PAX Prime Day 1 – Quick n’ Dirty
Yesterday was of course Day 1 of PAX Prime 2014 and the Dorkadia crew was out in force, though not particularly conscious after a night of pre-PAX-parties, wandering drunken wizards and the same excitement that makes small children miss sleep on Christmas Eve. We’re getting ready to head back for Day 2 as I write this, so without further ado, here’s my quick n’ dirty round of my activities at PAX Prime Day 1! (Note: I was able to sit down and have a few more in-depth looks at games, these reviews will be forthcoming. The Quick n’ Dirty round-up are for games I ran through a quick demo of, mostly in the Expo Hall.)
BioWare
Pre-Orders 11/18/2014
As we’ve mentioned on the podcast, Megan is a huge fan of this series, so she was off to the Xbox / Microsoft booth the moment she set foot on the Expo Hall floor. Jon and I followed her to get a chance to put our hands on the recently announced multiplayer mode.
The co-op is a 4 player co-op that has your adventuring party doing a dungeon crawl in the very traditional sense of the word. We made our way through a crumbling ruin filled with trapped doors, trapped loot and trapped traps. Actually, despite the promise that all doors and loot points are trapped, we were pretty lucky and in the 4 areas (of 5) we played through, we didn’t trip a single trap.
That’s not to say the game was easy – our demo was ‘play as long as you survive’ and we did not finish the demo, that’s for sure. The game requires a good deal of communication, teamwork and situational awareness. It’s a hard game but I really liked how it encouraged teamwork (the game even prompts you to get your group gathered up before entering any doors). I had a blast playing the Assassin class, which has a stealth, a leaping, rolling evade and a bunch of stab-stab-stab attacks – nothing particularly new and inventive for a rogue/assassin/thief character, but it was just FUN to play, very fluid. The multiplayer mode is a challenge, but the kind that feels incredibly rewarding when you beat it.
Magic the Gathering
Duels of the Planeswalkers 2015
Already Released
I excitedly ran over to the Magic booth to pick up the PAX Prime limited edition IMMA KILL ALL YOUR GUYS Garruk Wildspeaker Funko figure. I took the chance to play a few minutes of a game I already own, Duels of the Planeswalkers 2015. It was being displayed on Alienware laptops and iPads, and I was very curious about how it played on the Alienware laptop. The Duels series have consistently been some of my most heavily played games of the last few years – I like the UI, I like the chance to play with cards I otherwise wouldn’t, I like the various challenge and special modes.
Unfortunately Duels 2015 broke the streak. This game’s UI is laggy and unresponsive. The cards you’re given to start the game are so bad that the learning curve is all off – the early game is artificially much harder just because you’re stuck with so few cards to work with that are worth anything or have any interactions with each other. Even the main colors of the game are poorly chosen – bright, pure white screens are painful on the eyes and for most of us, just illustrate how badly we need to clean our monitors.
Duels 2015 actually managed to look and play worse on the Alienware laptop than it does on my personal PC, being extremely slow and having lots of torn graphics. For a game that should be lightweight and easy to play, this is inexcusable, and doesn’t speak well to the Alienware hardware it was shown on. I was really disappointed in Duels 2015 and am hoping that that next year’s version will return us to the very enjoyable game it was previously.
Arrowhead Game Studios / WB
Releases 09/23/2014
I actually walked by this booth, blinked, and walked backwards to look again. I had NO IDEA that there was a new Gauntlet game! Either I’m a bad games journalist (yes) or this game has been badly marketed (more yes). There was no one else around so I unfortunately had to play alone, which is, as anyone who’s ever played in the arcade knows, is never that fun in Gauntlet and more than a little difficult.
That being said, I had a blast! Gauntlet has all of its classic classes – Warrior, Valkyrie, Wizard and Elf – but they each feature a more unique play style this go around. I played the Valkyrie, who is a nice balance of sturdy and DPS-y; she is also basically Captain America, with a super fun bouncing shield toss move. I got pretty decently far on my own before getting overwhelmed and I reiterate: I had a blast the whole time.
I adored Gauntlet Dark Legacy as a kid and this reminded me of that strongly, only with a more polished, modern feel. I’ll be picking Gauntlet up and so can you.
Oculus VR
The good news – I was really impressed with how far the Oculus has come in a year, since I demo’d it at PAX Prime 2013. The hardware feels better – it’s more comfortable, more secure, lighter. I was able to take off my glasses this year, which I wasn’t able to last year, and I had no problems at all. The game I played looked great and was very immersive.
The bad news – I am astoundingly bad at the game I played, Superhot. It’s a FPS that allows you to control time to do Matrix-style bullet-time dodges, but I couldn’t even get to the first gun. The controls were unwieldy and I just didn’t enjoy the experience that much. I’m hoping to be able to hit the Oculus booth again and give a different game a try.
Disney Games
Disney Fantasia: Music Evolved
Pre-orders Available Now (Xbox 360 / One)
I’ve been super excited for this game since it was announced. I think it’s the most clever and adorable idea – a Kinect game where you play Mickey Mouse ala The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, conducting sweeping symphonies and orchestras as they play through some of the most gorgeous music ever created. I still think it’s a heartwarming, clever idea, but I’m sorry to say that the game just doesn’t stick the implementation.
I played with Jon in 2-player cooperative mode, but we had to wait about 10 minutes just to get the game to recognize him. The game refused to recognize Megan at all, which was blamed on the blue dress she was wearing. After struggling with the Kinect, we finally got to play; the demo we play had a mix of classical music from Fantasia and more modern fare from acts like Lorde, The White Stripes and Fun. I wasn’t expecting that – I wanted the Fantasia experience, being a conductor of a celestial orchestra, not…autotuning songs by flailing my arms around. We did, however, get to pick Night on Bald Mountain.
The gameplay is similar to a lot of other rhythm games – move in the appropriate gesture when the ‘cursor’ (a sparkly comet) lands on the prompt. Mostly we used swiping and pushing-forward-then-holding motions. It was very difficult for me to understand the prompts, while the sparkles and glitter looked neat, it wasn’t particularly intuitive and harder still to see when you’d successfully landed a motion.
Between issues with the Kinect and the design problems, I’m sad to say this is not the game that’s going to convince me to buy a Kinect.
That’s it for today, but look for more Pax Prime coverage from Dorkadia over the weekend, and follow Dorkadia on Twitter and Facebook. I’ll be active on Twitter throughout the weekend as well.
