Monday, September 12, 2011

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!

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