PAX Prime is a great event that lets gamers try out games that won’t be in the market yet, socialize with other gamers, go to concerts, play old school games or board games in the freeplay rooms and generally have a good time. The passes are reasonably priced at $65 for all 3 days of the weekend and $35 for an individual day.
Last year, there were quite a few shady characters outside the convention center shilling passes for anywhere from $100-150, and even worse, it turns out a lot of these were fakes, which led to people being ejected from PAX, and greater scrutiny of everyone’s badge, which meant longer lines.
This year, the 3 day passes sold out in about 4 or 5 hours, and by the time I finish typing this, the single day passes will probably be sold out as well. Part of the reason that the passes sold out so quickly may have to do with a League of Legends Regional Finals on the first day of PAX, but I suspect a large percentage of passes were bought by people who have no intention of enjoying PAX. Douchebags like this guy, this guy, or this guy.
I really loathe scalpers.
This week, North Korea will launch a “satellite” that tests their country’s intercontinental ballistic missile system.
The $850 million spent on the launch could have bought 2.5 million tons of corn of and 1.4 million tons of rice, which would have been lifesaving for the estimated third of North Korean children that will be permanently stunted due to malnutrition. Clearly over-nourished Kim Jong-un plans to continue his father’s policy of aggression, striving to unite North and South Korea, and strike out against the Western world.
Homefront for Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 places the player in a near future where Kim Jong-un succeeds in conquering and creating a Unified Korea, and through a series of nuclear strikes, disrupts American infrastructure effectively enough to allow its million man army to splinter America, and occupy several key areas.
As a resistance fighter, the player escapes from a processing facility, travels through war torn suburbs to a safe house, hijacks a convoy of fuel tankers, and retakes the Golden Gate bridge. While not a huge story arc, the plot serves adequately to move the action forward.
It was gutwrenching to see an airstrike on an average looking American neighborhood, and motivated me to fight. It was compelling to play through boarded up homes, overgrown backyards, and abandoned playgrounds. I also enjoyed a firefight in a computer parts big box store. Store displays come in handy for cover!
Homefront offers little in innovation to the first person shooter genre. Weapons feel very similar, the only major difference being that some have better scopes than others. Enemy troops are mostly content to stay in one spot until you shoot them, sometimes even with their backs turned. There is a brief stage where the player controls a helicopter, but for the most part, Homefront is a standard shooter.
I don’t typically play multiplayer, and I suspect that may be where the majority of the game’s content lies. Although it was a short 4 hours, I enjoyed my time finishing the campaign of Homefront, and could recommend it to those who are looking for a quick experience, and are interested in the setting.
Liked
Simple, short story. Play Red Dawn in a modern setting!Disliked
Dense AI, boring weapons.If I could change one thing:
The horrors of war were overemphasized in a few scenes. There doesn’t need to be children crying in a videogame.
The Legend of Zelda is the game that sparked my life long hobby of video games. Way back in 1985, I stood before a demo model Nintendo Entertainment System in Sears and played through the first two dungeons of the game in one sitting (standing). From that day on I was hooked. I loved the world of Hyrule, searching through each screen to find the secret treasure or hidden passage, fighting monsters, collecting Rupees so I could buy tools to explore further. I convinced my family to buy their first ever 13 inch color TV, and I mowed lawns all summer to buy that first NES, all so I could bring home The Legend of Zelda.
I still have a great deal of nostalgia for the Legend of Zelda. My mother-in-law knitted a wonderful Link outfit for my son, and I have framed maps from the Legend of Zelda and the Super Nintendo sequel, A Link to the Past hanging proudly in my gaming den. Naturally I was thrilled to hear the Land gallery in Portland was going to be hosting a Zelda inspired exhibit called The Legend of Zelda: a Triforce Tribute.
It was wonderful to see so many different artist’s interpretations of my favorite video game, and if you live in the Portland area, I encourage you to visit Land gallery before April 21, 2012. If you can’t make it, Land will be selling many prints of these works, and I hope you enjoy the gallery below.
Every gamer has had the experience of being immersed hours into a compelling game, only to find themselves realizing their eyes are glazed, their shoulders hunched, and they are in a word exhausted. Even if we are doing what we love, we can be overstimulated, and need a break.
Occasionally I find myself exhausted from media and culture. There is always a new show to watch, someone is always saying something inflammatory on twitter, I have podcasts to catch up on, movies to watch, games to play, websites to visit, stupid cat videos, facebook updates…
STOP
That’s what I did for 90 minutes.
And it felt great.
I visited Float On tonight, and gave my body a hard reboot. No light, no sound, no sensation. Just me, alone with my thoughts, gently supported in buoyant, warm water.
The private room I was given was furnished with a shower, bench, robe, towel and other amenities, but the dominant feature was the sensory deprivation chamber. Similar in appearance to a sauna, a small hatch opened to reveal an 11 inch deep pool filled with blue-lit water.
Once inside the chamber, I pulled the hatch shut, turned off the blue light, and floated. The water is saturated with 950 pounds of Epson salt, and heated to about 94 degrees so it feels body temperature neutral. The sensation of floating is unlike lying in a bed, or even a bath tub. In both cases, you feel your body weight pressing against the surface below you. In the chamber, I was weightless, free.
Floating in space.
My thoughts swirled around like leaves blowing in the wind, then settled for a while. Like the unbroken surface of a pond, my mind would be calm and still for a moment, and then an unseen pebble would send ripples of ideas out from my center.
As I first lay still and unmoving, I felt like my body was spinning clockwise, then counterclockwise, with no transition. Then I didn’t really feel my body at all. It began to be hard to tell where my hand ended and the water began. I had fun imagining myself melting into a glowing blue ooze, and I just drifted for a while. I don’t feel I ever fell asleep, but there was a period of time where I could not identify any conscious thought.
And that felt great.
Eventually the attendant turned on music in the speakers below me, and I turned on the blue light and opened my eyes. As soon as I could collect myself, I got out, showered, dressed, and slowly readjusted to the ever increasing stimuli as I left the lobby to the street, then to my car. I had to consciously speed UP to the the speed limit, but while my limbs felt pleasantly heavy, I was not tired or sleepy, in fact quite alert.
It was a great experience, and as I type this into the glare of a computer monitor, I find myself wanting to schedule another float in space.
Mr. Potato Head hosts a game show comprised of several remixes of popular Hasbro board games. Contestants in Family Game Night 4 are represented by Xbox LIVE avatars, which personalizes the game nicely, and players interact with giant sized familiar game pieces like Sorry tokens, and a story-high Connect 4 board.
Players can either play each challenge separately, or play all 5 challenges one after the other, collecting Monopoly markers to cash in at the end of the game. Although the game is called Family Game Night, and most families are more than two people, only two players can compete at once.
Some challenges remain virtually (see what I did there?) the same as their physical counterparts, like Scrabble and Bop-it. Connect Four is livened up by allowing players to shoot tokens like basketballs, allowing errors and bounces to add unpredictability to the game. Yahtzee becomes a bowling game with 6 sided pins instead of dice. My favorite is Sorry Shuffle, in which players push giant pieces as in shuffleboard, requiring strategy and allowing players to bounce opposing players out of the scoring zones.
Although playing Basketball Connect Four and Shuffle Sorry are both fun, each challenge only lasts a few minutes. This may be good for a family of 6, since only 2 can play at once, but after a while, the play experience feels rather shallow. Even though each challenge type has two modes, regular and extreme, a player can experience all the game has to offer in 30 minutes or less.
Family Night’s biggest flaw is the Kinect controls. Player motions are often not recognized, and the problem intensifies with two players. It can be very frustrating to have a word spelled out in Scrabble, and not get points because the time ran out, and the game did not recognize a left swipe. The game also frequently grinds to a halt when two are playing, and demands the players to painstakingly back up and fit themselves into silhouettes to be rescanned. Other games do not seem to have this issue, and it really takes players out of the experience.
Liked:
Familiar game icons supersized and thrown around by my avatar.Didn’t Like:
Very few game modes, little replayabilityWish I could change:
Kinect controls.
Family Game Night 4 was provided for review by EA. 11/32 trophies were earned over the course of 2 1/2 hours. All modes were played, including multiplayer. Two 7 year olds contributed this review.
I had a dream where I was with three monsters, and we had lost our heart-tree. The three monsters traveled through a splintered landscape, helping each other through various challenges, and discovering unique abilities along the way.
Actually, this wasn’t a dream at all, but a delightful little puzzle platformer on the PSP. Purchased as a PSP mini, you can actually play it on the big screen through your Playstation 3 if you wish, but with its retro sprite graphics, it looks much better on a small screen. This is a cooperative puzzle game, but you control all three characters, switching between them. The stages are broken up and rearranged in panels like a scrambled jigsaw puzzle, so jumping bast the border may place your character completely across the screen. This disorienting fracturing along with the games soundtrack gives the game its dreamlike quality.
This is by far the best PSP mini I have played. Most mini titles are clunky knockoffs of iphone games at 3 times the price, and I haven’t bothered to play them. This game is quite charming; the biggest barrier to my completion is that I seldom pick up my PSP.
Shadow of the Colossus is a gam
e I force myself to play.
I love the barren, expansive landscapes of the world, empty of living creatures except for me, my horse, and a few birds and lizards.
And something else, but I’ll get to that.
I have spent many hours wandering through old forests, gazing on abandoned, crumbling temples. I have given my steed free reign to gallop over wind-swept grassy valleys, giant distant broken bridges, and marveled at the world’s simple beauty. So why did I never complete this game when I had it for Playstation 2, and why am I having to force myself to play it now?
I spend many peaceful hours exploring the terrain, but eventually I am confronted with the task before me, and I suspect I am the game’s villain.
The game begins as I ride up to a weathered castle with a lumpy package draped over my saddle. I place the package on an altar in a great hall lined with 16 statues, and it becomes clear that the shape in the cloth is a woman, eyes closed, dead or unconscious. A booming voice from the ceiling tells me to reconnect her soul to her body, I must slay all the Colossus.
The game falls into a pattern after that. Raising my sword in the air, a beam of light guides me through forest, hill, and gorge to the Colossus I must slay. Sometimes, they’ll be in a cave, or atop a hill, or at the bottom of a ruin. Towering several stories high, they are some strange amalgamation of stone and fur. Their craggy faces look chiseled as if a statue’s, and rock juts out from their joints and spines. They come in many shapes, some on two legs, others on four. At least one flies. For the most part, they ignore me, stomping slowly on some unknown task.
Finding some purchase on their lower extremities, I climb up their furry backs, high above my anxious horse. Irritated, the Colossus rolls its shoulders, shakes its arm, plunges into the water, anything to get me to slip off.
This dance is the most challenging and fun aspect of the game. Each Colossus becomes a puzzle. When do I dare let go and rush further forward before the shaking begins again? After many failed attempts, I reach the head and plunge my sword into a glowing crest. The creature bellows, and slowly topples, still graceful, into a heap. And I feel like a jerk.
Why do I have to kill these majestic creatures? Why does a statue crumble in the great hall every time I slay a Colossus, and a continuous beam of light shine up from where it was slain? What if I am slaying the guardians of the land? I have no assurance that the voice in the great hall is benevolent and good, or even that it has the power to revive the woman I love. Even if she is revived, will the price I paid be worth it? I can’t shake the feeling that I am the monster in this game, not the lumbering giants.
When I first played this game, I stopped after killing seven Colossus. I have now killed ten. Judging from the six remaining statues in the great hall, I have six more to kill.
I’m not sure I can do it.
InFAMOUS 2 follows Cole, a messenger in “Empire City”(New York), who gains electrical powers after being caught in the epicenter of a blast in the first inFAMOUS game and is driven to “New Marias” (New Orleans) by a menace named The Beast. Cole’s powers develop according to the choices he makes, and since I played Cole as “good” in the first game, I tried to overcome my natural tendencies and play as a jerk this time. Once I overcame my initial reluctance, I reveled in my new found powers and the freedom of not having to worry about hurting innocent bystanders with stray bolts of electricity. I must confess to shameful glee at zapping street musicians, which earned me the praise of another evil character.
My choices did not come without consequences, however. The citizens of New Marias ran shrieking from me whenever I landed on the street, or even threw rocks and protested me. All of that pales compared to the ending of the game. Without giving anything away, I will just say that the magnitude of the impact of the choices I made was fully realized, and I felt genuinely bad for actions I was forced to make as a consequence.
Video games are often the place I go to escape day to day drudgery, and become someone else for a while. It is fun to explore what it would be like to have superhuman powers, make different moral choices than I would make in real life, and see what happens. inFamous 2 is a great game for this type of experience.
inFAMOUS 2 does have a few shortcomings. Missions felt very repetitive after about half the game, although I should mention I didn’t try many of the user created missions. The story is rather thin and the source of tension, the approach of the Beast, is lessened since you can roam around the city indefinitely until you trigger key events. Most characters with one exception are not very developed, but the one that is contributed to the gut-wrenching ending.
Feeling awful about what my character had become and had to do was my favorite part inFAMOUS 2. Very seldom do games inspire emotion in me, especially dark emotions like regret and disgust. Playing as Cole was very fun. Climbing and leaping building to building parkour style is a blast, and speaking of blasts, did I mention how fun it is to zap people? Cole eventually develops limited flight ability, but unlike Superman, gravity slowly pulls him back to earth as he glides. To carry the comic book analogy further, I would say that Cole plays more like Spiderman, graceful and powerful, but not invincible like the man of steel.
I enjoyed my time with Cole, although I probably won’t go back and try being “good”
One of my first memories was my parents taking me to see Empire Strikes back in the movie theater when I was really little. I sat and watched, jaw dropped. I had never seen anything like this before. I practically forgot to breathe, and I barely touched my popcorn.
After the credits rolled, and the lights went up, I begged to watch it again. My parents laughed, AND THEY LET ME! I think they enjoyed it too. Fortunately it was a Saturday, so I got to sleep in the next day. When I woke up, I started making spaceships out of kleenex boxes and toilet paper tubes. If you thought the Millenium falcon looked cobbled together in the movie, you should have seen my version.
Years passed and in my adult years, I struggled with the new movies, and the changes Lucas made to the original series. In my mind, Han always not only shot first, but was the only one who shot. I’ve come to accept that Lucas will continue tinkering with his films, and I’ve come up with a reason it doesn’t matter.
I now have the opportunity to share these films, digitally remastered on Blu-ray, crisp and clean, with my 7 year old daughter. She won’t care if the Ewoks are singing a different song at the end of the Return of the Jedi, because she’s never heard the “original”. She can thrill for the very first time to the whir and spark of lightsabers flashing (in surround sound!) hide her eyes from the Sarlacc monster, and cheer at the pod races.
Who knows, she might even laugh at Jar-Jar.
The Penny Arcade Expo, or PAX for short, is an event every gamer should experience. 70,000+ gaming enthusiasts converge on downtown Seattle for 3 days, and the convention is vast enough that no two attendees can possibly have the same experience. In some ways, PAX is like a giant open world video game , where your choices determine your experience. There are many ways to enjoy PAX, so many that it is impossible to experience even a tenth of what is available.
The largest part of PAX is the vendor convention halls. Game developers create lavish sets and statues showcasing their latest games, with consoles or PCs set up so players can try a sample of the new game before it is available for sale. 1000s of eager gamers line up before 10 am, then rush to their favorite game developer’s booth…so they can wait in line again several hours. Some of the games with the longest lines this year were Borderlands 2, Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, Mass Effect 3, Uncharted 3, 
and many others.
Panels take up the second largest amount of floor space. Theaters with distinctive names of Unicorn, Pegasus, Kraken, Serpent, and Wolfman host hour long panels featuring game developers, journalists, community managers discuss a wide range of topics and take questions from the audience. My favorite panel was “What women really want” which discussed the current characterization of women in video games, and what hopefully the future would hold as the gaming audience matures. Live podcasts with audience participation, such as the Giant Bombcast, Major Nelsen Radio, Retronauts, Weekend Confirmed, were common. Game development teams often talk about the challenges of making past and current games, and reveal aspects of games that aren’t released yet. The crowd at Gearbox’s Borderlands 2 panel was very excited to walk away with a copy of the game for free, before you can buy it!
You can also spend your entire time at PAX just playing games. Most of the 3rd floor was reserved for table top gaming, and even when I wandered by at 1am, all of the tables were full and players were tossing 20 sided dice and pushing hand painted figurines around hexes and grids on boards. Nintendo sponsored a handheld area that was full of 100s of bean bag chairs, where gamers could trade Pokemon and Dragon Quest monsters, grab free cotton candy from the Kirby booth, or catch a quip nap. Upstairs in the sixth level, there was a cornucopia of gaming opportunities. In either the classic console or current console rooms, you could check out a game from a wide library for free with your driver’s license, and plop down and play it at one of the many stations for at least an hour, longer if there wasn’t a wait. I witnessed a heated Street Fighter 2 battle as I wandered through late at night. PC gamers also have a few options. There was a huge room set up with networked stations, and a smaller room for those who brought their own rigs. Check the video for the scope of this room! I got the distinct feeling that many never left this area except for food and bathroom breaks!
PAX also serves as a hub for online communities whose members are separated by large geographic distances. Cospla
yers often plan their costumes all year, so they can meet up with others for group photo opportunities. There were a lot of people in Spartan armor this year for Halo Fest, and the Mortal Kombat crew was quite intimidating. PAX may be the only time online gaming clans meet physically, and I witnessed several joyful reunions. After the Main Expo Hall closes each night around 6pm, there are several after-parties every night. I had the pleasure of attending the Gamma Ray Games Level Up Comedy Show, Dues Ex community party, PAXtra benefit party for Child’s Play, and the PopCap Party. I would especially like to thank Xbox360Achievements.org, who welcomed me with open arms to their Thursday night pool party as well as their Saturday lunch event. I wasn’t even a member of their forums, but they were all friendly and welcoming to their community. We’ll see what happens after I post my gamer score.
You could also experience PAX as a treasure hunt, or in gamer terms, a loot quest. Every vendor was passing out something. Without even trying, I came home with 9 T-shirts, 4 lanyards, 8 pins, 2 masks, 2 patches, a Mega Bloks Halo Warthog vehicle and three Halo mini-figs, 2 blow up Mass Effect Omniblades, a foam chainsaw, a whoopie cushion, and an OnLive Game console. There was also a scavenger hunt involving QR codes hidden all around the convention, with clues to a word scramble that if solved would get you a free PAX XP pin for bragging rights. Although I completed the XP challenge last year, this year’s challenge had over 30 steps, and I chose to pass on the quest for the sake of time.
What makes PAX great is not just the plethora of simultaneous events, but the general atmosphere. There is an overwhelming attitude of excitement and anticipation. People gladly wait in line several hours because they are going to see something awesome, and everyone around them thinks it’s awesome as well. You can dress as a dark elf with a longsword on your back and only receive complements. The positive energy and enthusiasm surrounding PAX is why I look forward to coming every year.
This device was indispensable, keeping my 3DS and phone charged.
