PAX is upon us, and the East variety no less. It being my first PAX show, and also my first time visiting Boston, I was pretty excited to finally visit the show I’ve simply read about for years and it did not disappoint. Boston is cold but the games are coming in hot as I spend my first day checking out a few interesting titles.
Rad
Rad is the latest game by Double Fine that’s being published in partnership with Bandai Namco which makes this the most interesting game on the show floor purely because of these two companies collaborating together. It pains me to say however that Rad is a disappointingly uninspired rogue-like. Taking place in a post-post-apocalyptic world, you pick from a very 80s inspired cast of characters and bat away radioactive bugs. It does the typical “find the things that open the door then fight the boss in that door and move to the next level” thing that many roguelikes have done before it. The gimmick here however is that when you level up you mutate a limb into something like a fireball shooting arm, a snake head, or even a tail that births little spiders that aid you in battle. The mutations are defintely the highlight of the game as they’re visually fun, but the game itself just doesn’t do enough to sell me on having to invest in another roguelike and feels more like Double Fine late to the game in the roguelike trend.
Dark Devotion
Dark Devotion is the latest in an attempt to make a 2D Dark Souls game and I honestly continue to not be a fan of these attempts. The game looks very much as if someone took the aesthetic of that series and just did it in pixel form but the movement felt too slow for what I would want out of that type of game and the enemy animations didn’t feel like they gave enough of a visual cue for me to read them properly.
Creature in the Well
Being my first appointment of the day, Creature in the Well was super cool to play. I’d maybe describe it aesthetically as Hyper Light Drifter and mechanically like Legend of Zelda. In it you control a robot who can swat at balls of energy and power up these batteries that can allow you to open doors and progress through the dungeon. Things get tricky when enemies are thrown in and you have to not just worry about dodging their attacks, but catching ricochetting balls to whack their way. There are a variety of weapons to equip that grant special powers like one that gives a laser-sight making it easier to aim and another that collects and balls that swing your way and lets you fling them all in one concentrated burst. Even though the PAX demo was a linear affair, the game itself is said to have these grand dungeons to explore where you’ll solve a variety of puzzles and face off a boss at the end. Considering the email I got pitched the game as “a hack-and-slash with pinball elements” I was pleasantly surprised and really looking forward to seeing more.
RED HYDROGEN One {Phone}
We got to see the 3D phone! So RED, makers of very expensive film cameras, have decided to dip their toes into the phone game with a modular phone that’s selling itself on its modular gimmick and also the addition of a 3DS style 3D that’s limited to videos and games. The 3D itself works just like it does on a 3DS, no worse or better which is a bit of a bummer since, like the 3DS, you have to look at it at a very specific position to make the 3D work and not give you a blurry mess. As cool as the concept of the phone is, it feels very much that, a concept. I’m more interested to see the third or even fourth iteration of this if it hopefully gets to that point.
Armed and Gelatinous
I’m really glad the developer for Armed and Gelatinous found us giddily ignoring the PAX show to hide in a corner to watch the new Godzilla 2 trailer and asked us to come see his game because Armed and Gelatinous is a lot of fun. In it you and three other players control a floating ball of jelly as guns float through space and the gimmick here is that as you pick the guns up, they stick to your body depending on where you touched them and will only fire in that one direction. The more guns you get the bigger you get as well, which also allows you to hold even more guns and seeing a giant blob with an exasperated face fire off dozens of guns was a sight that never got old. You’d think you’d be an unstoppable force if you collected all these guns, but the game balances things out by including a dash that can insta-kill anyone hit by it no matter what their size. This means even someone who got ahead in kills and amassed a horde of guns can be taken down in a second by a freshly respawned player. You can block someone’s dash by dashing back at them however, but things start to get hectic when every player is gunning for you. I will say, as much fun as we had playing the game there was a very slight delay to shooting and dashing that seemed purposeful and I wished it was a bit faster. Regardless, you know a game is a good time when the people playing are laughing and having fun, and a crowd of onlookers builds up to watch and also immediately get invested in the action happening on-screen.
Speaking Simulator
This was easily the weirdest thing I played today. In it you play as a robot who’s impersonating a human (think Terminator style) in the hopes of taking over the planet. You have a sentence you need to speak and each syllable is performed by moving various parts of your face, to an often comical degree. So the screen is split into two, one half showing your face and the other showing the inside of your mouth. In your mouth you can control your tongue with the WASD keys and need to press glowing buttons as they appear while with your mouse you’ll click and drag on your face to contort it into horrifying ways, a la Super Mario 64 menu screen style. As you play you’ll be able to collect upgrades that change the way you play such as adding eye movement or emoting. Visually the game is just hysterical seeing your robot squish its face into horrifying positions, but the writing is where the game sells what it’s going for with some genuinely funny lines. Speaking Simulator is deliciously unsettling with a game that’s a surefire winner for game nights with friends or even solo.
Street Fighter Exceed
We closed off the night in typical fashion: with a trading card game. Street Fighter Exceed isn’t like regular TCGs however, at least not in the “trading” aspect. There are decks made specifically for certain characters (like a Ryu or Zangief deck) and the cards there are not meant to be used in another deck. The main hook of the game is that both players have a “hero” card they place on a mat that has movement slots on it. On your turn you can choose to move along the board or attack your opponent and this is where the fighting game IP makes sense here because despite being a card game, Exceed feels very much like a fighting game. Just like in the genre it’s emulating, positioning and reading your opponent’s moves are integral to victory in this game because an attack card you play might have an attack range of 3, but if your opponent is 4 spaces out then your attack will miss and your opponent will basically get a free return hit on you assuming he played a card with a range that reaches you. Positioning your hero to take advantage of the attack cards you have and also reading your opponent adds an interesting layer of depth to the game that made it feel very much like Street Fighter and I’m really looking forward to playing more.
So that was it for the first day of PAX East. As my first time going to the convention it definitely was a great first impression and I’m looking forward to getting some sleep before heading out into Day 2.
