game doesn't back up too much before giving you a second chance to get it right if you didn't do the event properly and ended up as chunky kibble bits.

However, QTEs are not the only thing about the game. It likes to break up the action with puzzle areas, when you get to explore and solve problems. As an example, I played a scene where the player needed to figure out how to herd the baby triceratops back into its pen. This required you to look around the area for the information necessary to solve the dilemma. In this case, it required a combination of using the manual controls for the gate as well as using the car's horn and lights to distract the dinosaur so I could get it back inside its pen.

This was then followed with a quick time event sequence where a tyrannosaur tried to eat my characters several times, which was great fun.

The graphics are nothing to write home about, and I found myself wishing they had gotten different voice actors, because they sounded incredibly bland. However, those were really the only two blemishes against the series. I'll probably check it out when it arrives.

The Battlefield 3 exhibit. I lost all interest in checking out Battlefield 3 once I found out EA has made it an Origins exclusive. I don't want to install their cruft on my computer. Steam is a known quantity, and EA hasn't proved to me yet that they can be a good citizen.

I *think* this was for League of Legends, but I could be wrong. Cool artwork is cool.

Tanks tanks tanks! It looks interesting, but I didn't try it. It's Free 2 Play, or Freemium, so you can go check it out if you like.

Some shells at the 'World of Tanks' booth. In grand Hollywood tradition, they're Styrofoam (I couldn't resist touching one).

Resident Evil: Operation Racoon City. It's slated for release sometime later this year. It supports four player co-op play, and is supposedly about playing Umbrella special forces trying to clean up the city from the zombie menace!

Is that a zombie? Blam blam blam.

APB: Reloaded artwork. The game is Free 2 Play, and I played it. For about a day. I'll have to post my review of it later. This artwork is neat, though. :)

More neat APB: Reloaded art work.

Upstairs in the console free play lounge. You took a ticket, looked at a list of games, and decided what you wanted to play. Then, you traded a form of ID for the game and went a played it for awhile. A neat idea PAX has done every year. There's also a free play room for PCs as well, where you can play for 45 minutes whatever games they have loaded on the boxes (usually it's a good selection).

The main escalator lobby, crowds going up an down. Up and down. A LOT. :)

A look out at the top of the escalators, from the fifth floor looking onto the fourth floor. The fourth floor had the exhibition hall, while the sixth floor has some more exhibitions as well as BYOC (Bring your Own Computer), various tournaments, and the freeplay rooms.

A view of the exhibition hall on the fourth floor, chock a block full of booths and people.

The really awesome looking 'Rift' booth. Rift is an MMORPG, and I usually don't play them. Sadly, that means I haven't played this one either. But it looks really cool anyway!

A closer look at the vines up top. It was really well done.

That's all I have time for today. Tune in next time for the final and last part of a tour through PAX!

PAX Prime 2011 - A virtual tour, Part 1

Now that I've finally covered all of the special interest areas of PAX, it's finally time to take a general tour through the exhibition hall and talk briefly about the various games I saw while I was there.

FireFall was everywhere at PAX. They clearly had a large budget for advertising this year vs. last year, when they first introduced the concept of the game.

Graphics about the game were posted all over the place in unexpected areas. They even had graphics applied to the sides of the escalators. There was even this gigantic tableau out in the foyer next to the Prototype 2 exhibit (which we'll see later). Periodically an animation would play in this model where the flaps that are currently laying on the ground in this picture would pneumatically lever themselves upward as if the pod was getting ready to blast off.

A close up of the lady figure. Who cares about the guy figure? :)

I didn't spend any time playing this game (shame on me!), but I was able to sign up to be entered into the 'beta,' which is apparently running now. Supposedly you just need to register here and you'll be put into the 'beta' pool, which is to say, you might get a chance to play the game eventually. I still haven't received an invitation, so clearly I am not cool enough to play.

Gears of War 3 is arriving in a few short weeks, so of course we had quite a bit of advertising material for it lying around, including this model of Marcus from the game. Impressive, but silly.

The 'Just Dance' series of games were a crowd favorite, just like they were last year. Elsewhere they also had a 'Just Dance 2' booth. Never underestimate the capability of normally introverted nerds to dance like crazy people in front of thousands if they get to play a game while doing it.

Unlike 'Just Dance 2,' which was a Wii exclusive, 'Just Dance 3' will also be on Xbox 360 and PS3. It's coming this October, so soon you too will have a chance to make a fool of yourself in front of your television.

More 'Just Dance' footage with the destructoid robot this time. Check out my earlier post from a few days ago for video of him dancing.

The scout trooper was getting down with his bad self.

This is what they do in the break room when they're not chasing Ewoks.

I bet he would've beaten Luke in a dance off.

'Guild Wars 2' had a large presence at PAX also. Unfortunately, I didn't brave the long lines to check it out. Some of that was because I haven't yet had a chance to try out 'Guild Wars 1' from when I picked it up during a Steam sale. My excitement should rise once I get a chance to play the first game.

Another shot of the 'Guild Wars 2' goodness with different lighting from later on.

Another shot of the same art flipped, downstairs in front of the t-shirt store.

Bethesda upped the ante for Skyrim by bringing a big old gigantic dragon to intimidate the crowds.

It's too bad it wasn't breathing fire out of its mouth. Better not give them any ideas...

RROAWR! It looked awesome. Sadly, again, I didn't go check out Skyrim. I wasn't overly enthralled with either Oblivion or Morrowind, the last two entries in the series. I think I'll wait and see on this game.

If I knew more about Dungeons & Dragons I could tell you who this guy is. But I don't. Oh well.

Messing with his cat would be a very bad idea, though.

The Songbird, the mysterious villain from Bioshock: Infinite! I actually stood through this line. They didn't have a presentation, sadly, but I was able to get a signed poster out of the deal. I'll post a picture of the poster some other time. Other people took a quiz on some artwork they were displaying to get a t-shirt (I should have taken photos of some of that art!)

Various companies show off their awesome case mods at PAX. I'm not sure I'd want my computer to be 'powered by a skull,' but it does look pretty cool.

RAGE guys! Sadly, yet another exhibit I didn't sit in line for.

Jace Beleren from the Magic universe! He likes to use Blue, which means he's a bastard, unsummoning all your creatures and cancelling all your good cards.

Liliana Vess, black magic witch extraordinaire. Apparently, she's going to be featured in the next magic set.

Time for a change in venue! This year, PAX also had game companies upstairs on the sixth floor. Sadly, they were a little more out of the way than the people on the main exhibition floors, but it did make it easier to get around and look at everything up there. Some really cool indie games were being shown there.

Take 'Uncle Slam,' for example. The idea is to select a president, then knock his teeth out.

"Why are you sitting down on the job, my good chap?"

The game is played on an iOS, so either an IPhone or an IPad. The IPad probably works best. You can maneuver your president forwards and backwards, then touch on the boxing glove you want to use and slide your finger in the direction you want to punch.

"Put up your dukes, I say, we need to decide whether to create a national bank."

If your health bar ran out, you were knocked out. Also, your energy bar would drain when you threw punches.

I turned out to be horrible at this game, unable to really connect properly with my boxing gloves. It was down to the wire, my health almost gone.

"My fiscal policy is obviously more sound!"

Things looked dire until I discovered that if you backed up, then rushed forward, you could knock down the other president, forcing him to get up. I rushed back and forth like a whirling dervish, determined to knock my opponent over.

I had no health left, but the match wasn't over! I rushed forward, pushing him over. I thought for sure he would get up and finish me off, but the bell rang. The round was over, and I was the winner! I'm still not sure how I won. Dumb luck, probably.

If you own the proper IDevice, I would recommend you get this game. The demo I played had around ten presidents, but they claim when they're finished they'll have all former presidents in game, right up to Obama. That will let you choose your favorite president and go at it in a Mike Tyson-esque punch out to the end!

That's all for tonight, stay tuned for a continued tour of the games I saw at PAX!