PAX day three was all about the exhibit hall. I went in with a mission to check out a bunch of games I missed the first two times and did pretty well I think

Champions Online seem to be pretty much be City of Heroes 2. That isn’t a bad thing though since I enjoyed CoH way more than WoW. I talk to one of the developers a bit while I was playing. Cryptic apparently bought the Champions IP so they could have complete control over it and were trying to expand the universe’s stories to for the game. They have cross-platform play between the PC and 360 working in test versions at the office but she wasn’t sure whether or not it would make it into the final product. She also wasn’t sure how DLC and expansions would work on the 360. I got a hopefully but no overly convincing vibe. The game itself played pretty well on using a controller but I could for the life of me figure out how to swap different powers in and out.

I checked out all of the PAX 10 games but the only one that caught my attention was The Maw, an Xbox Live game developed by Twisted Pixel Games. The basic premise is you play as a captured alien whose only chance of escapes means releasing a blob that will eventually eat the entire universe. You start out the game leading the blob around on a leash and as he eats more and more he grows larger and larger until by the end you ride on him. The blob gains different powers depending on what he’s eaten and I saw some sort of fire power and some sort of flying power.

I’ve pretty consistently had very little interest in Little Big Planet. First of all I don’t own a PS3 and secondly I had almost no idea what it was supposed to be and no interest to find out. After seeing Sony’s demonstration of LBP I still have no idea what it’s about but it did look kind of neat. Sony showed off a small jungle level that was created during the demo. Four players had to then race to the finish line which was rather uneventful until one of them figured out how to use the rocket cars. They then proceeded to kill everyone with it and crashed into the spawn point which caused everyone to die when they respawned.

I played Resistance Retribution for a few minutes mainly just to get a free hat. The controls were tough to get used to, the analog stick moves you, the ABXY buttons look around and the shoulder buttons fire. It was OK but it’s not really my thing so I’m biased. Other people seemed to like it. This was the first time I’ve ever used a PSP and I was pretty impressed with the PSP’s analog button.

I briefly played Sega’s Bleach: Dark Souls. Despite hearing a lot of buzz about the game it didn’t impress me much. I think they were going for an old school SNES type fighter look but the graphic mostly just looked meh. All I thought about while playing it was how awesome Smash Bros DS could be and why Nintendo hadn’t created one yet. I mean it’s just about the only Nintendo IP without a DS version.

Gearbox was doing a promotion where if you let them shave your head and paint Hell on the back of your head they’ll give you a free copy of Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway. A free game sure is tempting but I’m not sure I could pull off the bald look. I also once again hit the PC free play area for some more TF2 LAN goodness. Mmmmmm

After I was finished with the exhibit hall I got in the very long line for the final round of the Omegathon which also served as a sort of closing ceremony for PAX. The Omegathon is a tournament featuring 20 contestants randomly selected from those who pre-registered for PAX. Over the course of expo they compete in various games that generally aren’t considered competitive games. The winner of the event gets $5,000, an all expenses paid trip to the Tokyo Games Show, and custom PAX versions of the 360, PS3 and Wii. This year’s games were Peggle, Boom Blox, Geometry Wars 2, Rock Band, Jenga (the real version) and a secret surprise game. I skipped all but the final round.

The absolute best marketing at the fair was in the Omegathon line. A could of people from 5th Cell showed up right as the line was forming told everyone that they had downloadable demos of Lock’s Quest available via DS download play. There were about a dozen people who took them up on this offer. Lock’s Quest is a tower defense game, but instead of just watching as the enemies pound away at your defenses you can have your character, Lock, who can attack the enemies and repair your structures. I mostly played the battle mode which was just straight up tower defense. I ran through part of the single player campaign but only got through part of the tutorial. It was a fun way to waste sometime in line and an interesting take on tower defense. Hopefully other companies will catch on and do the same thing in lines next year.

The final game of the Omegathon was revealed to be Vs. Excitebike for the Famicom Disk System. One of the guys easily beat the other, 4-0 in a best of 7 matches. It wasn’t a very exciting end but it was pretty cool to have be watching a video game competition with that many people all of whom were into it as much as I was. Gabe and Tycho then took their turn at the competition and Gabe bested Tycho 4-1 which was apparently the second year straight that Tycho has lost. With that PAX was over. I had a great time and was sorry to see it end but there’s always next year.

Last week was the E3 Media and Business Summit, formerly known as Electronic Entertainment Expo also known as E3. I thought I’d post my take on the show this year and give an overview of the major announcements.

MS definitely won E3 this year. Hands down. First they announces a refresh for the Xbox 360 dashboard interface. The new look is similar to that of Vista’s Flip3d and the new Media Center. I can’t wait to play with the interface when it is released. Along with they new interface they’re also allowing 8 person voice chat and the ability to copy game discs to the HD to speed up load times. Microsoft is also adding avatars, which are basically Miis for the 360, and along with them a casual games section for XBL called Primetime. Not extremely exciting but kind of neat. Two other things that don’t really interest me are Lips and Netflix. Lips is a karaoke game and Netflix is partnering with MS to allow movie downloads. The big reveal for MS was Final Fantasy 13 was going to be available for the 360 (everywhere but Japan). That’s a pretty big blow for Sony since the Final Fantasy series has always been a huge exclusive for Sony.

Harmonix also announced the entire set list for Rock Band 2 and it is chock full of awesome. One of the coolest parts of the announcement was that for $5 you can unlock get most of the RB1 content as DLC for RB2 which will go nicely with the ability to use any RB1 DLC in RB2. Activision also annouced that the Rock Band guitars and drum set will work with Guitar Hero 4 which means there is actually a chance of me buying GH4 now, depending on the set list.

The Nintendo conference was just weak. Wii Music was announced and looks pretty useless, basically it amounts to a video game version of the toy instrument they make for kids. Other than a generic statement about more Mario and Zelda coming they didn’t really say anything about any games I actually care about. They did announce Animal Crossing: City folk and eventually Pikmin 3. Neither of which I’ve play or have much interest in right now (although I did order Animal Crossing: Wild World for the DS). I was hoping for a new Kirby, Kid Icarus, or a new IP. Of course they did announce two new periperals for the Wii, WiiSpeak and the Wiimotion+. Wiimotion plus comes bundles with WiiSport: Resort looks and interesting but it would have been nice if it was built in to the Wiimotes to begin with. Apparently WiiSpeak, which comes with Animal Crossing, works pretty well but I think I’d just prefer a headset.

OK, So there was some good news for Nintendo on the DS side. Chrono Trigger (aka the best RPG ever) and Kirby Superstar are being remade for the DS.

As for Sony, they didn’t have much that interested me. probably since I don’t own a PS3. They some new PSN games and a video download service. They also showed a trailer for a game called MAG which is supposed to feature 256 players at once.

Some other stuff worth mentioning:

• PC/360: Left 4 Dead
• PC/360/PS3: Return to Castle Wolfenstein 2
• 360: Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts
• 360: No Bungie announcement
• Wii: Dead Rising is coming to the Wii
• Wii: Mad World
• Wii/360/PS3: MegaMan 9
• DS: Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
• DS: Puzzle Quest: Galactrix

In the end, I think this sums it up the entire conference pretty well.

2007 was a big year. I graduated college, got a crappy job, got an awesome job and had a few ups and downs. It was also the year I returned to gaming. In 2006, aside from the occasional round of CS:Source, or Mario 3 Battlemode, I didn’t do hardly any gaming. I’m not even sure if I bought any games that year. This year; however, I got 3 video game systems (Wii, DS and 360) and more games than the past five years combined (30+). All that and there’s still a rather beefy list of games I didn’t get around to checking out. Here’s my top 5 games played in 2007:

1. The Orange Box (PC)
   Portal and Team Fortress 2. Enough Said. I’ve already talked about TF2 and gave a brief mention to Portal. Combined together in one box this package is almost unbeatable. Portal was short but the most inventive game I’ve played in a long time. TF2 has already replaced CS: Source as my go to game on the PC. A great value and a great time!
2. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)
   This is easily the best game released for the Wii to date. The controls are great and use just the right amount of motion without feeling tacked on. The gameplay is fun and I constantly find myself saying “just one more star”. There’s also tons of variety in levels, I haven’t found a level yet where I thought the game was overly difficult or broken. Although Two player co-op is somewhat disappointing.
3. Rock Band (360)
   Despite only owning the game for six days last year it’s easily one of the best. Guitar/Bass is a bit easier that GH3. The drums are wicked fun to play (despite my lack of coordination). Singing is fun when you have someone who can sing. The track list is better than GH3 despite having less songs. There’s just something undeniably awesome about getting a bunch of people together and rocking. The downside, It is a huge pain in the ass to carry around all that crap; My original guitar was defective and I’m waiting on a replacement; and I can’t use the same characters for different instruments.
4. Guitar Hero 3 (Wii)
   Before Rock Band there was Guitar Hero 3. I bought this game twice, just to get a second guitar for multiplayer. Even after Rock Band it’s still a blast. (It’s also much more portable) Despite the Wii version getting screwed over with mono sound, no DLC (until later this year), and crappy online multiplayer, I’m still happy I got the Wii version. It’s waay more portable and GH3 (and Rock Band) are meant to be played with people in the same room.
5. Paper Mario (Wii- VC)
   Initially I was going to put Super Paper Mario here. The dialogue was great, I had fun playing it and have no regrets buying it but realistically it’s not top five material. It was waaay to easy. Less like a game and more like a story with a lot of walking and jumping. It did get me interested in it’s great granddaddy, Paper Mario. So Paper Mario came out six years ago, I never bought an n64 so it’s new to me. Anyway back to the game, It was a lot of fun but I’m still disappointed I got a fish instead of getting to ride Yoshi around.

Close but not quite:

• Metroid Prime 3 (Wii)
  I like the game so far especially the controls but haven’t had a chance to play much of it yet.
• Halo 3 (360)
  It’s pretty looking and I hear the multiplayer is good but this is another game I haven’t had much time to play with. I plan on using this game to learn how to play console FPSs.
• Bioshock (360)
  Supposedly one of the best games this year, I want it and I want it bad but I don’t have to time for another game right now.