PAX Prime, Aug 26-28th 2011.

[Bort]

The show starts in less than 24 hours and our own chopemon is currently in the air heading there. Anyone else attending?

http://prime.paxsite.com/

A lot of the panels should be live streamed. The schedule for them is here - http://prime.paxsite.com/schedule.php

The PAX 10 indie games this year are - http://prime.paxsite.com/pax10.php

Digipen will have a suite of student games there. You can see trailers for them here -

http://indiegameschannel.com/wp/2011/08/23/digipen-pax-2011-student-game-trailers-part-1/

http://indiegameschannel.com/wp/2011/08/23/digipen-pax-2011-student-game-trailers-part-2/

[Bort]

AssRev panel - http://uk.gamespot.com/events/pax201...es%3Btitle%3B6
David Jaffe Keynote - http://uk.gamespot.com/events/pax201...s%3Btitle%3B10
Mike and Jerry panel - http://uk.gamespot.com/events/pax201...3Bplay_btn%3B3
Bioshock Infinite panel - http://uk.gamespot.com/events/pax201...3Bplay_btn%3B6
PC Gamer panel - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxLJbBEdHlY

[chopemon]

News from the show floor: there are far too many people here.

They have added another expo hall but it is full of board game retailers and indie devs so most of the crowd are in the main expo halls. Those halls are full to bursting and the lines to play anything are ridiculous.

But on to the cool stuff!

My longest queue was for nearly 2 hours to see Borderlands 2 and it made me incredibly happy. It looks fantastic, the new enemies and weapons are really impressive and the mission structure has been fixed for coop (no more ineligible party members). I don't want to say any of the details as you should see them for yourselves when they eventually show some gameplay.

Lollipop Chainsaw is good but lacks the Killer 7/NMH magic. It plays exactly how you'd expect and has the usual Grasshopper style bosses. It feels nice and certainly seems like a good game but I want to feel the first time I felt when I played a Suda game.

Retro City Rampage is about as close to perfect as you can get. The game gets everything right. The best surprise is when you get in a car and find out it controls exactly how it would if it actually were a NES game as it only turns in 8 directions. Very cool game full of personality.

Gotham City Impostors is a great shooter. Not much to look at visually but it has excellent feeling weapons and interesting gadgets.

Ghost Recon Online (free to play) is what you'd expect. Imagine the adversarial modes from GRAW but with smoother animation. I enjoyed it

Ghost Recon Future Soldier. Team GRAWsome get your guns. This feels like GRAW but again much smoother. The class system and intel linking will make for some unbelievable team games.

That's all I've got to play since we've been exploring and going to panels. The panels have been weak unfortunately. The Irrational panel was just regurgitated preview content and so was the first Halo panel. There was some cool anniversary news in there though and the flicking between the old and new graphics is pretty stunning. The Giant Bomb panel was very funny but we were herded like cattle into the queue room which was overcrowded, too hot and didn't have any air.

Right, I'm off out for sushi!

[Flabio]

The live 'Acquisitions Inc.' D&D game last night was quality, nice of Wizards to stream that one live I thought. Suspect that when they put up the edited version online it won't have *quite* so many porn jokes.

[abigsmurf]

Typical Suda bosses? Euch

So it's 5 minutes of combo>dodge>combo>dodge until the bosses health gets low and they start spamming unblockable movies that take out most of your health (or kill you outright)

[chopemon]

Typical Suda bosses? Euch

So it's 5 minutes of combo>dodge>combo>dodge until the bosses health gets low and they start spamming unblockable movies that take out most of your health (or kill you outright)

Correct except for the last bit. The first bit repeats instead but there is a QTE as well.

So, Gearbox won PAX.

Every developer panel (that I went to) was purely an exercise in marketing and advertising. All of the content was just recycled from press releases, trailers and previews. The Irrational panel included exact quotes from things I read/saw weeks before PAX.

Then Gearbox happened.

The Gearbox guys treated the attendees with respect and they truly valued the fact that we had come to see them. Randy and Mikey bounced off each other and had absolutely no PR sound bites. A bunch of developers got on stage to hang out with their fans. We got to see a sizzle reel of Aliens footage and found out some cool stuff (there is a way to counteract Alien acid).

They were honest and open about the reception to Duke and it was nice to hear a developer accept the problem rather than bull****ting it away.

Then they started talking about Borderlands 2 and that was great. They told us about new systems and what they're doing with it. During the Q+A people asked a lot of questions about information that hasn't been revealed yet. They didn't answer some questions but they broke embargo about a whole bunch of stuff. Artifacts now upgrade everything in the game (how high you can jump, how good you are at driving etc.), scopes have loads of variety and different scopes tell you different things about the target, there is more than one female player character and there is a whole line of toys coming for it.

When they were talking about this Randy told them to break the embargo on the information. It sounds like a minor thing but the president of a triple A console developer was open and candid with a room full of people. How often does that happen? Most of the time it is force fed PR lines. When was the last time a president of a company bought 900 people pizza? That's what we got today.

They also handed out vouchers for a free copy of Borderlands 2 when it ships. This is cool and everything (it got a standing ovation) but it didn't really influence the good will of the crowd seeing as we're all going to buy the collectors edition (they confirmed there will be one) but it was just another cool thing they did.

PAX has gotten very corporate and Gearbox was a refreshing change.

[abigsmurf]

I'll give Gearbox a pass on Duke as they were patching together one of gaming's worst managed projects.

Duke Begins will be a chance to see if they can make a good game with the licence.

[Flabio]

PAX has gotten very corporate and Gearbox was a refreshing change.

In terms of developer panels maybe, but everything else that goes on (the gaming sessions, webcomic stuff, board game stuff etc... basically everything that isn't E3-Like) isn't.

It's pretty much the only show of it's type in the States that's open to the public, and so the publishers and marketing types are always going to hit it hard rather than just let developers do things.

The PA guys do take feedback seriously though, so if they get wind that people aren't liking the panels they'll adjust. As a show it's been heavily moulded by the public so do make sure to email with how you think it needs to change.

[abigsmurf]

I know last year they banned boothes from scheduling their own events (except for ones on the main stages) in an attempt to keep it from becoming too corporate.

The big question: how many people wearing dickwolf t-shirts?

[Flabio]

I know that NDAs in the biz make it very difficult for developers to get permission to do the kinds of open access panels that most con goers are used to. I think we're still a few years away from a culture where gaming cons can have anywhere near the level of fan interaction that comic, anime, sci-fi and fantasy ones do.

Some developers do do decent ones of their own. Blizzcon and Quakefest for example (and the stuff that they do for Eve Online as well actually). But a big single event with lots of developers doing panels? Would love to see it, but still too many hurdles yet.

[Bort]

Giantbomb do the PAX 10 - http://www.giantbomb.com/pax-prime-2...ax-10/17-4796/

Giantbomb panel, part 1 - http://www.giantbomb.com/pax-prime-2...art-1/17-4791/
part 2 - http://www.giantbomb.com/pax-prime-2...art-2/17-4792/
part 3 - http://www.giantbomb.com/pax-prime-2...art-3/17-4793/

Just checked and the podcast is different to the panel this week.