Well It's that time of year again and once again I find myself in Seattle for PAX Prime. I'll be trying to get as much info out over the next 3 days as possible with pictures of all the shiny new games and the trade floor (which I might add is nearly double the size this year). You can check back here or follow my misadventures on twitter @3pgPAX.
Today's adventures were more of airport/customs fun, finding hotel, food and then ending up at a board game PAX meet up where we took over the Sheraton Hotel Lobby.
Citadels is card game for 2-7 player of bluffing, building, diplomacy and accidental back stabbing, it will make more sense in a minute, I swear. The objective of the game was to build buildings for your citadel, all which cost a varying different amount of gold between 1 and 6. Each player had a role card, which grants them an extra ability or income each turn, that you also go to change at the end of every round. Starting with one player each player at the top of each round shuffled through the 8 different role cards and chose one in secret from everyone else, until there were none remaining. Each class has a different turn order, labelled from 1-8 that will always be the same, so for instance the Assassin is always the first person to go in a round, they get to choose one other role to assassinate each round and they miss that round. I say role because they aren't choose a player, they say I'm assassinating the Merchant, not really knowing who they are until it becomes the merchants turn and a corpse turns up.
All in all a lot of fun, a bit slow on the uptake but once it got rolling it was a lot more about guessing who to screw and how.
The gem of the night though was Fantasy Flight Games' Red November, a cooperative board game where 6 gnomes are on a submarine with a bunch of vodka that's breaking down. Everyone has to work together to keep themselves alive as fires break out, bulkheads get blocked, parts of the sub flood and if you're really unlucky, a kraken attack. It was much simpler and a hectic crazy of "Well do we put out the fire or try and stop the missile bay from exploding". It's also great playing a game where vodka makes you more powerful. Although sadly, just like in real life there is the consequences of the hangover.
Over all a great first day and I need to give a shout out to a few of the guys over at The Modern Day Pirates who we were board gaming with most of the night.
That about wraps up the festivities of pre-PAX. I'm off to bed to rest of for a day of gaming sensory overload.
I do ask over the next couple of days you bear with my spelling and grammar abilities, or lack thereof, as well pictures being updated later into the posts as my main goal is to get information out as fast as possible this weekend with the intent of tidiness a little bit later.
Yes, it's true. The new game of Telltail is indeed going to include some familiar faces pokering with each other. Sam & Max, TF2, Penny Arcade and Strong Bad team up together!
"We've had the idea for some time of exploring the idea of what video characters do when they're not ‘on the clock' in the games we play," explained Telltale CEO Dan Connors via the game's announcement. "We pitched the idea to friends in the industry and it really resonated. We all had a great time imagining what these guys would banter about while slinging cards – from there Poker Night at The Inventory was born."
We'll have some live feedback from PAX convention this weekend to confirm or deny this corpocracy. Stay Tuned!
I bought this game on a whim, just seemed like it would be great for some mass carnage and zombie slaying. I think its fun and figured I would do a little mini review for those interested. If you prefer to watch a video, see below. It has annotations that describe most of what I cover in terms of game mechanics.
Overview
The game is pretty straight forward, load up and pick your mode. Arcade has 5 different maps with 3 different difficulties and modes. You can play free play, timed, defend daisy (your girl friend) and survival. To unlock the next levels you need to get atleast a bronze, getting a silver and gold medal will unlock character bios, artwork and vision filters (change the way the camera looks). The bronze isn't too horribly hard with a little practice so you can un-lock the levels pretty quickly. Note: To change the settings that matter you need to click the left most tomb stone when you boot the game up. The in game options only really change sound.
Controls
This is the biggest problem I have with this game. If you do not have a usb controller, this game will be a NIGHTMARE to play. Even with a controller (I use a xbox 360) you have to use the lock on function since for some reason they made it so you can't run one direction and shoot in another. Right trigger fire and left trigger brings your stick of fire out to burn zombies. You will end up holding down the lock on the entire time, its not bad but I would REALLY prefer it to be a standard shooter set up. Once I used the lock on and controller the game got about 10x more fun, a mouse is just.. a nightmare.. and you are on fire.. while drowning.. and fighting a bear.
Audio/Video
The graphics have a cartoonish feel to it but it fits really well with the game and the audio is good but will get repetitive quickly. Once you listen to the songs for each level a few times I would advise slapping on some music of your own, the sound effects though are excellent. The sound of a chain saw tearing through zombies is really satisfying.
Replay value
For a game like this it has a surprising amount of things to do, most of which take some time and know how to do. Also you can go back and just kill a shit ton of zombies if you feel like killing some time, or of you cant connect to the internet and need to blow something up. It is a simple to pick up game and at no point have I felt like it got impossibly hard, very difficult yes but never to the point where I have said "this is just stupid". Situational awareness, having an escape route and knowing whats on the map can keep you alive through just about anything. If you have $10 to spare and like to kill zombies with shotguns, lawn mowers, chain saws, bats, or other various weapons its worth picking up. On Steam.
Quietly drifting in the shadows of big budget Starcraft and no-budget minecraft we have the sequel to Puzzle Quest. If you felt betrayed by Galactrix, set those feelings aside. Galactrix was a mistep in a new direction. They took some risks, and their clunky UI design made us all pay dearly. But Puzzle Quest II serves up a healthy dose of new mini game variations, and removes at least one of the annoying old bugs. If you're a big fan of the old Puzzle Quest, then you'll know what I mean by "illegal move." You are no longer penalized a turn for making a mistake, or accidentally clicking incorrectly. However, with that same correction, they've removed the enjoyable click-sweep interface. You would think they are making enough money to afford a UI designer, right? PQ II is plagued by similar ill devised UI decisions, but serves up relentless puzzle grid fun. And all the old puzzles you loved are back with potential new friends thrown in the mix.
At this point in my gameplay I have not seen the old world map. They seem to have swapped it out in favor of a smaller dungeon crawl view. Similarly, when you get to a portal, they have "pages" of portal selections. In the first few areas this can be super confusing when you haven't filled up the page and you're trying to figure out how to get back to town. If I hadn't noticed the tiny little arrow by the list, I might have been fiddling with it for hours, or never figured it out. Yet another annoying UI choice.
To fill out the rpg quality of it they've added traps and trap detection minigames, door bashing/lockpicking/magic lock picking, looting minigame (THE BEST!) Let me give you an example... When you defeat a monster, or find a lootable item, you play the minigame where you have X number of moves. You can find crafting items which are used at the shop for upgrades, gold, or rare items. You can also get rare items by doing combos or matching more than four. So, while you don't get to decide what rare item you get, you can work towards how many of what type of item you get. Nothing says skill like getting five rares!
Of course it wouldn't be an RPG if you weren't leveling your character, so there's a myriad of stats that are influenced by your upgrades per level. It's very similar to the old version, but they've tweaked it out pretty heavily. The morale mechanic has been streamlined so it isn't completely worthless as an upgrade. In fact, I think it may now be the most powerful.
Long story short; PuzzleQuest II is an adequate and enjoyable successor in the PQ franchise. And hopefully, one day, they will hire a competent UI designer.
There are things about being a gamer that makes me inwardly cringe. I think about some of our community members that love gaming so much that they play everything and anything. One of our admins, Labfiend, has one of the largest Steam catalogs I think that is out there. It is amazing. He has probably played more games than I ever will. And he hasn't stopped yet.
Think about that. No matter how long I play or how many games I buy, I will never catch up. Then I think about my games, what I have played, what I have enjoyed, and I have to hang my head in shame. What's my dirty secret?
I am a total game snob. "Horrifically snobbish" would fit. I only play a very small selection of games good enough for me. I am full of disdain for everything else. Imagine if a self-proclaimed "Movie Geek" claimed he only watched movies from Paramount. He obviously is not a geek if he isn't watching everything. Right? So I guess I am not a gaming geek if I don't play everything, right?
Does the logic follow on this?
I have never played a Playstation 2 or 3 or PSP. I have never touched an XBOX, ever. I touched a VirtualBoy once, and I felt very dirty afterwards. I never played Diablo, any of them. I never touched any of the Sims games. I have never played many of those games that you all consider necessary to have experienced to be called a Gamer. I find that I fall into one game at a time and play until the next best one comes along. I have my single player queue and my multiplayer queue. That's it. Two games at a time.
What do you think? Is a Gamer defined by their game catalog? Or are they defined by their way of life? Meaning is it action that defines them or the love of games that defines them? Discuss.
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Well It's that time of year again and once again I find myself in Seattle for PAX Prime. I'll be trying to get as much info out over the next 3 days as possible with pictures of all the shiny new games and the trade floor (which I might add is nearly double the size this year). You can check back here or follow my misadventures on twitter 
Quietly drifting in the shadows of big budget Starcraft and no-budget minecraft we have the sequel to Puzzle Quest. If you felt betrayed by Galactrix, set those feelings aside. Galactrix was a mistep in a new direction. They took some risks, and their clunky UI design made us all pay dearly. But 