Sorry it's more than a little late, I suppose it got lost in the shuffle a bit when I got back from Boston. To recap the stuff that's already out there in case you missed it (or in case I didn't link it yet, which is true for a couple of these things):
- Here's a preview of Civilization V that I wrote after getting a closed-door demo.
- I also wrote a piece about InstantAction.com, and the pretty cool direction they're trying to take web-based gaming.
- I recorded two miniature podcast episodes with the guys from Immortal Machines; they can be listened to here and here.
- I talked to Realtime Worlds about their upcoming multiplayer game APB - that video is here. I'm also now in that beta, though the NDA prevents me from saying anything else about it at the moment.
- We got sort of ambushed by a very friendly lady from Becker College, and talked to them about learning to make videogames, though the audio for that turned out... not good.
- If you didn't read it already, please take the time to read about Of Dice And Men, which was for me the best surprise of the show.
Video of the interviews I did with Firaxis about Civ V and with InstantAction are also at the above links, if you're interested. I promised to mention something I left out when writing up the Civ V preview: the game will now include AI-controlled "city states", essentially NPC nations that never grow beyond the size of a city and its surrounding areas. These city-states can be allied with, warred with, protected, abandoned to enemies, conquered, etc, and while unfortunately nothing much was shown about them in the demo (part of the reason I left it out), it sounds like a very cool addition to the gameplay.
Beyond that... well, to be perfectly honest there isn't that much to say. If you don't feel like listening to the podcast episodes, they can be summed up by saying that nVidia's 3D tech really failed to impress me, as did ATI's 6-monitor "eyeFinity" setup (six monitors? ...seriously?), and that while indie games had a very respectable showing on the floor (I'm looking forward to playing more of Joe Danger, Shank, Monday Night Combat, and Slam Bolt Scrappers), major publishers really weren't there with a significant presence, especially compared to what I saw at PAX in Seattle. Blizzard and Nintendo essentially didn't show up at all (Nintendo had a phone booth-sized display with a few DSi's), and a lot of other publishers were there with games that were already released or the demos of which we'd already played. The only big-name unreleased game I played was Mafia II, and while I'll give it another chance later, it didn't demo very well on the show floor at all.
Our interview with Perfect World unfortunately never happened - essentially, they bailed on us - and the crowds prohibited me from checking out Red Dead Redemption and Crackdown 2, both of which I was curious about. Honestly, I have to echo the criticism of a lot of other folks who have written about it and say that the size of the venue was a problem. There was essentially no chance of getting into a popular panel unless you were willing to wait several hours in line, and the whole thing in general just felt... well, rushed. That might have had something to do with suddenly having responsibilities there, though, as opposed to just being a gamer at PAX. I'm told they'll be moving to a larger space next year.
I don't want to paint it as a negative experience on the whole; it absolutely wasn't. In addition to the stuff I wrote about and talked about above, I got to meet and chat briefly with Jeff Green, whose GFW Radio podcast was one of the shows that got me wanting to start podcasting and whose signed poster from their live "reunion show" at last year's PAX I have up on my wall.
That guy on the left? He's a pretty cool guy. Yes, I'm a nerd.
I also got to talk with Luis Gigliotti - an executive producer at THQ who just released Metro 2033 - about what it was like to work so closely with Dmitry Glukhovsky, upon whose wildly popular Russian novel the game is based. That was a really great chat and I'm hoping I can get him on the podcast for an interview sometime in the future. The American Classic Arcade Museum had a room set up on the top floor with a bunch of classic arcade cabinets that was really fun to walk through, and right next door to that PAX had its traditional "console classics" room, where I got to play a few rounds of SNES Super Mario Kart with friends I almost never get to see.
So yeah, minor complaints and stolen iPhone notwithstanding, it was a great trip, and if you're a gamer that's never been to PAX, you should make a point to go. I have little doubt that they'll fix up some of the quirks that arose during their first show in Boston next year, and if you can make it to Seattle, obviously that one's been running smoothly for years and I'm sure will continue to do so. PAX really is like nothing else I've been to, and I certainly intend to go again, though I suspect cost will restrict me to the East Coast version, at least for the near future.
Oh, and speaking of cost, I did replace my iPhone. Which is really not cheap to do at all. Maybe I'll write about some iPhone games next, and see if that makes me feel any better about it.