Penny Arcade Expo 2006: Saturday
The Penny Arcade Expo continues unabated. I’m getting too old for this…nah.
Tags: Penny Arcade Expo Categories: Features, Tech Features
Posted by Peter Lytle on Sep 11th, 2006
It has been scant minutes since the PAX 2006 Concert 2 closed, and I have scurried back to my room on the bloody, stumpy remains of my feet to fervently scribble down today’s hectic happenings. [Maybe if the scribling were more legible this report wouldn't have been turned in late. - Ed.] While yesterday was a whirlwind of activity, today added hundreds more people and an entire exhibition hall. Tournaments, LARP events, exhibitors peddling their wares, more panels and another concert made day two of PAX almost too much to handle. However, I am hopefully able to distill the purest essence of Saturday’s action here.
The day began with a stop by the BAWLS booth for breakfast, followed by a jaunt through the exhibition hall. This year’s exhibition hall is truly massive, and the hoards of milling persons do not help facilitate actually learning anything (although it is a veritable shangri-la in comparison to E3).
Besides the exhibition all, there were plenty of other events, which were split between me and my boss, Daniel. By this point in the convention many places, including the console freeplay area and the console tournament areas reeked of so much body odor that they were nearly unapproachable. Despite this, the tournaments and the Omegathon proceeded without pause and the beanbag lounge continued to be the hottest social spot in the Meydenbauer Center.
Ubisoft has two very intriguing games in the pipeline: Assasin’s Creed and Heroes of Might and Magic: Dark Messiah. A panel discussion was to preview the two games; too bad it turned out to be a multiplayer demo of yet another Sam Fisher game. After starting 30 minutes late and failing to deliver on Assasin’s Creed and Dark Messiah, I walked out; there were far more interesting things to do than watch what seemed to be a mediocre Splinter Cell re-hash.
However, after speaking with the Ubi team in the exhibition hall, I found my initial condemnations of the game to be unfair and inaccurate. Double Agent’s multiplayer has been significantly tweaked to make it a unique “cat and mouse experience.” The spies must rely on sneaking and trickery to survive, since they have no weapons. Although they can still snap the necks of mercenaries, the mercenaries themselves will find themselves seriously up-gunned and sporting motion sensors. Although the Ubi panel was a bit of a disappointment, Double Agent is probably not as bad as it was made out to be.
On this second day, the greatest highlight was by far the exhibition hall. I, being an illustrious member of the press, was allowed in 15 minutes early. Since I already knew the layout due to a little covert scouting the afternoon before, I made a beeline for those booths that would probably be swarmed the instant the doors were opened to my braying gamer brethren waiting outside.
My first stop of the day was to The Behemoth booth, which I instinctively and correctly guessed would be the best in show of the entire hall. The Behemoth booth had a small, simple and neatly-designed booth that featured an intense new game named Castle Crashers, senior members of development staff and internet hero Tom Fulp! The booth was selling the usual booth swag: t-shirts, games, figurines, etc (only these t-shirts look like ones you could actually wear in public). Every person there was intimately informed about their game and was more than happy to tell you all about it. The energy and dedication of the high-level staff present was infectious, as everyone they talked to became engrossed in the playable version of Castle Crashers. Castle Crashers is a hand-drawn 4-player medieval beat-em-up, vaguely similar to the Behemoth’s previous title, Alien Hominid. The insanely over-the-top co-op action was too much fun to describe here; a full hands-on preview will follow in a few days. Kudos to The Behemoth: they really had a superb showing at PAX.
After playing Castle Crashers for way longer than was polite, I made my way to the Neverwinter Nights 2 booth. Although their setup was very spartan, their game was amazing. Neverwinter Nights 2 follows in the grand RPG tradition of Fallout and Baldur’s Gate, only this time the game accurately portrays the D&D rules and the Forgotten Realms world down to the minutia. The character generation system has become much more nuanced than its predecessors, creating character diversity through background options rather than focusing on superficial cosmetic choices. The combat and dialogue system is no longer just a computer interpretation of the D&D rules: according to sources, almost anything you can do with the D&D game mechanic, you can do in Neverwinter Nights 2. It has been years since any game has come close to matching my experiences with Fallout and Baldur’s Gate; Neverwinter Nights 2 looks like it might just surpass its vaunted predecessors.
After Castle Crashers and Neverwinter Nights 2, I found myself in some addled, giggle-ridden state of gamer euphoria. However, the good times were not to last. As I was passing the Dungeons and Dragons Online booth (which I chose to mostly ignore, it was the exact same thing they had last year, showing the exact same game), I noticed The Lord Of The Rings Online in a corner. Intrigued, I elbowed my way into the little crowd of excited people to get the scoop on Turbine’s new MMO. Unfortunately, what I heard frightened me: everything will be canon from the book license. Although this may sound like a good thing, it isn’t. There will be no hit points (there were none in the Tolkien universe), no faction vs. faction PvP (again, not canon) and no red squirrels (thank the Tolkien superfans – instead of trying to help build believable gameplay mechanics, they went ballistic on the dev team for having red squirrels, which apparently are not native to Tolkien’s England). Instead of dying, you are “defeated,” which was not clearly explained. Apparently, instead of you head flying off after getting beaned by a Troll’s club, you run away. Some weapons will have upgrades such as poison, which instead of killing you via poison, will eat away at your resolve. At some point, this made sense to someone on the development team, and that frightens me. As for PvP, players will be allowed to create “monster” characters, which will populate the PvE quest areas. Do well as an orc or goblin, and you may spend special points to buy upgrades, such as a Troll. However, you cannot leave the PvE areas and attack faction settlements. Although a neat new idea, this eliminates any possibility for an evolving, player-driven game world. However, it also prevents moron players from running roughshod over the Tolkien canon. I feel like I may be too harsh on LOTRO, but some of these new gameplay mechanics are so far-flung from the basic tenants of reality that it’s hard not to laugh at. Hopefully I am proven and wrong and it turns out to be a great game.
At this point, I was getting a little soured on swords and sorcery, so I tried my hand at the America’s Army target shooting game. Every year, the Army makes a really good effort to come out and be a good exhibitor. Their booth is always visually interesting and stocked with info about America’s Army videogame and the Army itself. As well as a multiplayer table of America’s Army, they had a target shooting game complete with a CO2-powered carbine, much like an old arcade shooter. This game tries to replicate elements of training recruits experience in the army. Although target shooting in-and-of itself isn’t very exhilarating, it definitely seemed authentic. The whole setup was polished and the game was much more difficult than one would imagine.
After I got my fill of blasting wooden terrorists, I went right across the path to Harmonix’s booth to play Guitar Hero II. Apparently, Harmonix has been listening to their fans and has implemented many new features, including co-op mode, where one person plays lead guitar, and another plays bass. Other modes include practice mode, where you can play a song segment by segment and slow it down, pro face-off mode, which allows 2 players to go head-to-head on the same note chart, and basic multiplayer that allows each player to select their own difficulty. New songs include “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” “War Pigs” and “Freebird.” When asked about “The Final Countdown” by Europe and “Wishmaster” by Nightwish, Harmonix staff refused to comment. All they would say is that “Guitar Hero II has been turned up to 11. Lengthen your strap kid, you ‘aint George Harrison.” After it was confirmed that I was not, in fact, a member of the Beatles, I was forced to relinquish my guitar to the waiting hands of another wannabe guitar hero. I am a guitar zero.
My final stop in the exhibition hall was to see Auran’s new game, Fury. The premise of Fury sounds like tons of fun: as described by CEO Tony Hilliam, “Fury will be like Battlefield 2 meets Unreal Tournament meets Battlegrounds meets Guildwars. On Steroids.” This type of white-knuckled deathmatch teamplay, usually reserved for first person shooters, was amply displayed by their booth: nothing but huge multiplayer bloodbaths on dozens of gaming rigs. There were even two DJs to MC the booth, much like Mexican soccer announcers. Although a cool premise, the DJs’ antics wore thin very quickly on any nearby individual not playing the game. As for the game itself, Fury was indeed very fast paced. However, combat and using skills feels clunky and unintuitive, like an early beta. However, since it really IS basically still a beta, I have high hopes for the future.
The only real panel of the day I attended was “The Role of the Community and PR in the Game Industry.” Now, it is a well known fact that anyone involved with public relations or advertising is actually a soulless, incredibly dull and evil robot (yours truly is an Ad and PR major…), so the fact that there is actually a panel dedicated to my line of work is heartening. Not a lot was said here that would have any meaning to the average gamer, except for a few gems. Frank O’Connor, Bungie’s content manager spoke about why the whims of the hardcore fans are not always followed: “A small vocal few could completely ruin or change a game” The game developers are the ones in charge of making an enjoyable title, not “fanbois.” Frankie also confirmed that teabagging a downed opponent is a facet of HALO multiplayer that Bungie wants to foster in future games. “We recognize that teabagging is an essential part of the HALO experience,” O’Connor said. “In HALO 3, teabagging opponents in multiplayer will make your shields recharge faster…I’m not kidding, you can quote me on that.”
Saturday’s last huzzah was concert number 2. The crowd was much larger this night, probably because the artists were the videogame-culture gods MC Frontalot and The Minibosses. For you philistines who don’t know, MC Frontalot is the creator and undisputed master of nerdcore hiphop. He and his sidekick Yook fronted nonstop for over an hour onstage to an equally nerdcore crowd. Rapping about bridges, Urolagnia, crippling depression and videogames, “The Front” had the crowd howling and singing along throughout the show. His was easily the most entertaining of all the stage performances.
However, nothing compared to the pure-videogame-rock power of The Minibosses. The Minibosses are not human. They are beings of pure energy and rock that coalesce into human-like forms in order to play covers of old NES music. They had the crowd jumping, singing (if you can call it that) and waving DSs like lighters. It was an elevating experience, to say the least. Any gamer not in that room at that moment missed something beautiful that would have touched their very soul. If you haven’t yet, make a point of seeing PAX’s concerts. They’re worthy of holy pilgrimage.
At this point, I am beyond tired. It’s like Christmas when you were very young, and the overwhelming excitement almost made you want to throw up.
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Tags: Penny Arcade Expo
Posted by Peter Lytle on Sep 11th, 2006 and is filed under Features, Tech Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
