Originally I planned on posting everyday during my visit but we have been having so much fun I just haven’t had time. PAX East has been more fun than I originally thought. Plenty of games to play; both indie and from regular developers. Lots of vendors from NVidia to Alienware. Great panels and good music as well. I’m going to dig into these a bit more. Let’s start with the games.

I got a chance to preview Split Second. It’s racing but with demolition built in. Basically as your racing you have the opportunity to set off explosives, move large objects through buildings, and cause other acts of destruction in hopes of hitting or destroying your opponents. The game was pretty cool, but there is one flaw that will keep me from buying it. When your going at top speed and tap a rail or a curb you blow up. EXTREMELY annoying.

I checked out Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands.  The demo was pretty good. Movement was very fluid. Puzzles were as to be expected. The fighting was much better than the previous PoP.  More enemies to fight, more combos to do.   As most know this PoP is based on the same story line as the games on the GC, so you also have the ability to control time.  This makes things a bit more interesting, but since I’m not to familiar with the Sands of Time storyline I probably will be skipping this one as well.  I saw the new Red Steel. It looks pretty cool, but the controls are pretty much the same and that’s what stopped me from playing the first one.

I played a few indie games. Let me start with the worst one of the bunch.  I played a game called Breach…bleh. I didn’t want to say anything while I was playing it because the dev was right next to me, but boy did it suck. I wanted to stop playing it after about 2 minutes but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.  The graphics were bleh, the shooting was neh, and the knifing was blah.  Nothing to get me excited to play.  He said this game includes a cover system, which other games don’t have.  Obviously he has never played Rainbow Six Vegas.  If this game came out in 2001 it may have actually been good.  However, it’s just too late.

I got a chance to play Shank, a side scroller coming to XBLA this summer. Wrap it up in one word? AWESOME! I can’t wait for this game to come out. The game art is amazing. It really feels like your playing through a comic book. There was one part that I really liked where the sun is setting behind you and while your fighting on this bridge all you see are your silhouettes. The gameplay was nice, smooth, and polished. You have two shanks, two guns, a chainsaw, and grenades at your disposal. In order to optimize your combat you need to use all of these in combos that you make up on the fly. I am definitely going to be purchasing this when it’s out.

Next game I checked out was Slam Bolt Scrappers. This is a Tetris clone with a twist. Instead of blocks falling from the sky, little monsters fly down with different colors. Kill the monster to grab the block. You want to stack the blocks by color. Color blocks become weapons and the bigger color blocks you build the larger the weapon becomes. The lasers, missiles, and bombs attack you opponents structure and break it down.  You can also attack your opponents.  If you take all of their health they have to hit a button combination to get back into the game.  When you opponents tower falls you win. It was a very fun game to play but at the same time was challenging. It required a lot of team work and focus. Even though I lost I still had fun which was the important part.

I got a chance to play AAAaaaaAAAaaaaAAAAAaaa.  I saw this game on Steam but didn’t really pay it any attention.  I checked it out at the booth and liked it so much that I bought it when I got home.  Can’t beat the price it was only $5.  The game was originally developed to simulate base jumping.  The developers found out that it was boring so they chose a different approach.  You start off at the top of a structure.  When ready you jump off and your objective is to rack up as many points as possible while falling down.  You do this by getting close to objects, staying close to objects, and hitting point barriers.  If you tap a wall while falling it will start to spin which throws you off a little bit.  If you slam into the top of an object, or don’t deploy your shoot in enough time you die…and lose all of your points.  Very fun game.  It is also very challenging at times.  I would recommend checking it out.  If you need something to blow a little time on and have a little fun I think you will like it.

The last game I got a chance to check out was Snoopy Flying Aces.  This guy is excited.  Why you may ask?  Because as soon as I saw it it reminded me of Crimson Skies for the XBox back in the day.  Crimson Skies was so much fun to play on XBox live.  Until you have played CTF in a airplane you really haven’t played CTF IMO.  The flight controls are very easy to use and the planes were very easy to  maneuver.  From what I can tell you get a choice of two special weapons along with your primary guns.  In my case it was four miniguns or three swinging balls of fire.  I was only able to play one game type which was trying to destroy a zeppelin before it reached the center of the level to drop a bomb.  From what I played it was fun and I’m looking forward to it’s release.  I believe it’s due for release this summer.

PAX was more than just games.  There were tech displays and entertainment as well.  I’m going to get into that in the next part of the post coming up soon.