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Kabbage
Joined: 19 Jan 2009
Location: Boston, MA
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 Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 7:19 pm Post subject: PAX East '14 |
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Yoooooooooooooo I'm going to PAX East this year again. Friday only.
Drop me a PM if you're going and we can maybe meet up at some point.
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Kabbage
Joined: 19 Jan 2009
Location: Boston, MA
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Rud31
forum ruler of Iraq
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: SanAnTex
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Kabbage
Joined: 19 Jan 2009
Location: Boston, MA
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| Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 3:36 am |
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This year... at least on Friday, there's like zero good panels. Still, Anamanaguchi will probably be great.
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Rud31
forum ruler of Iraq
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: SanAnTex
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Rud31
forum ruler of Iraq
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gary oldman dwarfism
Joined: 30 Apr 2012
Location: a cavernous donk
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| Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2014 3:14 pm |
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This was actually pretty fun.
I did not venture too far outside the Megabooth and didn't really play many games, because I didn't have much time while the floor was open. I think I spotted the Videoball booth from a distance on Friday night, but Super Pole Riders was all the team sport I really needed at the time.
I also didn't play a few of the games I was most excited for - Gorogoa, Framed, Elegy for a Dead World, Gods Will Be Watching, any of the dungeon crawlers - and only group-played Mushroom 11. A lot of the Minibooth games were excellent. Burrito Galaxy and Treachery in Beatdown City both seemed to be a bit broken.
bort & bhroom's dreaded minibooths gave me a bunch of microsplinters from tugging those dowels out, so thanks for that. They were extremely functional and utterly disgusting. Apart from the curtain rods they looked pretty good.
I think I like everyone I met there, which feels real weird. So did being that close to that many people being semi-forced-by-circumstance into sales patter.
The RPG panel:
1: "<game>! Right? That battle system. Nothing else like it."
Crowd: <claps>
2: "That is literally the worst game I have ever played."
1: "I will murder you."
Crowd: <laughs>
3: "<Game> is what inspired me to make games."
2: "Well, my favorite is <other>."
Crowd: <boos>
1: "Seriously? You like <other> more than <game>? What is wrong with your brain? Do you have brain diseases?"
repeat 50x
I heard a few game names and learned nothing about any of them except that they are definitely Japanese and occasionally have battle systems, and also the latter FF games' character models like to overact |
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Kabbage
Joined: 19 Jan 2009
Location: Boston, MA
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| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 11:49 pm |
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God dammit, I've been fucked over by SB's "log-in clears your entire post after you hit Submit" bug so many times.
fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
Okay, long story short, this was a lot of fun, but the convention itself was pretty shitty. All the panels I went to were bad to terrible, with the absolute king being the Three Old Dudes Play Roguelikes panel, featuring:
| Quote: |
| Eric Neustadter [Gaming Ninja, Xbox], Dan Amrich [Community Developer, Ubisoft], Jeff Green [Chief Consultant, Hit Detection] |
Hooooly shit this was bad.
Basically the only reason I went was because I'd just met up with my Brontoforum.us / Talking Time krew and they all really wanted to check this out. Holy shit. They got the ball rolling by putting up a bulleted list of six roguelikes with their publication dates, and literally reading the titles of each with their year, one after the other, without anything but the barest surface detail. I have no idea why they bothered to do this. Then they gave us their five key elements to making a "true" roguelike, the first of which was "no added graphical elements", the second was I believe "must be turn-based", and so forth. So they kind of got it out of the way early that after the 1980's, they didn't consider anything to be a real roguelike. Not FTL, not Spelunky, nadda.
Then, bafflingly, they started playing Spelunky while fielding questions. Questions involved "Why don't you think FTL is a roguelike" (didn't meet the criteria), "What do you think of Binding of Issac?" (nobody had heard of it), "Where do you see roguelikes heading?" (they wanted them to go back to how they were). They briefly discussed Nethack and how it ceased being Nethack when it gained more modern additions in recent patches.
Them playing Spelunky was surreal, because they never made it past the second level. They kinda just kept blowing themselves up by accident or walking into obvious traps. I don't think any of them had ever played it before, which was... it was weird. The whole thing was weird.
Anyways after that I hung out with my group for a while, which was a huge highlight of the con. We hit up the arcade area, the beanbag area, played Carconssone, and by the time that was all done, the first two kinda crappy bands were done playing, so I ran upstairs, met up with Gary Oldman D., and enjoyed the hell out of Anamanaguchi. Waaay better than I was expecting.
They played about six songs, two of which were great, two were good, and two were ehh. Had a blast.
Edit: Er, meant Spelunky, not Cave Story. Fixed!
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Last edited by Kabbage on Mon Apr 21, 2014 7:50 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Kabbage
Joined: 19 Jan 2009
Location: Boston, MA
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| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 11:50 pm |
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As far as the floor itself, I mean, none of the major publishers had anything interesting to show besides Planetary Annihilation, which ruled. That said, I only went Friday, so I missed Firaxis.
The upside was that the indie developers seemed to be given more space this time around, and their offereing was sexy as hell. Really hope PAX keeps on in that direction, because it was encouraging.
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Rud31
forum ruler of Iraq
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: SanAnTex
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Kabbage
Joined: 19 Jan 2009
Location: Boston, MA
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| Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2014 7:46 am |
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Oh wait, I meant Spelunky, not Cave Story. Lemme edit that.
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Kabbage
Joined: 19 Jan 2009
Location: Boston, MA
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| Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2014 8:13 am |
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At one point two separate people at the QA panel asked if they had any fun stories from thier years and years of experience. Two guys just looked at each other like it was a really weird question and were like, "uh nope, nothing comes to mind." and the other was like, "okay there was this game where you had to go to the bottom of the cave to retrieve an orb, then get back to the surface, and I got almost all the way there but died!!!!" and that was the entire story.
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Toptube
Anti-cabbage Party Candidate
Joined: 23 Apr 2007
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| Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2014 1:58 pm |
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| I think PAX will be better, next year, in terms of games/material to be shared by big devs. Right now we are in a bit of a doldrums where nothing is due out soon and no one is really comfortable enough to show anything early. But next year I think we will be far enough along in this new generation, that everyone will have projects in full swing and be more relaxed and excited to share. |
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Glam Grimfire
Joined: 16 Dec 2011
Location: the funky western civilization
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| Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2014 2:51 pm |
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man that roguelike panel sounds absolutely bizarre. i think it kind of echoes the sentiments behind the roguelike community at large, though. i dipped onto a roguelike specific forum hoping to find some graphic roguelikes worth playing a few years ago and found a hella lot of derision for any games that didn't fit a strict template embodied by pretty much just nethack
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gary oldman dwarfism
Joined: 30 Apr 2012
Location: a cavernous donk
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| Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2014 3:31 pm |
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Hey hey hey, Angband, too. Is there a reason why Brogue wouldn't fit this ideal? Not turn-based? Too easy?
It was a pretty MOBA- and MMO-heavy showing this year, and I don't imagine the MOBA side will be declining much. Oh, if anyone would like Awesomenauts, I have a key, and I did not much care for it.
I've been playing the original jam version of Gods Will be Watching, since I didn't get a chance to play the current version. Gorogoa's got a demo version that I haven't tried out yet, and hopefully I'll slowly get around to the others as well.
I liked Below about as well as you can when surrounded by impatient people, and Planetary Annihilation looked like TA but rounder and 10x and the crazy siege weapons are much crazier, so that is good. Otherwise, the big games I played were Titanfall (whose controller I can't really use) and Natural Selection 2 Combat, which didn't seem all that different from the original version. I didn't realize they were releasing it as a standalone game until a couple days ago. |
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Kabbage
Joined: 19 Jan 2009
Location: Boston, MA
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| Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2014 11:29 pm |
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No mention of Angband or Brogue whatsoever. No idea why.
This was actually my first time seeing Titanfall in action. I'm sure the underlying game is generic and mediocre but holy schnikies that is a gorgeous game. Impressive as hell.
I somehow missed Below and wow. That is a thing of beauty.
PAX East gameplay video (mute voiceover) |
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Ymer
Joined: 05 Oct 2009
Location: PAL region
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| Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2014 11:42 pm |
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| Kabbage wrote: |
| I'm sure the underlying game is generic and mediocre |
Nope!
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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scratchmonkey
Final Finasty
Joined: 21 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 12:49 am |
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| Kabbage wrote: |
| No mention of Angband or Brogue whatsoever. No idea why. |
Nethack gets the "canon Roguelike" nod because it, like the people who developed it and continue to play it, base far too much of the personal worldviews/narratives on it requiring a large amount of esoteric knowledge accumulated only through a long time sitting in front of UNIX terminals or slowly absorbing the knowledge of CLI greybeards. Angband, in comparison, despite being just as ancient and from the same basic sources, is far more straight-forward (to the point where a decent AI can beat it pretty easily) and is much more of a test of patience than anything else.
Dungeon Crawl and Brogue, despite being actually accessible and more complicated in terms of evaluating decisions during a time of crisis; are too new (i.e. were developed/came to light in the last 15 years or so) and are thus beneath recognition. |
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Kabbage
Joined: 19 Jan 2009
Location: Boston, MA
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 2:56 am |
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| CubaLibre wrote: |
| Yeah why would you think that. |
Heavily promoted by Microsoft, published by EA, made by the Call of Duty guys. Haven't been following it, but a lot of signs point to "pretty but safe and bland."
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 3:09 am |
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Obviously you haven't been keeping up with the good Call of Dutys and the bad Call of Dutys.
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Kabbage
Joined: 19 Jan 2009
Location: Boston, MA
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 3:16 am |
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I can say without reservation that I have not been keeping up with the Call of Duty's no
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Kabbage
Joined: 19 Jan 2009
Location: Boston, MA
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 3:18 am |
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Beyond being utterly delighted by the fact that you can shorten one of the more recent titles to COD BLOPS
COD BLOPS II
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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Dracko
a sapphist fool
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 5:20 pm |
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And Black Ops II.
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Kabbage
Joined: 19 Jan 2009
Location: Boston, MA
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| Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2014 2:56 pm |
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I did actually play and beat MW1 back in ye olden days. Got through the whole thing, and that nightmarish little bonus level in the plane, on Realistic. Pretty good game! The nuclear bomb sequence was a big highlight.
Wasn't quite so nuts about what little I played of MW2, on my little brother's machine. I mean, I know spawn points and linear hallway levels are par for the course with a CoD game, but you can only shoot so many normal military dudes before you've basically seen everything the game has to offer.
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