So I'm back from PAX Prime 2012 had a great time lots of good stuff seen played or licked.
The news from the Q&A's was that there will be a pax Austrailia next year and that PAX prime will take 4 days. They also mentioned they want to do a PAX england but no date on that. They also let slip that strip search which was part of the Kickstart PA project will be filmed by the loading ready run crew.
The show floor was as crowded as usual and they've spread out some more to now take up the entire convention center it's annex and parts of the hyatt the sheraton and the red lion hotels for the various rooms.
There was the usual stuff of soon to be released games Borderland2 Assassins Creed 3 a couple other shooters whose names I forget took up large chunks of the floor and had queues stretching round the block with long wait times. I tended not to bother with these it takes up too much time for my liking unless it something I really want to see I'm not spending 4 hours waiting. I can better spend my time elsewhere.
There was a healthy set of indie games in the show MOjang where there showing minecraft scrolls and cobolt they had a pretty good talk that I went to on the future of Minecraft the next update (now officially called the pretty scary update launches halloeen) has the new boss the wither and item frames. They also talked about what each of the 4 devs are doing some engine upgrades to better support newer hardware and of course the long awaited mod api.
There was a good showing from the smaller devs like telltale promoting their walking dead episodic adventure games and Double fine showing of their wares. I saw Tim schafer demoing Double Fine Happy Action Theatre a kinect title that consists of a series of mini game modes like time delay dubstep and the penny arcade fairy princess maker.
Bethesda were showing the Doom remake as well as the upcoming Dishonored which is looking good.
Sony had various stuff I saw a remake of Okami for ps3 motion stick thing name of which escapes me glowing ping pong ball gadget oh PSMove.
Microsoft had some sort of Xbox live on PC showing which just the sound of made me nervous Games for windows live is bad enough. Torchlight 2 was showing looked good. They had a new Neverwinter game and a few other wizards of the coast titles knocking about.
Fair number of MMO's Firefall had a big booth lots of push there. Planetside 2 persistent FPSMMO with huge battles had a moderate showing I had a quick play of that it played like the first game in most respects good fun but feels like a constant battle with no end in some ways.
Some of the smaller Dev's had FPS on show I tried a couple of those. Natural Selection 2 is a aliens vs marines sort of squad based FPS game with a touch of RTS thrown in reminded me a lot of a game we played at a Blondcon some years back that was a opens source based on q3 engine game you could evolve aliens in it set up bases. This was the same only newer it was fun but I had no idea what I was doing.
Another PC FPS game I tried was called Primal Carnage it had humans vs Dinosaurs. Beyond the novelty of running around as a trex of swooping in as a teranadon it was pretty poorly implemented and I doubt I would pay money to play it long term.
A lot of the big pc outfits were there razer alienware intel nvidia etc none seemed to have anything particular for sale. Razer made some deal about revolutionizing pc gaming but they claimed that last year and all they had was a very large laptop with an lcd in the keyboard, no idea what crap they were hawking this year.
Ubisoft had a mix of new titles and stuff that was already on sale like sleeping dogs. I tried the new tomb raider looked like an interesting direction had elements of RTS in there a semi open world environment with her shipwreaked on an island needing to survive in the wild. I enjoyed the demo.
The most interesting stand for me was the Nintendo stand they had the new wiiu out for testing and the new revision of the 3ds hardware the 3dsxl. The wiiu adds this new controller the screen thing and some of the games make intelligent use of it. I tried this one title where 5 players 4 with wiimotes as ghost hunters 1 with the new controller as the ghost and the screen on the controller shows the ghost character the main screen doesn't players have to catch the ghost in their flashlights that make it visible the ghost has to drag players off into the dark. I had a few rounds of this and it was a lot of fun I can see it being a good party game it was part of set of smaller games called nintendoland. They also had a new mario games like scriblenauts trine2 and a title called Project 100 that looked interesting save a city from monsters or some such. Their main title seemed to be ZombieU a sort of zombie themed FPS it looked OK. The overall breadth of the lineup and signs of creativity in the games with some intelligent use of the new controller make the new platform seem promising. They also had pikimin 3 which looked fun.
The 3dsxl seems like a much improved version of the 3ds it has a wonderful large screen on it an some improved ergonomics the 3ds is basically box like the xl version much smoother rounded edges. If they can get some good games on it that leverage the 3d I think they'll do well with the new XL version.
Nasa had a booth and gave a really great talk about the work they were doing with games you can get their first game for free on xbox live it's a kinect title called Mars Rover Landing pretty simple game that recreates the 7 minutes of terror for you to play through they also showed a load of web tools that used their mapping data of mars and games stuff to allow you to follow the progress of the rover or drive around yourself. They also talked about how they are using gaming tech to control their robotics systems showed a few demos of controlling humanoid and non humanoid robots that way again using kinect hardware. They finished their talk with a hypothetical look forward to a future where we have holodecs an can follow along dive the seas of Europa and so on it was a very uplifting talk and got a long standing ovation and it's good to see a big organization like nasa taking gaming seriously as a medium to educate people about their efforts and a platform to build on where so often it's dismissed as a somewhat childish pass time.
I had a brief look through the table top areas fanatsy flight had some new starwars based game they were demoing there was this game called leviathans didn't taken much else in.
Monolith were demoing another Lord of the rings game seemed like a party based action adventure. There was a motorcyle game that's big sell was Robert Patrick of T2000 fame doing the voice of it (guess it was a kit style talking bike) the booth there was right next to the popular Double fine booth which probably didn't help the guy manning the motorcycle had bleak desperation in his eyes. They has another prop covered by a silver sheet to drum up excitement but noone cared.
It was a good time and I'm struggling to think of what else was on show the information overload of the show floor makes recal tricky (byrn will understand what I mean) if any other impressions surface I'll add them.
Comments
Thank you!
Fascinated to read about NASA taking gaming seriously. It is also interesting that consumer hardware is now so advanced (and reliable) that NASA can take it seriously.
Looking forward to Torchlight 2. It's one of those weird things where you pre-purchase a game long ago and it's a little present for later in the month.
The WiiU is looking good but it won't make me get a new one. The Wii comes out for Mrs's Zumba and Felix's mariocart. As it uses the telly, it doesn't get much of a look in otherwise.
Razer should shoot their marketing team. Their products are good but they have fallen into the realm of showing more pretty girls than the actual products. They don't have anything revolutionary up their sleeve, they just release branded mice every so often. I think they're going to wear people down with their constant dick waving.
Since PAX has a ban on booth babes razer's usual tatics were probably a dead end. I found out what razer's big pax announcement was it was the same as last years announcement a gaming laptop but this one is slightly improved over last years model. What a joke.
I like that PAX don't allow booth babes. Didn't know that! Respect to PA.
The Korean shows where they tend to release loads of stuff are wall to wall models with the odd mouse here and there.
You're right that it is a joke. I think the peripheral hardware manufacturers are going to get a kick in the pants very soon when Valve put their considerable weight behind R&D. The joy of Valve is that they can release a peripheral and make sure that the games work with it - updating their own as required.
Most gamers won't buy a peripheral unless it is compatible with the games it runs on and although Windows does a reasonable job of accounting for unknown hardware - something truly new would need a fair amount of effort.
I hope Valve's R&D lights a fire underneath all the others - there's too much sitting on laurels for my liking. It feels like the last innovation was the graphics card.
Hmm valves last attempt at hardware was the razer hydra which was pretty aweful
I'm most interested in some of the things happening in VR like oculus Rift some of the people that have spent time with the prototype say it's amazing
So far Valve and hardware are an unknown they've produced nothing worth attention so far and it's not their area of expertise still I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and cross my fingers that the Hydra was razers idea.
I really like the idea of the Oculus Rift, but a bit concerned about the motion sickness many that have tried it have reported. Inner-ear motion disconnect is what causes my car sickness, and I've also suffered the same with Red Steel on the Wii (that was due to the delay in movement to the screen response...effectively lag causing a disconnect between visual and motion).
I can only assume I'll suffer a similar issue until it's cleaned up... As I said, love the idea of it (it fits perfectly with a powerful laptop too...for games simply don the headgear, and away you go, yet it all fits in a bag!)
Yeah that is a concern the delay of motion has been the bane of vr goggles for a long time and as a fellow motion sickness sufferer it would cause me issues too. I'm usually fine in games though very occasionally I get a twinge like that where the motion is really bobbing or some such Prey was the last time I felt it.
They made a big thing about the lag being low and that on production models it'll be even lower and the unit lighter so hopefully it will be light enough not to cause explosive vomiting on every use as that would be unpleasant.