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The Paladin’s PAX Wrap Up

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Like Shmee I also attended PAX West, formerly Prime, and like him I came away with a few games to recommend. While there really wasn’t a game of show for me in either the Board Game or Video Game categories, there were some interesting and fun games you should check out for yourself.

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911 Operator by Jutsu Games out of Poland made me upset, not because it was difficult or controversial. No, I was upset because I was on the phone with a guy who had cut off his leg, begging me to tell his wife he loved her, while the stupid ambulance driver took his sweet time navigating Seattle’s streets probably trying to find a Starbucks first. 911 Operator felt frantic, but meaningful and I was proud at the end of the demo that no one died on my watch – not even one-leg guy.

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Lightspeed Frontier was a fun little game in the IndieMEGABOOTH by Crowdwork Studios. I had fun flying around in this procedurally generated, rouge-like game (Shmee’s favorite genre right now). Plus I rammed another ship, killed it, and impressed the devs who were cool guys. You can download the demo now, so give it a try.

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The final game I’ll talk about is Identeco a Cyberpunk RPG that is now in Beta by Humanoid Games. We played this and it was a lot of fun. Thematically its similar to the RPG Shadowrun, just less grim and without the fantasy elements of Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, or Magic. Mechanically it felt a little more like D&D with a little more meat to it. I enjoyed our playtest and was impressed with the system. I suggest you download their Beta and give it a try yourself.

Some honorable mentions would be Cowbots and Aliens (which Shmee talks about in his post) and Ice Cool, a fun dexterity game with penguins.

Course there is so much more that goes on at PAX; panels, events, swag, and just being with friends, bro. Most of it would be hard to explain without context or not being in a sleepless state kept awake by energy drinks. Still, I plan to go back next year to plumb the depths and come back with more great games to try.

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PAX West 2016 Wrap-Up!

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Another PAX West (formally PAX Prime) has come and gone, and I am exhausted.  There is so much to see and do that it just overwhelms the senses.  Every show that I have gone to is different, and this year was mostly about just hanging out with my friends.  One big reason for that was the huge indie game presence at PAX, and a lot of them were similar, so nothing really stood out.  Indies are usually well represented at PAX, but this year they were everywhere.  Word to the wise for all you indie game creators out there: if your new game features the terms rougelike or procedurally generated, your game had better be amazing.  There are like eighteen million (not exaggerating) procedurally generated rougelikes out there and they are all pretty much the same.  They are not bad, but just not good enough to care about.

Which is why the only indie game that I really ended up enjoying was an old school four player party game called Death Squared from SMG Studios.

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In Death Squared each player tries to move their cube to their colored circle.  Once all cubes are on their circle the ‘room’ is complete.  The problem is by moving your cube you are causing problems for the other cubes, so you all have to work together.  It is so simple, but so well executed.  This looks to be a must buy.

For board games I was starting to feel the same way that I was feeling about indie games.  They all have different settings, but in the end they are pretty the same three or four games.  However it took a trivia game called America by Bezier Games to prove me wrong.

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I generally am not a big fan of trivia games, but America’s excellent design makes it a ton of fun.  Pretty much there are three tracks for every question: the State the question takes place in, the year the question happened, and the amount of something in the question.  You get more points for getting it right, but if you are close you get points too.  That way even if you don’t know the answer you can guess based on whether you think other people know the answer or not.  It is great.

Like I said above with this year kind of being different it took a while for me to come up with a game of show, but I ended up picking Cowbots and Aliens.

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This game saved VR for me.  Every VR experience I have had thus far has been kind of so-so.  Some of it has looked cool, but none of the games have been better because they were in VR.  Cowbots and Aliens by Wizard Games Inc. was different.  It puts you in a saloon where you can use anything in the room as a weapon.  You can flip tables, deflect bullets with spittoons, break bottles over counter tops, you know pretty much everything you have ever wanted to do in the wild west while fighting an Alien Squid.  It was a blast.

The best panel by far was Telltale’s group play of Batman.

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It was so fun to control Batman with a thousand other people.  If you have not picked up their Batman yet, you should.  Like everything they do it was well done.  I can’t wait to play the rest of this great game.

That was pretty much my PAX West, and while I will need a few days to recover, I can’t wait until next year to do it all over again!  I wonder what PAX West 2017 will be like?

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What Was The Point Of Preacher’s First Season?

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I am not one for spoilers, but I have decided that I have to talk about how the first season of Preacher ended, so take this as your spoiler warning.  The show ends with a town wide explosion.  Which is similar to the comic book (in the comic it was only the church), but the comic book did it in the first two pages not after eleven hours of television.  We had no attachment for anyone in the comics yet, so the explosion just set the tone for the wild and crazy graphic adventure.  In the show we know everyone, so they just killed a bunch of people we have some sort of interest in.

What was the point of the first season then?  To show that Jesse is kind of a jerky know-it-all?  Trust me if they had followed the comic books people would have come to that realization anyway.  I don’t think Preacher needed a prequel, or this prequel at any rate.  It didn’t show us anything relevant or new about these characters.  It did show us that they are going to try and be as weird as the comic books, but just at a much slower pace.  Maybe the writers just wanted us to be asking the same question as Jesse, Tulip, and Cassidy, “What is the point of it all?”.

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No Man’s Sky Is What Is Wrong With Pre-Ordering!

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I am not here to jump on the No Man’s Sky hate bandwagon.  That wagon is already filled to the brim.  No I am here to tell all the bandwagoners that this is all their fault.  People love to get excited about things, and when they get excited about things they want to do something.  In the case of videogames the only thing that they can do while they wait is pre-order, but once again this has burned them.

People let the hype work them in to a tizzy, and they were ready for No Man’s Sky to be the best game of all time.  You would be able to fly to the infinite number of planets and make them your own.  Each planet would be wondrous and filled with adventure!  The space simulation would be pitch perfect.  This would be the ultimate game!  As it turns out No Man’s Sky is Terraria (in the Minecraft family), but in space.  Which is not a bad thing, but it is not the be all and end all to gaming.

Understandably people who thought that they would never have to buy another game ever again are upset they spent $60 on something that was different than what they expected, but had they waited less than a week until after No Man’s Sky came out they would have understood what the game was, and then made an informed decision.  Honestly once that week was over a lot of them probably would have got the game anyway because people who have accepted the game for what it is seem to like it.  It is relaxing and it is fun to wander around and see what is next.  Sure the space combat is kind of wonky, but there is still the thrill of landing on or jumping to new worlds.

All of this to say that the current system of pre-ordering needs to stop, and in this age of digital downloads there isn’t even a need for it.  For most games the reviews are out the day before launch which is still enough time to read the reviews, and then buy the game and have it download to your console or PC in time for go-live.  In situations like No Man’s Sky where we had had to wait a while, the reviews were still up pretty quick, and since it is not multiplayer no one was missing out on anything.  Do yourself a favor and save your money until you know what you are buying.  You will be happier.  I know I am.