PAX Dayz '09: Day Two {update}

Summary in two words (and pardon my French): F@#$ing AWESOME!!

UPDATE!! 

Wow, a picture of Wil Wheaton and review that includes swearing.  At this point I almost wonder whether I need to say more.  But will :)  Hit the jump for the meaty goodness of the epic PAX day "d'eux."

People

First off, I think the Seattle Convention Center is staffed entirely by people's Grandmothers, which when you think about it is a smart move, because who would try to sneak past or lie to their Grandma?  Anyways, I was talking to one of the Grandma-guards and she said the conference had sold out to 16,000 people every day!!!  I can totally believe that because Saturday was simply a sea of people.  Young, old, and Apatow-comedy-actor-aged they came, and besides all being their to share the love gaming and gamers, one of my favorite things about PAX is the fact that EVERYONE is wearing a hilarious t-shirt.  From classic "You have died of dysentery" Oregon Trail t-shirts to "Wil Wheaton says: Don't be a dick," to the return of the Mario Kart blue shell helmet (the shellmet), every possible geek-related article of clothing was on display.  I even rocked my "Twin Pines Mall" Back to the Future shirt.  T-shirt spotting is one my favorite things to do at PAX, and is just another great display of the wonderful gaming culture.

Panels

This day started out strong with a live tapping of the show that practically started my interest in games journalism, The Totally RAD Show in which they answered questions from fans and gave us a sneak peek at their new intro where they CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED and I have to say I really dig the direction their taking it.  Next followed one of the most epic panels I would attend the entire weekend, a panel on story telling in games featuring the legendary Tim Schafer (Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts), Greg Zeschuk (BioWare, KOTOR, Mass Effect, Dragon Age), Denis Dyack (Eternal Darkness, Too Human) and Joseph Staten (Bungie Creative Director, Halo series), moderated by G4/X-play's Adam Sessler.  They discussed and debated everything from what it means to have story in a game to whether cut scenes were the proper mechanic for telling the story in a game.  Amazing stuff, I'll be doing a write up of the panel later on, so be sure to check that out.  I also had to stop by the Giant Bomb reunion tour part II, and visit the former-Gamespot people who didn't "practically" start my interest in games journalism, but DID start my interest in games journalism.  Epic day.

Games

I decided with all the cool panels and things I wanted to do that I'd leave Sunday to be the day where I actually got hands on with games, but when there's an overflowing entrance, brimming with excited people and sounds and colored lights, it's hard to resist.  

Shank

This was a game that no-one had heard of before this conference, but every WILL hear of from now on.  Shank is a 2D side scrolling action game, like Final Fight or the TMNT arcade games, but what makes it really stand out is the games art style.  This game has come closer than any other game to date at looking like an actual cartoon, as the characters movements, attacks, facial reactions, etc. are all animated like anything you would see in a Saturday morning action cartoon.  A lot of people were praising this game as breaking new ground in this arena, and while I agree that it looks great, I think it's weird that no one seemed to mention the Behemoth booth which was right across from the Shank guys.  Their games like Alien Homonid and Castle Crashers have essentially been doing the same style of "completely animated 2D action game" that Shank appears to be doing.  Either way, a great looking game which will hopefully be coming to XBLA or PSN sometime soon.

Deathspank

Ron Gilbert was wearing a very strange t-shirt while giving his keynote to the 5000+ crowd of on-lookers on Friday.  The shirt said "Unicorn Poop" and had a bright colored, magical looking swirl of the stuff pictured on it.  Being that it was PAX and I assumed this was some internet meme that I was simply unaware of, and I didn't think much of it.  That is, until I found the Deathspank booth and it all started to make sense.  Deathspank is Ron Gilbert's new action RPG featuring the misadventures of the noble knight Deathspank as he bumbles and bashes his way through a beautifully constructed 3D-2D world.  I know that last statement is a little hard to visualize, but imagine you made a paper-craft world, and put it on a really big toilet paper role, and as your character moved from bottom to top and top to bottom, you simply rolled the toilet paper role with the paper-craft world glued to it.  Make sense?...  Either way, this game looks to have all the humor of his previous titles (Monkey Island 1&2, Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle) with a phenomenal looking "pop-up book" art style.  To give you an idea of the humor, one of the attacks that Deathspank has is to unleash a barrage of chickens.  The reason he possesses this poultry power is that in the game, if you kill enough of the chickens which scatter the landscape, the chickens assume that you are the chicken god since you hold so much power over them, and they choose to serve you.  AMAZING.  I also saw an attack in the list called "unleash orphan" which one can only imagine the hilariousness that might be involved there.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Knights of the Old Republic was probably my favorite game for the original Xbox.  It combined the Star Wars universe with brilliant story telling, amazing new locales, and one of the most epic journeys and twists that I've ever seen put in a role playing game, or for that matter, any video game.  THAT SAID, when I learned that BioWare's follow-up to KotOR was going to be an MMO (I am of course excluding the Obsidian helmed KotOR II: Sith Lords which wasn't bad, but wasn't great), I was more than a little disappointed.  Don't get me wrong, I understand that MMO's can be awesome if they are made by Blizzard and are called with World of Warcraft, but the idea of grinding, leveling, and instance crawling is just no substitute, in this blogger's opinion, for epic storytelling.  So I came into this demonstration with skeptic's eyes, but I think that maybe, just maybe my fears might have been allayed.

They started by showing us the old, but brilliant cinematic trailer for game, the one that makes every Star Wars fan wish these guys had helmed the prequels.  It still looks awesome, but it ain't no game, so they quickly switched into to some live, pre-alpha gameplay demos.  They noted the fact that MMO's do a terrible job at telling a story, and they said this was something they hoped to be the first to accomplish successfully in this genre.  One of the ways they hope to do so is by being the first ever "fully voiced" MMO, meaning they are recording hundreds of hours of dialogue for this game.  They also demoed the first ever CO-OP dialogue system, where teams of players switch off responding and engaging in a conversation, each given their own control over their own responses to non-playable AI characters in the game.  That stuff has me pretty psyched.  They continued by showing combat demos on Nal Hutta with a "scoundrel" class human character, and on Korriban (the Sith training world from KotOR I) with a Sith warrior class.  I'm a little disappointed by their "stylized realism" approach to the art style, as everything looks a bit cartoony, but that's one of the sacrifices you have to make for an MMO.  The combat looked solid, very much like KotOR I & II combat with blasters and lightsabers masking a Dungeons & Dragons style dice rolling combat engine.  I was impressed by the lightsaber duels as the character's animation showed the Sith warrior parrying attacks from multiple enemies, including from behind him, which looked really cool.  

I'd like to tell myself the somewhat substellar graphics were due to the pre-Alpha nature of this game, but I can't help but long for a legit, offline KotOR sequel that looked as good as BioWare's other action RPG series Mass Effect.  However, with the promise of storytelling as the driving feature, and knowing that the talent behind the original is going into this, I think I left with an overall good impression.  Plus, they gave us all free copies of the original KotOR for PC, which I plan to play through as soon as I can.

Concerts

The icing on the already delicious treat of Saturday PAX was the concert, featuring techno-nerd band Freezepop, new comer comic duo Paul and Storm, and the demigod of geekdom, who keeps on trying till he runs out cake, Jonathan Coulton. 

Freezepop is a "if you like 'em, you like 'em" band that is less likely to attract you if never heard of them, especially if "electronic" is not your genre.  As a techno/electronic band, which is not my favorite genre, I actually quite like their music and this being the second year in a row to see them at PAX, I think they are growing on me.  I can't say I'd actively seek out their music, again because the genre isn't my thing, but if someone said "YOU CAN ONLY LISTEN TO ELECTRONIC MUSIC FROM NOW ON!" I'd listen to Freezepop.  I actually really dig their "Less Talk More Rokk" song.

Paul and Storm...wow.  I had listened to some of their stuff online as I had heard about them in faux-angry mutterings from Jonathan Coulton's blog, but I can't believe how astonishingly funny these guys are.  Imagine a folk duo, singing folk harmonies, singing a song about the guy who invented chicken nuggets!  Or imagine a pitch-perfect plain-chant intro to nun boxing match.  Their a bit crass, but for the audience they were playing to, they hit the note perfectly.  I was literally keeling over in laughter at some of their escapades, especially their "What if Randy Newman sang a theme song to Lord of the Rings."  Even when their set ended at midnight-thirty, people were shouting for them to remain.  I hope these guys come back every year.

Jonathan Coulton is currently my favorite singing artist, and his PAX concerts are just plain magical.  This year's tone, however, was a bit different.  Things have moved on from the "wow his songs are funny" phase to the "everyone loves his music and sings along" phase, and despite there being less "surprise haha" moments, it felt much more like a proper concert set than a comedy set.  In fact, during several of the songs Jonathan Coulton just stopped singing and let the crowd take over.  As an extra special treat, Paul and Storm can out and provided vocal harmony and hilarious pantomimes for a majority of his set.  It's kind of weird.  Paul and Storm really were the Jonathan Coulton of this year, as they seemed newer and funnier, but Jonathan Coulton has moved beyond trying to convince the crowd to enjoy his work and into the stage where people just truly love his music.  We made him do four encores and it was nearly three in the morning by the time we left.  Like I said, magical.

Summary

Having the Joco concert on Saturday I think was a good switch from last year as it really does cap the amazing and most heavily trafficked day of PAX with what amounts to as close as you can get to bliss being a gamer here on this earth.  I knew Sunday would be a half-day and this was really my last day to soak in a full dawn to dusk run, and couldn't have asked for more.  I think after Saturday's concert was over and I didn't stop smiling until I drifted off into peaceful, exhausted sleep.  I probably could have died happy...but I'm still alive. :)

Sunday write up with a bunch of hands-on game impressions to come.