At Least You Didn’t Wear ONLY Boxers

I’ve said before that PAX East, for me, is about the people. It’s about meeting people, talking to people, and hanging-out with people. I may be extremely introverted, but my passion about games makes me want to talk about them with anybody.

 

People with whom I spoke often seemed to fall into the following categories:

 

Industry: these are the developers, testers, and marketing people who tried their best to explain their demo. This was often hard to do in the limited amount of time you had to play a demo. My best experience with a developer: playing Wreckateer, where the dev talked with me, not at me. I also had a great time talking with @Porkfry at the Crimson Dragon booth (although I did terribly with the demo).

 

Fans: this is how PAX gets its energy! People passionately talking about the industry! The best vibe was always around the Harmonix booth: while some people were playing Rock Band, others were playing Rock Band Blitz. Everybody was talking about Rock Band Blitz – mostly in a positive way – and you can bet the guy behind you was checking out your final score…and lack of skill.

 

Trolls: more so than last year, I noticed trolls. They exist in real life…it’s not just an Internet thing! Things I overheard in line: “Sony doesn’t like gamers” and “We need to keep moving so we don’t get mixed-up with these Kinect players.” While waiting to play Crimson Dragon, a dude walked up to me and said it was “cool seeing a Kinect game that didn’t require you to dance”. I then gave him a schooling on Kinect, and all the fine Kinect games I’ve played.

 

Friends: while some of these may be included in the first two categories above (but hopefully never the third!), these people are special. These are the people you wait all year to see maybe once or twice over the course of only three or four days. These are the people with whom your true PAX memories are made.

 

I say everybody should try to attend a PAX at least once – not for the games, but for the people (even the trolls).

 

What Are Words For? LISTENING!

PAX East is quickly approaching. Not only is it about meeting people, but it’s also about listening to people. Last year, I attended a slew of panels. Most of my time was spent listening to others talk. It’s a lot of work – finding the room or theater in the convention center can be a challenge, and then there’s the waiting-in-line. A lot of it.

 

This year, it won’t be any different.

 

The list of panels was recently published, and I’ve already set my tentative schedule:

 

Friday:

Story Time with Jordan Mechner (The Keynote) – I’ve found that the Keynote is the best way to start PAX East. It’s the official kickoff of the EXPO, and regardless of who is presenting or what the topic is, I wouldn’t miss it for any reason.

 

Gamers With Jobs: Gaming For Grown-Ups – Ken Levine is on this panel. Need I say more?

 

BioWare and Mass Effect – Given all the recent controversy, I’m worried this panel might turn into a three-ring circus. I hope the fans can behave, and that this panel isn’t ultimately cancelled.

 

PAX Game 2012 – this is promised to be a version of the TV game show “Match Game”. Dan Amrich is on the panel. Again…need I say more?

 

From Lurker to Leader: A Frags to Riches Story – While this is late in the day, I believe DMZilla said he’s a panelist. So…I’ll lurk.

 

Saturday:

Harmonix and the Evolution of Beatmatch Gameplay – I love music games, and can’t wait to hear this discussion.

 

Joystiq Show Live – this needs no explanation. Last year’s X3F was hilarious, so I’m compelled to attend this.

 

Community Management 2012: Game Journos Living in Captivity – Dan Amrich on another panel? I’M THERE!

 

Sunday:

Real RPGs: Sexuality, religion, and race in design and play – These are all the topics that make RPGs interesting, so I’m looking for some thought-provoking discussion.

 

Trailers: The Final Frontier – Pete Hines from Bethesda is on this panel. It’s all about trailers, in case you couldn’t figure that out.

 

Of course, my schedule can change at any moment. But if you’re going to be at PAX East, you’ll probably find me attending these panels. Or waiting in line…

 

See you there!

 

 

The End

I’m about to discuss the ending of ME3. So I’m going to spoil something. SPOIL. SOMETHING. So if you don’t want the ending of ME3 to be SPOILED, you probably shouldn’t read the rest of this so the ending of ME3 is not SPOILED.

And just to be clear: I’M SPOILING PART OF THE ENDING OF

MASS EFFECT 3.

I put about 60 hours into Mass Effect 3. I took my time. As a result, I was completely vested in the outcome. Despite the controversy over the ending and the outcry for the writers to change the ending of the game, I’m quite satisfied with how my Mass Effect 3 ended.

You see, somewhere about 48 hours into my 60-hour gameplay, I had an epiphany. I predicted how Mass Effect 3 would end. Now, I didn’t know about the choices at the end of the game, because I avoided reading anything about the story to avoid spoilers. But I had nearly predicted one of the choices and the effect it would have.

There were underlying themes involving the Geth and EDI that hinted at this.

It was around that 48-hour mark that I said “The only way to eliminate the Reapers is to…destroy all technology.”

This ended up being one of the choices I had at the end of the game. There was a choice “to destroy the Reapers, all synthetics, and most of the technology upon which civilization relied.” Paraphrased, of course, but you get the point.

What wasn’t clear with this ending was “how much” technology would be destroyed. But the ending I imagined, in my mind, at that 48-hour mark, was much more dire than the ending BioWare presented. Here’s how my ending would have gone:

Shepard opens the Citadel’s arms, the Crucible docks, activating the Crucible. It sends out a pulse, repeated to all mass relays throughout the galaxy, which disables all technology. Planets go dark. Crew are trapped on ships that no longer function… doomed.

Shepard, trapped on the Citadel… alone.

 

The dawn of a dark age.

Would that be an acceptable ending? Absolutely.

Why? It accomplishes the goal of the mission: stop the Reapers.

ME3: Micro-management 101

Mass Effect is a series that is full of decisions. Every decision has weight. What often gets over-shadowed, however, are decisions related to class, weapons, and armor.

 

I’ll admit, “class” is nothing new. Mass Effect did not pioneer the concept of “class”. Like most games that incorporate a class attribute, the class you choose has an impact on your available abilities. My preferred class has always been “infiltrator”, because I prefer sniper rifles and other weapons and abilities that allow me to wreak havoc…from a distance.

 

As an infiltrator, my preferred biotic is “incinerate”. It’s highly effective against organics lacking armor and shields, but it also works extremely well against armor. Taking down “brutes” is easier with “incinerate”. Even enemies protected with shields can be defeated with incinerate…once the shields are eliminated.

 

Combine your abilities with your squadmates’, and defeating any enemy becomes an exercise in using the right abilities and weapons in the right sequence. But timing is always key. Get temporarily blocked from using a biotic due to cooldown, and things can get quite hectic.

 

Banshees, anybody?

 

Mass Effect 3 provides several tools to manage ability effectiveness. Leveling-up earns points to allocate to your and your squadmates’ abilities. Often, you can choose a biotic cooldown bonus or inheriting a percentage of a squadmate’s ability.

 

When faced with only enough points to upgrade a single ability, I would often spend minutes reviewing every possible path.

 

The configuration of your armor also provided bonuses. While you could select non-customizable armor, I often went with the customizable N7 armor. Finding or buying new components would open new possibilities, and changing a single component would greatly alter my overall bonuses.

 

One night, I spent 20 minutes configuring armor (which might explain why the game took me so long to finish!).

 

And hopefully, you didn’t overlook how weapon weight affected “cooldown”. Carry too many weapons, or weapons that were just too heavy, and your abilities’ cooldowns could take up to 200% longer. I would often sacrifice carrying an extra or more powerful weapon just to have quick cooldowns.

 

Overlook or breeze through any of these decisions, and certain battles could become downright frustrating.

 

Choose wisely.

 

Game Plan

I often make spreadsheets of the games I will play. My approach is relatively simple. Once I identify all the games I want to play, I add them to an Excel spreadsheet and sort by release date. To avoid overlap (I only play one game at a time, and finish every game I buy), I may “reschedule” a game for a later date, when there’s a gap, so I add an “order” to each title.

Today’s spreadsheet looked like this:

Yes, I’m analyst.

So why am I playing these games? Let’s see…

The Darkness II – I didn’t play The Darkness, but this demo proved to me it wasn’t necessary – the demo was perfectly framed. I don’t plan on playing this until April, when there’s a gap between two highly-anticipated titles.

Alan Wake’s American Nightmare – I will play this on release day. I loved Alan Wake, and just want more of this world. The new arcade mode looks incredibly fun.

Mass Effect 3 – highly-anticipated, and no other explanation needed. I will play this starting on release day, probably for the entire month of March…several times, exploring all aspects of the story and side-quests.

I Am Alive – I’ve been waiting for this since it was first announced. Unfortunately, since it is releasing the day after ME3, playing it will need to wait until April.

Silent Hill Downpour – I have never played a Silent Hill game, but this game has an atmosphere that calls me. I have this game slated for June, when there’s an obvious gap in my schedule.

Prototype 2 – I loved the first Prototype. The free-running was amazing, and so was the world. I can’t wait to see what this next chapter brings.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier – I just finished Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, and even five years later, it blew me away. The trailer for this game has me really excited now that I know what the game offers.

Inversion – This game will prove to be different. It offers a conceptual style of gameplay that I can’t avoid. I doubt it will be widely-played, but I’m looking forward to something different.

I love it when a plan comes together.

 

Back to the Past, Part 5: “Unfinished Business”

I can’t say I was ever a really big Tomb Raider fan in the past. I had dabbled with the original Tomb Raider on PC and it wasn’t a heck of a lot of fun to play considering the sub-par graphics I had to deal with and my inability to play using a keyboard. While that experience stayed tucked-away in my brain, over a decade of Tomb Raider games rolled on by.

When I got my 360 in 2006, there were only a few games that justified my purchase: Star Trek Legacy, Viva Pinata, and…Tomb Raider Legend. I didn’t know much about Lara Croft and her legacy of the last ten years, but everything I read about Tomb Raider Legend called to me. I purchased Tomb Raider Legend some time around February or March of 2007, and then it sat on a shelf…until October. Viva Pinata and Star Trek Legacy consumed my time (along with other things), and Lara Croft just had to wait.

I may have to admit, I was probably a bit intimidated to start it. I was still getting my feet wet with gaming this generation, and the games I had decided to play were either challenging or involved…or both. Well, at least from my perspective.

The actual gameplay didn’t prove to be difficult, although the puzzles often stumped me. What I remember most about Tomb Raider Legend, though, was the story – the writing. The opening CGI is epic – it is extremely cinematic and immediately draws you in. After playing through the game, the final CGI is bone-chilling. I wanted the next game “NOW!” Of course, I had to wait two years (and was sadly underwhelmed).

This year, I decided to wrap-up all the achievements in Tomb Raider Legend. I had never played the game on “hard”, thinking it would be too difficult. A few weeks ago, I finished it in about seven hours. The “hard” achievement, while worth 175 Gamerscore, isn’t what I remember most, though, about the experience.

It was feeling the same emotions I had felt four years ago, when that closing CGI started.

This is why Tomb Raider Legend remains in my collection today.

Back to the Past, Part 4: “GET OFF MY LAWN!”

When I got my 360 in 2006, Viva Pinata was one of my must-have titles. It was on a list of games I had given to my wife, and while I knew nothing about the genre itself, the descriptions provided on retailers’ websites attracted my interest. Needless to say, I was happy it showed up under the tree.

 

And it’s another game I don’t regret playing.

 

Viva Pinata was the first Xbox 360-exclusive title that I played. It was also my very first foray into the addictive nature of achievements. Viva Pinata barely had a story – it had objectives. But I soon started to connect the objectives to the achievements, and realized the more I played the game, the more objectives I would complete, and the more achievements I would unlock. Hello there, OCD!

 

There was no way to speed-run through Viva Pinata. A lot of the objectives were designed to be discovered through experimentation. Experimentation was fun – especially when growing plants and flowers and feeding them to piñatas to figure out what effect – if any – the plant would have on the piñata.

 

At the time, my daughter was five years old. She could sit and watch me play, and would get just as excited as I would over the appearance of each new piñata and their related evolutions. Eventually, she even started her own game…and I was met with a new challenge: who was going to discover the next big thing in the game next (or in my case, “first”…heh heh)? While I was considerably ahead of my daughter, watching her get excited over every new piñata and evolution was a real treat to experience.

 

Best Pinata EVAR!

For me, though, Viva Pinata was one of the first games for which I needed a guide. There were entirely too many mysteries to figure out. The allure of achievements almost required it. Unfortunately, even with a guide, fatigue set-in, and I only have 920/1000 GS for this title.

 

Maybe it was the colorful setting, or maybe it was the time I spent with my daughter playing it, but Viva Pinata remains one of the most memorable 360 titles I have played so far.

 

Back to the Past, Part 3: Not the Mama!

I had never played a game like Bioshock. I had heard a lot about it, but didn’t decide to play it until three months after its release. I was actually quite intimidated by it. I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to understand the controls, and that eventually the game would beat me.

 

And I was also afraid of it. After all, it was a horror-type game. I kept wondering whether I could play a game that could scare me.

 

It all started with the demo. The demo for Bioshock was the first demo I downloaded for my Xbox 360, after owning it for almost a year. The demo blew me away. When I got to the end of the demo, I wanted more. I wanted more of the story. I wanted to explore more of Rapture. So I ordered it, and more of it…I got.

Bioshock was my first experience with immersion. When I played Bioshock, I would literally escape from this world to Rapture. The art direction – particularly the art deco style – pulled me in. And then there was the music. Although I’m not old enough to remember the era in which Bioshock is supposed to take place, I have always been attracted to the music from that era. The music, particularly during the loading screens, managed to pull the entire experience together. I can still picture vinyl platters spinning in my head…

 

A vivid memory is my sitting there, staring at the screen, while I contemplated what to do with my first Little Sister. Being faced with a choice in a game was a first for me. The fact that I paused for so long is a testament to the game’s immersion. As a father, I saw my daughter in that character’s face.

 

When I finished the game, I mistakenly tried to replay the game on the hardest setting. So there I was, trying to beat that first Big Daddy encountered in the game…failing and failing and failing again. I gave up on that effort, deciding that my time would be better spent playing other games.

 

But that last image of that Daddy haunts me even today…

 

Back to the Past, Part 2: Enlightenment in the Dark

I’ll admit, I’m afraid of trying new things. So when I gave myself a 360 on Christmas of 2006, I added a few titles to a “wish-list” so that my wife could choose a game or two to give me as gift add-ons. “Perfect Dark Zero” was one of those titles.

At the time, I didn’t know anything about game reviews or communities. I read the description of the game, looked at the cover, recognized it had some type of sci-fi backdrop, and said “I’d like to play that!” And so, it ended up under the tree.

I didn’t play PDZ right away. I placed it on the back-burner. I knew it was a shooter, and my only experience with a shooter went back to “Wolfenstein 3D” on the 3DO, a game I don’t even remember finishing.

When I finally popped PDZ into the 360 sometime in the winter of 2007, I was still blown away by the little things this generation of consoles had to offer: music, cut-scenes, graphics, and breadth of environments. Sure, PDZ was a launch title for the 360, and it was over a year old by the time I played it, but I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the game.

I played it…as best I could. For the most part, I had no idea what I was doing. I could barely connect on shots, and the story really confused the hell out of me sometimes. I specifically recall trying to guide the remote camera through a series of tunnels to its goal and completely disorienting myself many times. In fact, that was an overall problem I had with the game, being relatively new to shooters: I had no idea where I was going! I crept along at a turtle’s pace until I got to the end.

And while I didn’t care much about achievements back then, today I look back fondly at the 10 GS awarded to me at the end of that game. That’s right, TEN…for completing the game on “agent” difficulty.

After playing “Perfect Dark Zero”, I thought “maybe shooters aren’t for me?” (Of course, that would be proven wrong later…)

I’m Catman

“Move over, Batman. You’re a flying rodent, and I’m a cat. A cat…with a sword.”

 

OK, so maybe I haven’t played a Batman game. But I have played “Puss In Boots”, the movie tie-in game that I really enjoyed. This game uses Kinect for Xbox 360, and it controls quite well, exceeding my expectations.

 

The first, and most important thing I’ll say is: this game is fun. There are games that are a challenge, and games that make you feel smart, but every once in a while, it’s great to just stand up and have a little…fun.

 

Especially when the environment is so immersive. It’s easy to become immersed in this game – what occurs on the screen and what you’re doing in your room connect seamlessly. The combination of immersion and fun will leave you smiling.

 

A large portion of the game involves sword-fighting and combat. As you fight enemies, your “boots” meter will fill. Occasionally, you’ll be given an opportunity to block, requiring you to correctly position your hand so your sword blocks an attack. Doing so fills your “boots” meter quickly.

 

Once this meter is filled, you can step to the left or right, and line-up your opponent with a trap in the environment. You then “kick”. Doing so correctly will launch the enemy into the trap. It’s fast-paced and precise…and fun.

 

There are other power-ups, but the most charming is an ability to summon a guitar…that allows you to charm up to three enemies at a time by…strumming your guitar. Fill a meter, and then swing to strike up to three enemies across their heads with your guitar. It’s extremely satisfying to actually do all of the movements and see them reflected on-screen.

 

This game does exactly what I’ve been saying Kinect games continue to do: dissolve the barrier between the gamer and the screen. Granted, some well-designed games can do this with traditional controllers – I’ll admit that. However, Kinect games not only equal the level of immersion provided by traditional games, they sometimes manage to exceed it.

 

“Puss in Boots” is probably the closest I’ll ever get to becoming a cat…wearing boots…while brandishing a sword.