But first, the not so awesome things….
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier
The
title of this game should be; “Ghost Recon; Exactly Like We’ve Done Before”.
How can this be a “future soldier” game when in every iteration of Ghost Recon,
players had the ability to wallhack? Why is it fun to know where your enemies
are?
Assassins Creed 3
What a
waste of time! I should have known better than to wait in line for this pile of
crap from Ubisoft. If you’re expecting anything drastically new from the last
five iterations over the same number of years, (which I’m not sure anyone is)
then you probably already have decided on whether or not you will be buying
Assassins Creed 3. Assassins vs Templars
taking place around the 18th century when America was first being
colonized. Another year, another Assassins Creed game. It will also most likely
be $60 on PC and most likely be another pass from me.
Mass Effect 3 Panel
Another
waste of time. Bioware went out of their way to declare they would not be
addressing the ending to Mass Effect 3. The good news is the audience was
allowed to ask questions after the panel speakers were done talking. What a
perfect time to confront Bioware! The panel included a producer of Mass Effect,
Level designer, two writers and a QA guy. The first topic? DLC. Ok. Then some
talk about Tali and how she’s a racist. OK. Then questions… And the audience elects to ask about; the
Citadel, video game relationships to art, shooting Mordin, WHAT KIND OF TOOLS
WERE USED FOR TESTING THE GAME, “If you could throw one character into the
synthesis ending, who would it be?”and some lame question about Garrus. My fellow video gamers disappointed me.
Borderlands 2;
Another sequel, another game you probably
have already decided whether or not you re buying this. Me? I’m not. The
first one is a giant mundane repetitive piece of shit. As much as I want to kill dogs for the first 30 levels I think I'll spend my time doing something more fun.
The Things That Were Cool…
Aliens: Colonial Marines; While waiting in line, we got to
speak to the marines, who were not part of Sega marketing or any other contract
marketing company, but were rather fans of the Alien franchise and had
constructed their own Marine outfits. Sega found these guys online, and hired
them to hang out at PAX, which was a nice touch to the authenticity around the
Aliens Colonial Marines booth.
The game itself looks OK, definitely not what you would
expect from 6 years in the making, but as we learned recently, the game was announced
before production had even started. We saw "Pre-Alpha" footage of a
live demo of the game. After the live demo, we got to play 5v5 multiplayer
against the developers where we were the Marines and the devs were aliens. It
was essentially Left 5 Dead only in the Alien Universe. The Aliens even had an
equivalent of an tank.
What got me the most excited was this game is actually going
to be the canon "sequel" to Aliens. So it follows the events after
the movie. You board the Sulaco and see Bishop cut in half, two pods were
jettisoned into space alluding to Ripley surviving.... later in the game you apparently
get toland on the planet LV-426. One of my questions after the demo was whether
the Space Jockey would be making an appearance. And the response I got was;
"Well you can't land on LV-426 without bumping into the Space Jockey can
you?"
Diablo III Beta Keys; ( I still haven’t received mine yet but the
Blizzard dude said it would take 7-10 days… I’m still hopeful)
Primal Carnage; A multiplayer game that is Left 4 Dead, only
putting dinosaurs against humans. The game we played was extremely buggy, but
it was also extremely fun in the early pre-alpha development stages. Playing as
a T-Rex, velociraptor or pterodactyl you can attack humans in exactly the ways
you are envisioning as you read this. I
have high expectations that future demos will be more complete and even more satisfying
as this demo was.
Air Mech; The surprise of PAX for me. It’s a multiplayer RTS
that can run in your browser. You can even play right now if you’d like; https://www.carbongames.com/chrome.html
When you hear RTS you immediately think of Command and Conquer, but this RTS is
less about placing/building buildings and more about using your super jet/robot
transformer to fly over predetermined bases, build your army and attack your opponents
in 1v1, 2v2 or 3v3 co-op play. The devs claim it’s also coming to steam later
in the year but you can play the demo right now through your browser.
Super Monday Night Combat; Another wicked fun multiplayer
game. Yes it’s a lot like TF2, but it’s more like TF2 on steroids... for free. It was actually released on steam yesterday before I post post this. Seriously, go there right now and you’ll
start downloading it.
PAX East Summary: So yes, I hit up all the major titles and
not one of them really sparked any huge interest. The two places I had the most fun
were at the Air Mech booth and Far Cry 3, and the only reason Far Cry 3 seemed
so fun was because I got to sit down and rest while I played. Overall I feel
2012 is a weak year for games and I'm surprised more gamers are not bored with the over hyped beaten to death franchises. My only hope is Valve can get me another release
soon…
Good Movie’s I’ve Seen Lately
I meant to write full reviews for these but I haven’t had
time, so very quickly people should go see, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance if
it’s still around in your area. Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, also known as
the Crank guys (and Gamer), have put their own spin on the Ghost Rider
franchise and it really paid off. It’s light-years better than the first movie
that also stars Nicholas Cage. This is what Ghost Rider should look and feel
like. Johnny Blaze (and Cage) come off as crazy lunatics. Now we need Neveldine
and Taylor to tackle the Punisher.
Another great movie out right now is The Cabin in the Woods, written and directed
by Drew Goddard, the dude who wrote Cloverfield and a bunch of Lost episodes and
co-written by Joss Whedon, the dude who directed awesome movies like Serenity,
Thor and the upcoming soon to break every movie record; The Avengers. It’s much
better for me not to say why The Cabin in the Woods is so great, because it’s
greatness is hidden in a bunch of misdirection in the way the movie was
promoted. You just need to trust me that it should be experienced. Don’t ask
anyone if they have seen it, don’t Google the synopsis, just go to the movie theater,
see the movie and return here and comment on your reaction.
No comments:
Post a Comment