Epic Default Productions

An Introduction

Many of you don’t know me, so I will take this opportunity to introduce myself.   My name is Dave, and I’m usually the co-host of RAPodcast.net (I won’t bother linking it.  If you want to find it, you should be able to).   Johnny, who is a frequent guest on the podcast (Ok, so I lied about the linking), asked if I wanted to contribute to Epic Default, and I jumped at the chance to do so.  I’m still working on finding my voice for the site, so my publications may be sparse.  However, I felt that this one could not wait.

PAX

This past weekend, approximately 60,000-70,000 gamers converged on Boston.  From all parts of the world they made a journey, which had been previously an annual pilgrimage to Seattle, to the newly mobile mecca of gamers, the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX).  For those few of you here who somehow continually miss our references about PAX, it is an expo about gamers and gaming.  It is an amazing and nearly mystical experience, whose sole purpose is to provide a common area for people to congregate and enjoy themselves and their culture.  PAX is a place for people to come together:  uniting table and video, console and pc, board and card, classic and modern.  I won’t go much further into detail here.  There’s plenty of other material out there on PAX.

Post PAXE impressions

Wow.  I’m not sure where to start.  I actually outlined this article before starting, but this section was titled with the vague “Post PAXE Impressions”.  That doesn’t really help to guide me as much as I had hoped it would.  What does one say about the overwhelming flow of emotions that can be tied to PAX.   The show was great, I suppose I should start with that.  It was amazing, it was full of fantastic people (and a few not-so-fantastic), and it was the most fun I’ve had in months (probably since PAX Prime 2009).  I guess what I’d better do here is split this section up further

Boston

The city of Boston is gorgeous.  It’s expansive, it’s a great combination of colonial and modern, it has a mostly accessible public transit system – although I’m nowhere near as taken with it as the locals are.   There was a Trader Joe’s and a Walgreens across the street from the expo hall, there were TONS of pubs and bars (It’s Boston.  Honestly, who’s surprised that there’s booze?).   The city was welcoming, and responsive, stores able to pull in the extra workforce to handle sudden influxes of gamers seemingly coming out of the woodwork.  Oh, and there was a lot of woodwork.

Hynes

The Hynes Convention Center was too small.  This is no one’s fault, given that PAXE was reportedly originally planned to cap out at 30,000-40,000 attendees.  For that amount, I think Hynes would have been fine.  The layout of the convention in the center was organized and planned, but not necessarily well.  However, it was probably the best that could have been accomplished with the limitations imposed by the center.

Expo

The expo hall is one of the “4 pillars of PAX,” the others being “Freeplay, Concerts, and Panels.” (NOTE: This is not official, nor even commonly accepted.  Some people argue there are only 3 pillars, some argue there’s more than 4.  They are stupid.)  The expo hall for PAX East was much smaller than what continuous goers have been used to in recent years.  It also felt more sparsely populated, which leads paradoxically to a more crowded hall.  There’s just as many people, but fewer places for them to be.  In this year’s expo hall, there were 5 games that stuck out to me.

Civilization V, by Firaxis and 2k Games, looked AMAZING.  I managed to snag myself a small demonstration from one of the producers of the game, who walked me and some fellow media through some of the new mechanics and layouts of the game.  Needless to say, it’s gorgeous.  Buy it.

Shank, by Klei Entertainment is an artistically brilliant side-scrolling brawler, similar in nature to Double Dragon, Battletoads, or the more recent Dishwasher Samurai.  It is being worked on by a team of incredibly artistic people and was being shown by Jeff Agala, who worked as an animator on several popular children’s television shows (including Atomic Betty!) and who’s style is clearly shown in the game.  Buy it too.

Joe Danger, by HelloGames is a motorcycle racing game in the spirit of Excite Bike, but with some elements of other games like Sonic The Hedgehog and Tony Hawk rolled in for fun.  A rather intuitive game, the level of difficulty scales from the ridiculously simple to the insanely complex.  With a level editor being included in the game, you can create (and reportedly challenge your friends to) your own insanities.   Buy it as well.

Puzzle Quest 2, by D3.  Really, do I need to say more?   Ok, I know Galactrix wasn’t what everyone had hoped it would be, but they know that too.  According to the D3 employees at the booth, who shall for now remain nameless (until I can dig their business card out of my suitcase) Galactrix was an attempt to push the game into a science fiction setting, and give it its own flavor.  That flavor, from my perspective, didn’t work out, and now they’re finally getting back to more of what did.  Some interesting changes:  gold and xp are no longer on the board, but now there is a purple mana gem.  There are weapons being added, and from what I understand you will be able to charge the weapon’s ability and use it.  I did ask them about balance issues, since the original was plagued by it, and was told that the devs had been keeping that in mind.   Of course, that doesn’t mean they actually DID something about it…  Anyways, Puzzle Quest 2.   This, you should also buy.

That brings us to the final huge hit for me at the expo hall.  Monday Night Combat.   General consensus was that it was a TF2 clone.  General consensus is wrong.  The game actually plays far more like a 3^rd person over the shoulder DotA,(or  LoL, HoN, Demigod) with the class elements of TF2 (although you will reportedly be able to customize the classes a bit more in MNC), and a sprinkling of the old-school  Smash TV for flavor.  The company, Uber, is staffed mostly by ex-GasPoweredGames developers, responsible for such fantastic games as Supreme Commander and Demigod.   This game is beyond amazing, and not only should you buy it, but you should get your friends to buy it too.

Well, I think that’s probably about it for now.  This has already gone on much longer than I had intended for it to, and I still have to go find the links for everything.