PAX West 2016 Day One wrap up
PAX has once again returned to our home here in the Pacific Northwest. Suitably, the weather decided to welcome all of the visitors to our fine city with a torrential downpour so intense that PAX was opened 10 minutes early just to get attendees out of the rain. Maybe nature wants us to go play videogames. As is usual for me, day one was mostly there to soak in the spectacle of it all. Though, in all fairness, I did run straight for a AAA title line.
As much as I may complain about Destiny, it was still the first thing I ended up visiting. I really wanted to check out some of the new stuff from Rise of Iron. The line was going to get long for that one. Of course, it was only a PvP match, but it did reveal some info. We were allowed to mess around with our loadouts and what I found there was shocking. Bait-click aside, it looks like relics are finally going to start mattering. I personally went with one that highlighted enemies with either low health or full supers. I’m bad at PvP; I’ll take all the help I can get.
The next stop of my morning was Bethesda’s booth to check out some VR demos. On offer for the show are Fallout 4 and Doom experiences. I went with Doom since I was really curious how a fast-paced FPS was going to translate to VR. Honestly, it’s interesting, but I wouldn’t want to play a full game like that. Using the Vive, I was immersed in a hallway with enemies advancing from both sides. The control in my left hand was my gun, my left was a grenade and my teleporter. Yeah, that’s right, teleporting. Since even a spacious room only provides so much area to roam, I had to instantly teleport from one place to another. Strategically, it was great. I was able to move completely out of the way of demon attacks with little effort. But is that really fun long term? The demo includes a hallway, an open arena fight, and a battle with the game’s end boss.
Beyond that, I played the most recent demo for Through the Woods. I’m still excited about it and I can’t wait for it to come out. I do wish that would be sooner rather than later.
The latter part of my day was taken up by two panels. The first, Megan’s valiant effort in round one of the Omegathon. I have to say that Set is a weird game to use in the Omegathon since it required using an overhead camera on a podium that then projected onto a screen for the audience. Sadly, it was sometimes hard to tell colors on that screen so we were left wondering if we were really seeing sets or if the light was just bad. Either way, game play was either plodding or lightning fast. Unfortunately, in the end Megan was eliminated from the Omegathon. As a Seahawks fan, I’m used to the words “maybe next year.”
Second up on my panel list was the Inside Gearbox Software panel. I don’t go to it for any kind of special announcement. Randy Pitchford and Mikey Neumann are the real reason to see that panel. As usual, Randy did some magic and some stuff was given away. Randy performing a song was one of the big highlights of the panel. The other big one was Randy and Mikey having a presidential debate as their Borderlands characters, Scooter and Crazy Earl. It was interrupted by John St. John as Duke Nukem in order to put in his presidential bid as well as announce a new game. Not an entirely new game, mind you. It’s the 20th anniversary of Duke Nukem 3D, so it’s being re-released with an entirely new episode made entirely with the original tools. That item drops on October 11th if you’re interested. Watch the whole panel here.
We closed out the night as any reasonable people attending a conference showing off cutting edge gaming would. We played some classic arcade and pinball games in the Hyatt and then went off to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse for a couple hours of cocktails and decompression before heading home for the night. What promise does day two hold? Hopefully some Rick and Morty VR shenanigans, but we’ll see.
