PAX 2010

My PAX 5

This was my third year going to PAX and it was a blast, as always, albeit exhausted (I counted having played over 30 games on the show floor). I feel like last year was a little better because there were more games I was pumped to see and less people there, but this year was bigger (the main theater was moved out of the convention center to Benaroya Hall - maybe it'll be the Paramount next year). Anyway, per tradition, I'd like to list out the top 5 games that I saw. I obviously didn't play everything and I'm not a journalist so I just did what I could with the schedule of stuff I wanted to see.

5. Infamous 2 - I was a little surprised how much fun this was to play. It was just a very satisfying experience overall and the controls just seemed to click with me, possibly better than with other people. The demo showed off how the camera does some automatic camera zooms for stylistic fighting, which I could see getting annoying after all, and it showed off a fair bit of rampant destruction of the city at your hands. I didn't really play the original, but I'll have to keep my eye on this.

4. Star Wars Force Unleashed 2 - My friend doesn't agree with me on this, but I think Lucasarts made an enormous improvement over the original here. The demo of the original was so bad that I didn't even finish it - I just couldn't get force grip to go my way. Ultimately, force grip is very hard to nail down with a normal game controller and may be better for something more like the PS Move controller where you can gesture in 3-D space. Anyway, the demo they had was pretty long and I had a ton of fun tossing around storm troopers and just being a Jedi (or is it Sith?) badass. Give this one a try before you knock it.

3. Epic Mickey - I think fanfare was low for this one because it's a Disney game rather than a big video game property. Still, I thought it was pretty creative. The graphics weren't that great (better than I expected for the Wii), but the gameplay was something different and I, for one, appreciated that. I don't think Disney games appealing to an older audience are so common that this game is a write-off. The visual style is superb and it brought back so much nostalgia of playing Mickey Mania back in day, even though it has nothing to do with it. Anyway, the game hinges on you using a paint brush to thin out (i.e. remove) pieces of the world or painted in parts that are missing. It lends itself to some great puzzle elements so I'd probably call it an adventure game more than anything else.

2. Donkey Kong Country Returns - If there's one game that Wii owners need to look forward to, it's this one. I adored this series growing up. I didn't own any of them, but I rented and beat each of them (actually rented from Phar-mor, remember when they existed?). My heart grew three sizes seeing the love they put into bringing this franchise back. It's so great that they preserved the 2-D nature of the game while upgrading the graphics (very well, I might add, despite being on the Wii). The gameplay felt just as cute, clever, and fun as it did growing up, and I definitely see it being a great party game (well, a party for nerds, that is).

1. Portal 2 - Even though it wasn't playable, this game looks like it's what we've been patiently waiting for since Portal came out what seems like forever ago. Aside from being more of what we came to know and love, it has co-op (including the ability to hug - chest bump will probably be in Portal 3) and newer guns (actual I think from Tag, which I covered last year) for painting surfaces to make you faster or bounce around, etc. The only problem was that the puzzles seemed very difficult, but I imagine it'll be back next year since they have over a year to go on it. That'll give them a chance to make it even longer and see people struggle with how difficult the puzzles are (or, hopefully, to make it easier to chew for more gamers).

I do have a few honorable mentions that didn't make the list:

• Duke Nukem Forever was the biggest news of PAX, by far. That's right, after 10+ years, they really are doing a sequel to the iconic FPS Duke Nukem 3D. It didn't make my list because I didn't wait in the 2-4 hour line to play it. I decided that my priorities lied in other stuff going on during PAX. My friend played it and it convinced him to pre-order it as soon as he can. It's apparently just as fun as it used to be with the humor intact and much longer. This game stands to be pretty huge though, especially judging from the great lengths people went through to play it at PAX. I managed to find some probably illicit videos of it online and it definitely looks awesome, but I can only imagine the outcries against it when it comes out given how crude it is. They should be releasing videos soon for the rest of us to see it - it doesn't seem to be vaporware this time around though. By the way, I think this was the first major game to be announced at PAX, which is a pretty awesome achievement for what started as a tiny indie games expo in Bellevue.
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  LittleBigPlanet 2 was fun, but my playtime with it didn't involve much of the super new stuff, I'm afraid. The level we played was trying to protect these Sackbots and it was very cute. The new costumes were also really neat. I can't say I'm amped for this game since it's nothing revolutionary, but I will be getting it at some point because it's looking very good.
• Killzone 3 deserves a shout-out because (aside from them giving out the best quality shirts) it was so fun we played it twice. The graphics were some of the best on the show floor. I wasn't sure whether to put it on my list at #5 or not, but ultimately it was just another FPS. It was neat how you chose a class and had abilities based on that class, like cloaking and stuff, and the gameplay modes were cool, but nothing really new. Just a triple A FPS. They did have it in 3-D and with the Move controller, but I played some third person shooter in 3-D and it hurt my head - I didn't bother trying with the Move controller.

• NBA Jam is back, and playing it very much took me back to middle school where I used to play it all the time when guests my age came over. It's as fun an arcade basketball game as ever, and actually transferred pretty well, visually, to the Wii.
• I'm not big on action games, but I thoroughly enjoyed Marvel vs. Capcom 3, even if I did get owned. The character models and gameplay are the high quality you'd expect from this series.
• Similarly, Mortal Kombat was a return to form. You can see some footage of it here - fatalities are back and bloodier than ever. A couple of them were so disturbing I shudder to describe them - no one under the age of 17 should be in the same room as this game's disc, but it will be a great ride for the rest of us.
• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood was playable in multiplayer and, while the graphics didn't impress me, it was fun. I think it would get repetitive after a while because it's just about trying to stay hidden until you find your target and kill them, but it seems like something that would be fun once in a while. You get a new target once you kill yours, but of course you're also someone else's target and have to be on the lookout for anyone suspicious since there are clones of all the players walking around under AI control that are not actually assassins.
• I didn't get any time with the Kinetic, but I tried out the Playstation Move a bit and it seemed fun. Not really a game changer, but I noticed better accuracy than with the Wiimote. Supposedly, it's hit or miss and I only played one game with it, but we'll see what happens with it.

And a few dishonorable mentions, real quick:

• Bethesda really missed with Hunted. It's a medieval take on Army of Two with very clumsy controls. Nothing at all was compelling about this game, and it actually froze before we could finish the demo. I was actually glad it froze so I could leave.
• I don't know why Sega was showing off Conduit 2. If anything, they should lock it away in a box so no one knows it exists. Aside from being by far the ugliest game I saw all weekend, the controls were really bad and the AI was even worse. Nothing redeemed this Wii FPS, except that you could relax your frustrations by moving three steps to the left to try out Sonic Colors, which is classic Sonic in 3-D and on speed.

PAX Keynote

Warren Spector, associated with many great classic games including Deus Ex and Wing Commander, gave the keynote this year and it was the best PAX keynote I've seen (I never saw the Wheaton one). Unfortunately, there's not a video online yet with the most poignant part of his speech, but he basically made the claim some considered quite bold that video games are the medium of the century much like books were ages ago and movies were last century. Every new form of media faces resistance before it makes it big, and video games are growing to the point that they're becoming the ultimate multimedia experience. I've always considered them to be that way because of the ridiculous music quality and, often, voice acting nowadays, but the growth of PAX and the revenues of the industry as a whole are proof that it's becoming more and more mainstream.

He also went into a diatribe, and rightly so, about a case that has reached the Supreme Court on whether video games can be censored by the government (i.e. what games can and can't be sold). It will effectively revoke the right of free speech to video games if the governator wins, and single-handedly bring the industry to its knees. Please join the fight for rights for video games - it's not fair for the government to tell us what we can and can't create if it doesn't have a net negative effect on society.

Real Tech News

Ok, so quite a bit of stuff happened last week, and yet I'm out of time here. I had a bigger to do list today than I was hoping for and I already have spent way too much time on this post, so I'm going to quickly touch on what I thought was the biggest stories from last week before I wrap this puppy up.

Apple had a big press event where the main thing announced was a new Apple TV at a $99 price point and integrated with Netflix and TV show rentals (just $1), as well as YouTube and Flickr. It seems like a device that would've saved Blockbuster if they thought of it two years ago. There's also a new shuffle (with buttons) at $50 for 2 GB, a stupidly small iPod nano with touchscreen starting at $150 for 8 GB, and a new iPod Touch in line with the new iPhone starting at $230. You can drill into these things in more detail here, but I personally am impressed by the Apple TV offering and I think it totally stands a fighting chance against Roku (that's the only direct competitor it really has, to be honest). There's also some silly social networking music thing they're trying to do and a new iTunes with somewhat strange UI choices.

Palm is working on version 2.0 of webOS and the biggest improvements are card grouping (kind of like on Windows 7 task bar does with windows) and a display when docked that passively shows information (I assume stuff like stock tickers and news headlines). Other cool features under-the-hood: outside developers can extend Synergy for better integration with your address book, background services can be written in Javascript (leads to performance improvements over Java and easier to write for many mobile developers versus C), and applications can provide information to make their data searchable from global search. I really hope it's not too little too late because I love webOS from a user experience standpoint.

Say goodbye to national broadband - it's just not feasible.

Gmail has launched the coolest feature it has released in a while: Priority Inbox. It has an algorithm for figuring out what mail is most important to you and bubbling that up to the top above your mailing lists and other junk based on your behaviors and what it knows are sites just selling you stuff, but you can also add in your input to help the algorithm out. I've been using it and have been very impressed - it's really helping me manage my unread items better because you can create subsections within your inbox view and stack them however you want.

I'll leave you with this awesome video from PAX. If you liked it, please support Paul & Storm (you'll have to click through it to YouTube to play in HD - it won't fit in my layout at that size):

PAX 2009

PAX is really just a three letter word for how to spend your Labor Day weekend being a total, unabashed nerd. It was at least as fun this year as last year - I really don't know how to measure fun but it was definitely a great show. It was surprisingly well run (except for a couple of instances where enforcers were arranging lines in a stupid way or not letting people into an event that wasn't full), and actually quite a bit bigger than last year. I don't remember PC free play being over 400 computers last year, or console free play being anywhere near as big as it was (I swear both these rooms must've more than quadrupled in size). A number of improvements were made that made a lot more sense, like moving the artists' storefronts and moving the Penny Arcade store in favor of better arranging the game booths. I definitely saw a lot of games (by no means did I see all the games there, that's near impossible if you want to see any panels), so I'd like to go into my top picks, some other honorable mentions, and then the games I was really unimpressed with it. I've also got some other fun bonus stuff.

My Top 5

I'm going to work through my 5 favorite titles in reverse order. Unlike last year, I don't know if these were the five best games out there. I saw a lot of stuff I liked so I decided that these would be the 5 games I enjoyed the most.

5. Split Second

When I first glanced at this game, I remember my impression being, "Oh great, another Burnout - I don't need to waste my time here." Hearing Dan's excitement for Split Second at the Totally Rad Show panel pushed me to follow my friends into the booth when they went to check it out, and I was shocked by how fun it was. First of all, it was gorgeous. Yes, I had to italicize "gorgeous" just to emphasize how blown away I was. It's one of these racing games where you're driving super fast all the time and so the fact that I could still notice wonderful detail in the backgrounds is pretty impressive. The twist in this game is that at certain points in the race you can trigger events to screw over other racers. For example, with the touch of a button you can blow up the base of an air traffic control tower to have it crash on the track in the way of an opponent. These animations are slick and feel massive without taking you out of the fact that you're still in a race. We stayed at this booth for a while because we were so sucked into it, and each time one of us played it (we all played the same track), it felt like an entirely different race. It looks like it will be a great cross-platform arcade racer.

4. The New Super Mario Brothers

This game had to make the list for nostalgia value, if nothing else. New Super Mario Bros. takes the experience you had playing Mario on the NES or SNES and modernizes it without sacrificing the joy you had as a kid. Not only that, but it borrows a bit from LittleBigPlanet with the idea of co-opetition - so you can play with up to 3 other people but also fight with them for coins and upgrades and such. For example, you can jump on a yoshi and swallow your friend. The controls are just about as simple as they were back on the NES, and I think it'll almost certainly become a must-have title for the Wii.

3. Scribblenauts

Any list of great games at PAX that doesn't include Scribblenauts is automatically unreliable. This game always had a huddled mass of people around it because of how innovative it is. It may have been the most innovative game on the show floor. The concept is simply that it's a puzzle platformer where you can have anything you can think of to get you out of tough situations. You just write out the noun you want and it will magically appear in front of your character (some proper nouns are covered, too). So if you come upon a bad guy, a ray gun can be created. If you just want to fly through the level you can get a space ship. Half of the fun is really just trying to stomp the game. I love the idea that two people can play the same level in almost entirely different ways. The graphics are about as good as one can expect from a DS game, but it just shows that having great graphics isn't a pre-requisite to being a great game. I'm still marveling at the technical achievement of getting the game to recognize so many different nouns.

2. God of War 3

I've been waiting for this game for months now, so it's not surprising that I had a lot of fun getting my hands on God of War III at last. I actually hadn't even played the first two games in the series, but God of War: Collection is now available for pre-order with updated graphics from the two titles as well as trophy support, so I just went ahead and pre-ordered that. Having no experience with the franchise I did embarrassingly bad compared to everyone else who had played through the demo while I was in line, but I still had a lot of fun. I have a feeling that they're still working out a couple of kinks with the controls (which may be why the demo isn't publicly available), but it was definitely visually stunning and had very solid, epic action. The AI surely didn't mess around - you felt like you were really fighting 5+ enemies at once, not like they were being spoonfed to you. The variety of ways you could take them on was really awesome, too. It's definitely a game to be excited about.

1. Shank

Shank was definitely my biggest surprise at PAX. I heard about it at the Totally Rad Show panel, but playing it really is believing. I can show you a video of it, but it's not going to really seem as special as it does when you're playing it. I don't think I smiled or said "holy crap this is awesome" more times while playing any other game at PAX. I grew up on beat em ups like Final Fight and Streets of Rage, so this game definitely took me back. Apparently, from talking to one of the guys at the booth the game's creators were inspired by the games I fell in love with growing up. First of all though, the visual style was excellent. It did justice to forefathers of the genre while still feeling like a comic book brought to life. More importantly, the gameplay mechanics were simply and addictive. It's definitely really violent, but in a really cartoonish way that I tend to enjoy. It brought me a frightening, boyish glee to pounce on a guy a drive a chainsaw through his chest. I'd never do that in real life, but my mind rationalizes doing it in a game just fine.

Other Great Games

There were a number of other games that I checked out that I was impressed with as well.

• I got to play The Beatles: Rock Band on a stage (I took bass guitar) and thoroughly enjoyed it. I actually didn't know that it supported multiple mics. The special bass, other than being a great replica of Paul McCartney's, didn't seem to be especially different from my normal Rock Band guitar. Anyway, the visual style of the game is pretty much perfect and I think I'm going to have to pick this one up once I get through all the games sitting on my shelf begging to be played.
  
• I only watched other people play Brütal Legend, but it still looked like a blast. I laughed multiple times and it had plenty of visual polish.


• I really regret running out of time to play Heavy Rain, but I did spend a while watching someone else play and I think it basically feels like Silent Hill but with heavier focus on the storyline and trying to really put you in the shoes of a character in a story rather than a character in a video game. You get to make choices that are important to the story and it seems like an interactive story done right that feels more than just an interactive story. I'm definitely going to keep my eye on this one.


• Fat Princess just looked like a lot of fun. I didn't get a chance to play it, but I really wanted to from seeing how much fun other people were having and how cute the gameplay looked.


• I had kind of stumbled upon Need for Speed: Nitro, but I'm glad I did. It's one of the very few Wii games I've played that I feel used the wiimote well. It controlled really well and was genuinely fun as a racer. The graphics were definitely subpar, but it was still enjoyable.


• Star Wars: The Old Republic wasn't playable, but I sat in for an hour-long demo if it and was very impressed. If it wasn't enough that all character interactions are voice acted, you can make choices throughout the game that permanently change the future for your character. Not only that, but the combat looked less like MMORPG combat and more like a dungeon crawler's action might look like. In other words, it looked like really slick combat for an MMORPG (though I'm sure you just click to get the cool combat, I still thought it was neat). I'm actually afraid to see more of this game because I'm trying to steer clear of MMORPGs even as this game is starting to suck me in.


• I had played a beta for Uncharted 2 multiplayer and didn't even play for long because it seemed so bland, but the single player stuff I was watching at PAX was actually really gorgeous. I regretted that I didn't see this until the last minute, but it puts Uncharted 2 back on my radar.


• Starcraft II was at PAX, once again, and still looks great. I didn't wait the 60+ minutes it would've taken me to be able to play it, but it looks like the sequel that Starcraft fans have been waiting on for years.


• Castle Crashers was playable for the PS3 and was just as fun as has been on the Xbox 360. I had no idea it was being ported and now I know that I have to get it. They had a fighting game (akin to Super Smash Brothers) available for play, too, but it wasn't nearly as fun as Castle Crashers.


• I played Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time for a few minutes, and I didn't quite figure out the controls but I still enjoyed it. I think it's a little more grown up in terms of gameplay mechanics than its predecessors but still maintains that charm the series has always had.


• Almost all of the PAX 10 games were lots of fun and very innovative. My favorites were Tag and Fieldrunners, which I'd buy if I could. Tag lets you paint surfaces to be sticky, fast to run on, or bouncy, and you basically navigate levels in first person view with just these three paints. Fieldrunners was a tower defense game that just happened to be super addictive.

The Bad Games

There were a few games that I was sorely disappointed in.

Firstly, Avatar didn't impress me at all. I even watched a 20-minute demo of it with 3-D glasses. It seems like another over-the-shoulder shooter. I respect that its going to have its own story within the world set by the Avatar movie, but nothing else really impressed me here.

Every year there's an embarrassing game on display that you'd disown your friends if you saw them playing it, and Just Dance was that game this year. The people playing it looked really stupid. If you want a game that teaches you how to dance then I'm sorry but you need to get out more. This game isn't going to teach you how to dance well - going to clubs and taking dance classes will.

I watched some guy play Mass Effect 2 for like 10 minutes because he would not get off and let me have a turn, but I walked away because the controls looked so complicated. The game looks visually great but totally unappealing from the standpoint of game controls.

I watched Left 4 Dead 2 for a few minutes and it looks as good as the first game, but I agree with the crowd crying out that it's too soon for a sequel. I would've preferred that they waited another year or two to bake some more ideas because I didn't see the innovation this time around that I saw last year. The line was at least 2 hours long to play it so I didn't get any hands-on time.

The Sega booth was depressing. It was tiny and their big game on display was Bayonetta. This game takes a female lead, strips her down to as little clothing as I'm sure the ESRB will allow, and has her violently killing people in cliche ways while still trying to evoke sexual innuendo. For shame, Sega. I still remember the days still when you used to make great games, too.

The last game to disappoint me was Wet. It looked glamorous visually and had a strong sense of style, but it seemed way too complicated and difficult. There was one part where the main character was on a car trying to shoot at guys in other cars, and her reticule was super small. I know that's more realistic, but it also seemed really frustrating.

Conclusion

Last year, every other game at PAX was a first person shooter. This year, it was super bloody third-person (or over-the-shoulder) action games. There were actually a lot of games with way too much blood at PAX. I wish that less games would rely so much on blood, but I guess blood sells games like sex sells movies.

Of course, there were quite a few games without blood and even though I saw a lot of re-hashes of old franchises and sequels, I still also saw a healthy amount of creativity. Some people would argue that the industry has gone downhill, but I'd argue that things are no worse than they have been in the past. There's still enough creativity out there to keep things afloat.

Aside from the games, PAX had some great concerts. I think the Saturday night concerts were the best I've been to in a very long time. Freezepop was even better than last year, and Paul and Storm were a great surprise. I think they had hundreds of people clamoring for them by the end of their performance (including me) that hadn't even heard of them before. They were genuinely funny and had great stage presence.

I got my picture taken with Jonathan Coulton the day before his show for free, unlike celebrities at some conventions, and he seemed so cool in person. Anyway, his concert was great and I wanted to share a couple of his more unique performances from his show as best as I could record them from where I was standing.







If you enjoyed those, please head over to his site and support him - he makes some awesome music.

Back to the games: one thing I realized at PAX is that video games have come so far in the past decade, even. I played Doom II and Tribes 2 a bit while I was there and it reminded me of why I started playing video games in the first place. It's incredible how every other game was visually stunning. In fact, the only games that looked consistently terrible were on the Wii. I don't know if it's hard to program for or if the manufacturers just don't care or what, but those games felt like they weren't even up to PS2 standards. In any case, it was cool to see how far we've come over the years, and it's funny how selective we've become as games have become more and more interesting and innovative.

Ultimately, PAX is a place where people who don't belong can really belong. It can be hard sometimes to find other people who enjoy some of the nerdier things you indulge in. Some people, my ex-girlfriend included, think it's silly that I still play video games. I'm not ashamed of it at all though, and I think PAX is a great way to re-affirm that nothing is wrong with enjoying video games or tabletop games. In moderation, it's really not a bad thing, and that community experience people talk about at PAX is still very much alive. Now I just have to wait 12 months for PAX 2010.

Slumdog Millionaire

Got a Camcorder!

After the snow storm cleared up, I headed to Houston for Christmas and didn't really get a chance to sit down and blog about the news I had marked (you can blame a House marathon), and I don't want to talk about month-old stories so I'm going to fill this short post with original content and do a normal post next week. My coolest Christmas gift was this baby to the right here (in black): the Flip Mino HD camcorder. It's a pretty sweet pocket-sized camcorder that shoots in 720p HD, and I love it so far. I want to keep playing around with it and do a full review probably before the end of this month. I didn't post last week because I was skiing in Whistler, B.C. with my brother and his wife, but I took plenty of video so I'll try to post one big video with all that footage stitched together next week - all shot with my Mino HD. I'm trying to see if I can put it together for free using Avidemux and Windows Movie Maker, but we'll see how that works out in the days to come. I'm also going to be getting the tripod for it soon, so hopefully I'll be able to do more video content on this blog, which is the most exciting thing to happen to my little corner of the web since I got a digital camera a couple of years ago.

Who Wants to be a Slumdog Millionaire?

Rather than try to set up the plot of this movie, I think I'll just show you the trailer:



The trailer may even give you more information than it should, but if it motivates you to go see this movie then I'd say it was worth it. Essentially: it's about a bum who rises to become a millionaire through a famous TV show that was all the craze in India shortly after it was big in the US. Other than being set in India, I never felt compelled to see this film, especially after the Totally Rad Show's verdict was not to seek it out, but my sister-in-law loved it enough to convince us, and it was definitely a pleasant surprise.

Though the director isn't Indian so technically this isn't a Bollywood movie, I really wish that we had more Bollywood movies like this. A movie like this could definitely make an Indian man feel more proud about his country's cinema. I understand that Bollywood musicals have their place and I'm fine with that, I just wish it would produce films like this that cast India in this light that the world doesn't see: ugliness and beauty all at once permeating the streets. Any scenes that were set on the streets definitely gave me that vibe, and the cinematography was a big part of that. I didn't like how often the camera tried to give the audience a vertigo effect, but other than that it was quite impressive. The casting choices reminded me of Pan Labyrinth in that each one seemed to fit perfectly since these are actors/actresses you've never seen before and they do such a great job of portraying these characters that you don't imagine them in a world outside this movie. The music in this movie was also something that stood out to me: every song really held its own and they've since been stuck in my head at random times because their poignancy really resonated with me.

If all those things weren't enough, it was one of those movies where we were talking about it long after we left the theater and debating motivations and plot points and such. Even though it can try to be too obvious at times with themes and symbols, you can forgive it because it tells the story so well. I was worried that parts of the movie would feel contrived, but I thought that things flowed rather smoothly. If I had one complaint about this film, it would probably be that the pacing felt a bit off. It definitely felt like a long movie, and it was only 2 hours long. I strongly recommend running out and catching this movie if it's playing in your city, or keeping it in mind to rent later this year if you can't see it now. I give it an A+ and say that it's worth seeking out because I feel like it tells a very unique story in a great way and it does suspense so well that I'd compare that element of it to the likes of 24.

The Dark Knight Live Chat

I mentioned a while ago that The Dark Knight blu-ray had a special live chat for 100,000 people with director Christopher Nolan, and I did, indeed, attend it. I was pretty satisfied with it overall.

It was text only, not video. At first I was disappointed, but actually text chat lets you enjoy the movie fully and only tune in to what Nolan is saying when/if you want. It's actually a text box at the top of the screen that's readable without being too big and has a somewhat transparent background so that you can see whatever part of the movie it covers. We asked questions on the WB BD Live site (you had to be logged in, so only people in the chat could ask questions), and Nolan (or perhaps a third-party moderator) goes through and asks as many of the best as quickly as possibly.

Sometimes, he picked ones that I thought were kind of dumb or already answered in other features on the disc, but there were a lot of insightful questions answered about the casting, nuances of the story, origins and inspirations, etc. I didn't get any of mine answered, unfortunately, but the event could only support 100,000 people and with 600,000 copies sold on the first day alone (I imagine a significant number from pre-orders), I imagine a number of people were excited about this event a week afterwards.

I don't know how often they're going to be doing this, but it was cool. It was the only BD Live feature that I thought was creative and on par with some of the stuff Disney is trying out. I'd love to see them do more live events with actors from the film or even Batman comic experts.

For the curious, some have posted rough transcripts of the chat, but here are my highlights (beware of spoilers if you haven't seen the movie):

-Heath Ledger improvised certain voice qualities and gestures (like clapping for Gordon's promotion).
-The Hong Kong tanker plane was real.
-Nolan admitted that Rex Reed is his worst critic.
-The joker card in the judge's papers is how the Joker sources her DNA (this was a big mystery to me).
-The Long halloween and Batman Year One are Nolan's favorite Batman comics
-The assassination sequences were inspired by the Godfather
-Nolan's favorite scene was the very last one
-He took some funny questions, telling "spencer, [to] get over floren", and admitting that "it’s a 2-pee movie - I gotta make a shorter film next time".
-Someone proposed during the chat (and it worked)!
-A lot of people asked about casting choices and how good they were.
-Two face is dead.
-Dent killing 5 ppl (aside from the 2 cops) is still a mystery.

Prince of Persia First Impressions

I just wanted to real briefly talk about Prince of Persia since it's a new game that has probably been lost amidst all the December releases. I really like it so far. I've only past the prologue and healed one area, but the game is gorgeous and the animation is wonderful. I'm also impressed by the short load times. I have to admit that the game mechanics take some getting used to because action-adventure fans, including those of previous games in the 3-D leg of this franchise, will probably hit jump twice and end up jumping three times, for example. Once you get used to them though, the game feels like a ballet of parkour and stylized fight sequences. The fighting may not be very difficult or very varied, but I liked that the focus is on exploration and puzzles rather than fighting because I see it as more of a platformer/adventure title, and adventure games that rely too much on combat end up failing in that regard. This game definitely isn't for everyone, but if you can appreciate the finer points then you'll probably enjoy it. We'll see if my opinion changes as I get farther in the game.

Randomness

And now for some random last notes:

I finally created a Listmania list of my top 10 favorite movies of all time, which typically changes a couple of times a year so this ought to be a good, central place to keep it. This is not the 10 best movies of all time, just the 10 that I enjoyed the most. A movie's quality is subjective anyway, so I judged them for my list just based on watchability rather than technical quality. For example: Traffic is an awesome movie that I never want to see again because it's too depressing.

Has anyone heard of a site called Honeyshed? I saw a commercial for it on TV and was disturbed when I finally visited it. It's a digital home shopping network targeted at teenage hipsters that seems like a giant joke. It is a real site, unfortunately. I can't imagine how it got funding to be created, but I'll give it credit for being somewhat polished.

Now that Konami is releasing Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid for the iPhone, I have to admit that it's actually trying to compete with the PSP and the DS, because now it's going past the standard cell phone game fare. By the way, has anyone played the Metal Gear Solid pack for Little Big Planet? I'm thinking of downloading it.

VHS is dead, but will not be missed. Well, not by me, anyway. I never bought stuff on VHS because I never saw the point in it, but I remember being convinced by DVD because of the quality and extras. It's kind of funny how times change like that.

I didn't want to mention this, but I feel compelled to since everyone else has been: Apple will no longer be at Macworld after this year, and it's because they always wanted to, not because Jobs is retiring. I thought that making accusations like was irresponsible on the media's part. Jobs is obviously going to retire in the coming years, but that doesn't mean in the next couple of months just because this is his last Macworld.

Hope you all have a good, snow-free week (it snowed a bit tonight in Seattle)!

Penny Arcade Expo 2008

My First Con

When I was little, I always wanted to go to E3. Heck, I would've settled for any event where I could go around playing video games that hadn't come out yet. PAX was that and so much more. Lots of people will probably say this, but I have to say it as well: the crowd at PAX is just incredible. I definitely felt like I was at home waiting in line for panels and video games, and for 3 days it was like the nerdier you were the cooler you were. Isn't that a funny phenomenon? A lot of nerds spend their adolescence hiding their hobbies and interest whereas at PAX people literally wear them on their sleeves (I actually saw several of these people). There was something cool and refreshing about that (even though you also get the bad aspects of nerds, like being occasionally condescending and typically sarcastic). It was an incredible experience and I often felt as giddy as a 12 year-old at, well, a gaming convention.

Before I get to my picks from the show floor, there are a couple of other neat things from the weekend I want to quickly touch on.

The nerdcore concerts felt like rock star concerts - the energy was palatable. Except for Jonathan Coulton, I hadn't heard of any of the groups but they seemed to have sizable fanfare, and I couldn't help but flashback to Rock Band (I guess I've played it too much). Freezepop, a veteran synth pop group, had a pretty impressive cover of "The Final Countdown" that I really enjoyed but cannot find a recording of (let me know if you do, please). Jonathan Coulton was really awesome (I got an autographed copy of his Thing a Week Box Set and I love it), and he did most of his hit songs except for his excellent cover of "Baby Got Back". One of his best was when he brought out Felicia Day (from The Guild and Dr. Horrible) to sing "Still Alive" from the Portal video game. I loved his performance of "Mr. Fancy Pants" (he wrote it during his campaign of writing a song a week when he was close to his deadline for one week and had to get a Zendrum to stretch out the 1:15 song for live performances), and he also Rick Roll'd the audience after performing "Flickr". I never imagined that someone could perform so well with just an acoustic guitar (and a Zendrum), but JoCo put on one of the most fun shows I've ever had the good fortune of attending. I can with confidence say that at least 90% of that audience was having a great time and we even managed to get two encores out of (before the second one he told us that he just wanted to go to bed). I think you had to laugh at least once every 5 minutes, especially when the audience started calling out song titles, to which he told them that he had constructed a set to maximize our entertainment and (comically) that we weren't the boss of him.

We attended both Penny Arcade Q&A sessions (plus a live drawing of the Monday comic), and this is how they came onstage for both of them:



That was from the second, but I wish I had recorded them coming out for the first one because it actually started out with a live orchestra before that song came on. It was pretty epic. It's kind of scary how much some people idolize them (to the extent that one guy referred to them as "m'lords"), but I realized that they've come to be the mascots for gaming that gamers seem to really need. They've become an outlet for the spirit of the community (criticisms, joys, and charity), and PAX is truly a culmination of that. The Q&A sessions were hilarious, and one of my favorite parts was when Tycho (Jerry) didn't know who Dr. Manhattan one so Scott Kurtz (from PvP) yelled out, "He's from Alan Moore's graphic novel The Watchmen you fucking noob." Also great was Tycho singing. The most impressive gifts given to them was a plush doll of Broodax and a mosaic of buttons that spelled out "PAX 08" (I couldn't get a good shot of it, I was too far away) (EDIT: thanks to Ben for sending me this link to pictures of him and a fellow member of the button exchange presenting this).

Also great was the Totally Rad Show meetup on Saturday night! We got a picture with Alex Albrecht (from Diggnation and the Totally Rad Show, and who was formerly on TechTV's Screensavers):



I purposely did the Longhorn sign because it was the eve of UT's first victory of the 2008 season (52-10 against Florida Atlantic), I know that Alex was doing the rocking out sign. Anyway, at first we sat at the only table in the area with two guys not there for the meetup, who were kinda being dicks and telling the waitress like 3 times that they weren't buying our drinks even though the waitress didn't ask if they were. So we moved to a table with guys that had PAX badges and they were really cool (though younger than us). The TRS guys were going around to each table and chatting for a few minutes, and it was so awesome talking to Dan and Jeff because they acted pretty much just like they did on the show. It was very nerdy and surreal for me, like I was meeting Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid or something. They were super nice (though I felt like kind of a buzzkill when I explained to Dan that my job at Amazon was not one of the cool customer-facing things he liked but something behind-the-scenes that I still think is fun), and even brought attention to a guy proposing to his girlfriend. Surprisingly though, both of them made Dead Space their first choice from the floor though I ended up not liking it (keep reading for more on this). Alex I think kept getting held up during his rounds with the tables so we left before he made it to our area and got a picture with him, though he definitely acted exactly as he would on Revision 3, which I thought was great. He has a great personality for video, though I wish we could've gotten a picture with all 3 of the hosts.

I'm dragging this on too long, but there were two more things I have to mention before getting to the games. The first is this 3rd Space gaming vest to the right that rumbles as you shoot or are hit in a first person shooter (FPS). I tried it on and was definitely impressed. I think it's a tad expensive at a $169 list price, but I think it'd be worth it for like $100 if you love PC gaming. I know it sounds like a lame peripheral, but it really helps put you in the game (it's compatible with all the big FPS games). The other thing was that I played Gears of War on a PC with 3-D glasses and it was pretty crazy. I felt like it was more gimmicky though than the vest because it really didn't help put you in the game by much, and it's not true 3-D because it just pops out 2-D figures rather than rendering them in true 3-D, but it was still neat.

Top 5 Games to Look Out For

Now for the good stuff: the countdown of the 5 games I saw on the show floor that you may be shelling out for very soon.

5. Prince of Persia
I beat Prince of Persia: Sands of Time for the PS2 and loved every minute of it. The combat system could've been better, but being able to manipulate time in a way that didn't copy The Matrix was very revolutionary and handled really well as an important part of the game. Now Ubisoft is re-imagining the series in a big way with Prince of Persia (for the PS3 and Xbox 360), which follows a different prince's story from the previous two games. I saw a live demo of it (it was a demo demo, so he followed a pre-determined path), and the art style works a lot better than I thought in the first cinematic trailer that was released. I was concerned that it would look too much like a cartoon, but they really executed it well and it's just beautiful, especially when Eleka (your new sidekick) breathes life into an infected land. Speaking of which, she becomes an important part of helping you get through the puzzles in the game, fighting enemies, and finding your way if you get lost. They've created a semi free roaming world and I just love how they're getting creative with really giving you an innovative adventure title. I was a little concerned by him saying that you can only fight one enemy at time, but the combat looked super cinematic so I think the coolness factor outweighs my concern. By the way, the Penny Arcade guys are making a 32-page comic about a story Eleka hears as a child, and they announced that you can get it for free if you pre-order.

4. Left 4 Dead
This was probably my biggest surprise from the show since I hadn't heard of it and we totally ignored it until we heard rave reviews from the Totally Rad Show meetup. Valve's multiplayer co-operative survival horror game puts you and three others right in the middle of the zombie apocalypse and is what Resident Evil Outbreak should've been. It actually requires teamwork (especially when you get mauled by zombies) and the zombies really do react to what you do (if you're too loud they will overrun you). I was completely blown away by how much it feels like you're in a George A. Romero movie, and I'm really jealous that it's only going to be out for the Xbox 360 and PC. You might be able to find some bootlegs online, but they don't do justice to how nice it looks and how real the zombies feel. I wish I could say that I played it, but the line was crazy long and we just didn't have the time to wait.

3. Far Cry 2
The only things I knew about Far Cry before checking out the demo for Far Cry 2 was that it was set in the jungle and had revolutionary graphics. This new iteration uses what looks to be a more advanced graphics engine than even the one used for Crysis, and the physics engine is at least as impressive. I went to a demo that was actually him playing the production build live, and I was caught off guard by how great this game was. Mind you that it's hard to impress me with an FPS since every other booth was pimping an FPS game (the worst offenders being Resistance 2 and Gears of War 2) and I've played many FPS games, but the second he started a fire and I saw it dynamically spread based on what kind of vegetation was around it and the wind I was in awe. Everything that could realistically be destroyed could be obliterated in-game, especially when it comes to blowing up cars to kill enemies (you can do this in games like Metal Gear Solid 4, it simply looks more realistic here). The game puts you in a free-roaming world where you rely on missions from your "buddies", and if you get taken down in battle then a "buddy" (a non-playable character (NPC) who you designate as such) helps get you out of harm's way. The game is so realistic that if you let a buddy die in combat, he is really gone for the rest of the game. It was interesting how he had to play attacks by scouting, and how he could draw out the enemies with distractions and even create walls of fire to keep them from getting too close. To put it bluntly, the battles evolved into controlled chaos in the way that a battle should. This wouldn't be enough to put it at #3, except for that the map editor was incredible. It looked fairly easy to create a believable, natural environment, complete with weather controls, and he could jump into his map at any time to see it first-hand. He was even able to create a freaking swamp! If you thrive on FPS games, don't leave this one out because it'll be out for the PS3, Xbox 30, and PC this October.

2. Little Big Planet
I cannot say enough good things about this game - it's fun and joy on a Blu-ray disc (yes, it's a PS3 Exclusive). It's a platformer like no other, and there are plenty of videos out there to bear witness to that. The humbling art style is consistently cute yet creative, and the levels are just so clever. I saw a demo of the level editor and got to play it (after a 40-minute wait). The level editor lets you create your own levels and share them online (I think they'll pick some of the better ones every once in a while, polish them, and release them as features levels). It's pretty simple to create a map: you are just Sackboy (the main character) going around an empty space and creating things out of thin air and arranging them as you'd like. It looks like a pretty fun process and quite intuitive. While I waited in line to play the game, I saw one group of people (they let us try it out in sets of 3 people, it's a 4-player game via online or local multiplayer) play a mini-game where you have to fight each other and one where you have to stay on a cow. So I guess there are several mini-games ideal for a party atmosphere, but also a ridiculous amount of just levels to explore various worlds. The controls took all of 30 seconds to learn, and the simplicity is part of what makes this game so great. The customization of your character truly is fun (much like it is on the Wii) and easy, and everything looks really clean. The prospect of a game with seemingly limitless potential as far as number of levels (I think Mm themselves will be releasing some levels every once in a while) is wonderful and it makes me really glad I have my PS3. So if you have a PS3, keep an eye on this game (it's released in October, just a few days after my birthday so I may pre-order it to play on my birthday).

1. Fallout 3
I first saw some footage from this game on G4 and didn't bother watching for long because I didn't see anything special about it (I never had any exposure to the previous games in the series). Man, was I wrong. I went to the demo because it followed a Penny Arcade Q&A and ended up being very glad since it was standing room only (some people who had been waiting in line had to be turned away). They were playing the game right in front of us based on audience input on what should be done, so it was not a fixed demo. The best way to describe the game is as a mix of a role-playing game (RPG) and an FPS with a touch of third-person action. It's comparable, in a way, to Deus Ex. You emerge from one of a small number of vaults in the aftermath of a nuclear war, and you enter a wasteland. From there, it's a free-roaming world where you take on missions and the story advances based on your interactions with the characters. The other RPG element it borrows is level-ing up to improve your skills. What's really impressive is that besides having all these great RPG elements, it handles combat wonderfully. You can fight in first-person, third-person, or, if you haven't done it too much already, using a targeting system where you target a specific body party and a very brief in-game cutscene shows you the attack. The animation in these sequences are amazingly realistic and gratuitously violent. Make no mistake about it, this game is not intended for younger audiences in the least. There's so many other little things about this game that make it cool, like the fact that you can get addicted to drugs, or that you can do things like sneak up behind people and shove live grenades in their pockets, or how you can mod your weapons. For these reasons and many more, Fallout 3 stands to be the best game you have ever experienced, whether you love action or RPGs. By the way, they gave out swag by giving everyone in the audience a card with a skill on it where each skill had a prize, and mine ended up being an awesome hand puppet from a comic they commissioned from Penny Arcade:



Honorable Mentions

There were some other games I saw that I liked a lot, but didn't make my top 5.

Project Origin takes what was great about F.E.A.R. and improves it. I got to play this one personally and had a blast with it. The ability to slow time was not as gimmicky as Max Payne, the destructible environments were great, and it just handled nicely overall. It didn't stand out as much as Far Cry 2 did among the sea of FPS titles on the floor, but I think it's worth keeping in the back of your head.

Starcraft II was playable, but I didn't bother waiting in line for it because I knew I'd suck. It's probably best to check out the Protoss gameplay video they have at the official site and prepare to be dazzled if you were a fan of the original. I don't think they're likely to botch this sequel to one of the most celebrated video games of all time, and I look forward to seeing more of it.

Mirror's Edge was also playable, but I didn't want to wait in line for it. I didn't see what was so great about it until I saw a normal gamer playing it at the show. The art style is definitely something to behold, and I think that it feels almost like a first-person adventure title. I have to reserve judgement for it though for when I see more footage though, because the demo on the show floor was not very long.

There's really nothing to say about Rock Band 2 other than what's already out there about it: it'll have 100 songs by the end of the year and the instruments are better. I didn't play it at the show because I'm not good enough to play it publicly in front of as large of a crowd as the booth had amassed, but they didn't really show the stuff that's different from the first game, like the music video mode or the online world tour mode or the drummer training stuff. Still, the songs I saw performed looked pretty fun and were easily recognizable (though I cannot for the life in me remember which songs they were that I had seen). I'm definitely going to buy it, I just have to decide if I want the disc or the whole set.

Dishonorable Mentions

There were a couple of games that I didn't like at all.

They were promoting SingStar with little contests where they'd have people get on stage and perform a song, and they'd give a prize to the best of like 6 singers. I actually wanted this game a little before I saw people playing it (I was forced to because it was right next to the line to play LittleBigPlanet) - these people were terrible singers or just plain embarrassing. The bottom line is that I did not want to be them or have people in my home singing like they were. It's better in Rock Band when there's a drummer and guitarist, but with the singer singled out it's just not quite as cool.

I don't know why so many people loved Dead Space because I found that the controls weren't intuitive at all and that it seemed to copy Half-Life 2's gravity gun without thinking it through properly. The guy was basically holding my hand through the demo as I was playing it, which was kind of insulting because I had waiting for like 45 minutes and should've been allowed to figure things out on my own, but it also made me realize that the game was too complicated if the best demo they could come up with involved people talking you through how to play it in that amount of detail. I'll admit that part of it was probably that I'm not used to the Xbox 360 controller, but even if I was, the gameplay mechanics simply didn't impress me.

So where's the real news?

Yeah, about that...I'm too tired to keep writing. There are only a couple of news items that I was chomping at the bit to get to anyhow, so I'll save them for next week. Have a great week, everyone! I always love posting original content so I hope that you found this post at least somewhat informative.