written by Blain Newport on Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Every year at PAX, I seem to pick a different focus. In 2004, it was the bands. In 2007 it was the panels. In 2008, it was freeplay. And this year, it was the expo. I, for some reason, was really dedicated to getting my hands on piles of games I probably won't play for a very long time.
Recommended listening for this post is the Borderlands Line Jam which I composed while standing in line for Borderlands. (Guh.)
The Scale
THE AWESOME = I must play this game.
THE GOOD = I want to play this game.
THE MEH = Bargain bin, maybe?
THE PYUCKY = My demo experience sucked. If it gets good reviews, I'll think about it.
THE AWESOME
Bayonetta (2010)
Oh. Dip. Bayonetta looks fabulous. It plays wonderfully. The demo is a bit easy, but that's adjustable. And the special torture attacks were cool. The loading screen is also a combo training screen, a very nice touch. I wish I was playing it right now. I also hope it has an adjustable nudity option. I don't mind when she fights in a one piece bathing suit, but when she's wearing less than that it feels exploitative and pointlessly so since the game is great without it.
Dust: An Elysian Tail (?)
A downloadable indie game for the 360, I thought the characters on screen were too big for a side scrolling brawler at first. But the game makes it work. I don't remember suffering any offscreen attacks. And the controls were both responsive and made me feel like a clever badass. Using the backward dash to flip around and dash forward, or zip under a monster trying to jump over me and attack me in the back, thereby foiling it's move and setting me up to hit it in the back was delightful. I want to see more.
Ratchet & Clank 6 (A Crack in Time) (2009)
They had separate stations for the Clank parts and Ratchet parts. The Ratchet parts were as one would expect. Run around. Blow stuff up. There was an addition by the way of destructible terrain that was welcome. But for the most part, it was what I know and love. More interesting were the new Clank time puzzles.
I stood on a time platform and hit record. I ran over and stood on a button which raised a lift. I stopped recording. Then I stood on a second time platform and hit record. I got on the lift which was activated by first me and hit a button which opened a door. I stopped recording. Then I went back to the first time platform and hit record. I went to the lift button to send second me up the lift. Then I went through the door second me opened, completing the puzzle. It feels to me like just the right balance of running around and thinking to be puzzly, but not bog down the game.
Dark Void (2010)
They got zooming around in a scarily overpowered jet pack so right in this game. I didn't even want to bother with the combat parts. I just wanted to see if I could fly straight down cliff faces and skim the water and pull off a U-turn right before hitting a cliff and just generally go nuts with the flying. The combat wasn't broken or anything, but flying was big fun.
THE GOOD
Borderlands (2009)
My first demo wasn't so great. Controlling the sniper with the game pad is lame. There's not enough fine control. I ended up using melee attacks mostly. But on the PC, it should be much better. And my second demo, I fell into a nice groove of blowing the crap out of guys with a giant shotgun which had a crazy "six shells on a round plate" loading mechanism. The random guns initially sounded like a pointless gimmick, but I found myself liking my gun a little extra because I knew it was a rare combination of components.
The game is a bit slow, which is fine for co-op, where there's so much going on that it needs to be slow to be manageable. I'm not sure if the single player game won't drag a bit, though.
Overall, it felt like the loot and shoot cycle will make it a grind that I will eventually love.
Diablo 3 (2011)
It's Titan Quest. I will play and enjoy it at some point. It sucked being the barbarian because I whiffed a lot. :(
Mass Effect 2 (2010)
The shooting in Mass Effect was decent. If it holds up, it will be the first BioWare game I'll play all the way through since Shattered Steel. :O
God of War 3
It's God of War. The demo doesn't go through the head pulling off sequence, so I still don't know if that's going to be unpleasant. But the centaur disemboweling didn't bother me. I also didn't find the combat to be much of an advancement, so it still feels like it's a class below Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden.
The Saboteur (2009 maybe)
It's kind of like Mercs 2 in World War 2, which makes sense since it's also made by Pandemic. They do interesting stuff with color. Nazi controlled areas are in black and white. Enemies are highlighted in red. Friendly buildings (and troops, I assume) are highlighted in yellow. The overworld was a little large and I got lost. But the game itself seemed decent.
Uncharted 2 (2009)
There were some definite issues with the game. Aiming was decent, but not great. The bad guys seemed to have constant motion blur on them, even when they weren't moving. It was like being attacked by ghosts or enemies only partway in our dimension. The character conversations, which are supposed to be a strong point, were lost in the din of the convention center. The fact that this game didn't have headphones and Wet did was pretty messed up.
THE MEH
Muramasa: The Demon Blade (2009)
The Odin Sphere folks make another very pretty but not very fun action game. Dust: Elysian Tail makes this game feel very clunky.
Red Faction: Guerrilla (PC) (2009)
Available in PC Freeplay, RFG had some frame rate issues and the controls had not been well adapted to mouse and keyboard. It's better than Saints Row 2, which is unplayable on my machine, but I'll still hold off until I pick up a console as that's obviously where it's meant to be played.
Fairytale Fights (2009)
A brawler that combines cutesy style with extreme violence. I didn't find the controls that good. It was easy to misjudge angles and miss enemies.
Dante's Inferno (2009)
It's God of War, only not quite as good. The art style was cool. But every time a new big monster entered in a cinematic, looked at the screen, and roared it felt like such amateurish badassery I wanted to laugh. It's a good thing this game is coming out months before God of War 3 and on more platforms.
Invincible Tiger (2009)
A basic 2D brawler with the gimmick of 3D glasses to make things appear 3D. The effect basically worked, but didn't help the rudimentary gameplay, and hurt my eyes after a little while. Of course, the same could be said of nVidia's much more expensive 3D setup for Resident Evil 5, so at least Namco wasn't wasting too much money on their release.
Magna Carta 2 (2009)
As an action RPG, Magna Carta 2 looked fine. The guy demoing it was helpful and had a good sense of humor. It's just a very old school JRPG (androgynous teens saving the world while recovering from lots of amnesia) and therefore not for me.
Star Trek Online (?)
I'm not big into MMOs in the first place. But positive press from PC Gamer made me want to check this one out. I was not impressed. My ship couldn't maneuver for crap forcing me to rely on phasers and actually turn away from bad guys so I could shoot them in the back with torpedoes as they passed. It was not fun. The ground combat was better. I could run around and melee bad guys or snipe them or just blast away. But in both cases, the fighting was easy to the point that I didn't feel like I'd gotten much of an experience by playing the demo.
Split Second (2010)
Much like Magna Carta 2, this was an obviously solid game for its genre. It's just a genre I don't particularly care about. It's racing, but when you draft or drift you power up the ability to blow up parts of the track, dropping obstacles onto opponents and opening shortcuts. It looks good. It feels good. It may be a hit at future LAN parties.
Wet (2009)
The aiming in this game wasn't very good. For the most part it was easy enough that this didn't matter, but in the freeway sequence it made it difficult to actually finish. It'll probably be simple mindless fun when it's on clearance (and turned down to easy).
THE PYUCKY
Dead Space Extraction (2009)
My demo for Dead Space Extraction was lame. Apparently the person before me had used up all the good ammo and left me in a crappy situation. Also the game is harder if there's a second controller active, even if it's not doing anything at all, so I was extra boned.
Army of Two: The 40th Day (2010)
I haven't played Gears on 360. If you expect me to automatically know Gears controls to play your game, don't be surprised if I don't have any fun. To borrow a phrase from Dr. Zoidberg "Your demo was bad and you should feel bad."
Spyborgs (2009)
Some enthusiast press said this game might actually be good. The cinematics I saw online were so bad they gave me cancer, but I decided I should at least try it. Unfortunately the demo stations were left at the start of a lava level full of giant robots which was way too hard to just jump into. :(
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