Games

PAX 2011 Report: Day 2, Part 2

By Zak Edwards
August 27, 2011 - 11:45

PAX Day 2, Part 2:

In Which a PAX n00b Gets Smacked in the Face... with Video Games!

    Welcome to the Bin’s PAX Report, my clever little blog about my musings about my first PAX, with my friends Chew, PattyTheCake, and Lunchbox, my veteran friends.

So it’s almost noon and I still haven’t encountered the Expo floor, so I meet PattyTheCake and Chew at the entrance for my first foray into the floor of infinite sounds, clicks, whirls, and bright lights.  Chew is wearing his zombie Sith Lord shirt, something PattyTheCake is obviously irked about (“I hate that shirt, it makes no sense”).

I was not prepared for this, in any capacity.  I mean, I’ve been to a Comic Convention, but that hardly compares.  At a comic convention, at least the one I’ve been to, everything is relatively quiet compared to PAX.  Every panel has a game or a video or something that’s loud and fun to look at.  People are lined up to play various games, competitive or just general interest.  So let’s go through some.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

    That’s right, the much anticipated Star Wars MMO, from Canadian powerhouse game company Bioware, is here at PAX, and PattyTheCake could not be happier.  So we waited in line for a fairly reasonable amount of time as they let people in groups.  We played a quick round taking place on Alderan, the point was to capture some turrets in order to point them at certain ships to take them down.  The game is a typical Bioware game in many ways: selecting attacks in real time while operating on a D20 pattern.  But the possibility of large group skirmishes was amazing.  There were plenty of times two characters would be fighting and you could get the drop on them, only to have someone do the same to you, until the fight grew and grew into complete pandemonium.  PattyTheCake and Chew both got the characters they wanted on side-by-side computers, which they were very excited about.  As a mercenary, PattyTheCake had access to plenty of cool weapons and a jet pack, complete with duel pistols.  Chew, almost by contrast, was an Empire juggernaut, a hulking brute dealing excessive amounts of damage with a great big red lightsaber.  Personally, I was a sith sorcerer class of sorts and mostly ran around attempting to ambush people with spells from afar.  Chew, not being much a team player, mostly abandoned me as a bodyguard sort to swing his lightsaber as much as possible, and PattyTheCake was simply nowhere to be found (although I did accidently attempt to cast a spell on him about midway through the match).  The game encourages teamwork, but most of our team was too dazzled by our characters and the game itself to do much of that.  We lost, but left satisfied with coupons for a free t-shirt.

Borderlands 2

So this wasn’t so much a demo as a line-up, complete with a girl handing out free t-shirts, to a mini-theatre of a brief playthrough to show off the new game.  No hands-on, but a walkthrough that revealed some cool things.  First off, the player was the newly revealed Gunzilla class: a bearded little guy who can temporarily wield two weapons as his activated power.  Apart from obviously improved AI that can work together and use the environment to a much greater advantage, the new creature enemies look awesome.  A giant, six armed white gorilla-type monster ran around, throwing pieces of debris at the character.  The gun system has been overhauled as well, with each gun manufacturer having distinctive ways of working.  Tediore guns can simply be throwing away, or at enemies, instead of reloading, and another company all have rotating barrels for every style of gun.  The run through was obviously heavily scripted, but showed off the new enemies, the enhanced AI, the guns, and the presence of a mini-map on the screen (everyone cheered when that was brought to our attention!), and I remain very excited about this game.

Spider-Man: The Edge of Time

I briefly played this game for a little bit, being curious about how it was turning out.  I am a huge fan of the Spider-Man games that let you just swing around and I habitually throw Ultimate Spider-Man just to swing around for a half an hour.  Unfortunately, this game is way more “story-oriented,” to quote the guy telling me about the game as a played.  The combat is fun, but dried quickly, and I’m less excited about it after the demo.  I played as Spider-Man 2099 and the system followed a fairly generic light attack, heavy attack, web balls, and grab you never use sort of formula.  Swinging was awkward too, and jumping around was pretty impaired by the camera.  On the plus side, they gave me a free disposable camera and all I had to do was give them a fake e-mail!

Orcs Must Die:

Before I get into this last one of the highlights of Friday, I have to say.  Game titles are getting pretty hilarious as of late, including “A Shooter Game” and, this Orcs Must Die.  A game that will be available on XBox Live, Orcs Must Die is a sort of tower defense that was amazing fun in its simplicity.  Basically, Orcs will break into a castle at designated points and its up to you to lay traps and stop them from getting to a certain point.  The round starts with the selection of various traps you will use against them, all costing a certain amount of money.  After laying down your initial traps, you press a button to Unleash the Horde! and run around, either shooting the Orcs with a crossbow, slicing them with a sword, or even an ice spell of sorts.  Killing orcs gives you more money to set up more traps.  The game was fun and I can foresee it becoming very addictive.

So, this has gone on long enough.  More for Saturday as it happens and as I have time to get away.

Until later,
PAX n00b

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12