01 August, 2009

PAX 2009: More Buttons, More Games

written by Blain Newport on Saturday, August 1, 2009

PAX is a month away. Button time.

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

I liked giving people a choice of buttons last year, one clean and one less clean. And while I like a lot of games, Jason from Blaster Master is my avatar on the PA boards, so I will stick to that theme.

If you don't remember, here are my buttons from last year.

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

At 1.5" across, my little depth of field trick gets lost. But I like knowing it's there.



The latest Rebel FM episode mentioned that some games that weren't playable at E3 had playable demos at Comic-Con. (On a related note, it seems like movies and games and other bigger business are pushing the comics out of Comic-Con. I wouldn't be surprised to see someone to start a smaller convention actually focused on comics in the next year or two.)

I found the Comic-Con coverage by Arthur Gies a bit perplexing. I enjoy Devil May Cry but haven't been able to get into Ninja Gaiden (and not for lack of trying). He feels the opposite way. But he very much liked Bayonetta, which has the same lead designer as the original DMC (Hideki Kamiya). This has me extra interested to see what my reaction to the game will be.

Dante's Inferno is a game in the same genre (challenging brawler) that I'm also interested to see. EA's marketing for the game has been shameful. But Gies said the game underneath is actually very good, which is surprising. Usually marketing only gets that desperate / sleazy when the underlying game isn't worth the media it's printed on.

Also Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time (which I will call R&C 6 to save typing) was playable. I love the R&C games. But playing R&C 5 in console freeplay at PAX was very disappointing. It actually felt worse than the PS2 incarnations. I'm hoping there was sun spot interference or emanations from evil psychic waffles that ruined that experience and that the demo for R&C 6 will get me wishing I wasn't too cheap to buy a PS3.

And last, but probably not least, Dead Space Extraction for the Wii may be playable. I recently purchased and enjoyed House of the Dead: Overkill for the Wii. It feels like a waste of the Wii's potential to relegate it to light gun games, but they're good for co-op, and people have been saying good things about Extraction.

No comments: