A final day of awesome games, but no hands-on Watch Dogs demo or many Wii U titles.
Before we sum up what we loved about our final day on the show floor, there are a couple of things we need to address: 1) the lack of a hands-on Watch Dogs demo, and 2) the virtually non-existent line of upcoming Nintendo titles.
"Watching Watch Dogs" is what we liked to call our experience with the game at PAX East. The fact that fans and press couldn't get their hands on the most HIGHLY anticipated game of 2014 was a big letdown. Watch Dogs is due on May 27, a little over a month from now, and Ubisoft didn't seem to have much to show the fans. Even what they DID show, a 15-minute video presentation on secret missions in the game, was mostly made up of stuff everyone had seen before. It's alarming, right? The internet hype machine has certainly elevated this game to a Mount Olympus-like nature, and is that due to the time the game has spent in hiding from the fans who are supporting the game? Polygon tried the game out in March, and apparently enjoyed it. Ubisoft delayed Watch Dogs last year to fix some things they weren't happy with, and now they feel confident that THIS is the game they wanted to make all along, that they believe they will release the complete experience in May. If that's true, why not give your fans a little taste?
That's the landscape we witnessed at PAX, though: smaller devs have to show pre-alphas of their games in order to get people interested in them, while titles that are literally about to explode in the public mind can continue to hide in the shadows. Lots of big titles hold out until release day. Most of the time, they deliver, but sometimes they fail miserably. What will be Watch Dogslegacy? We won't have to wait that much longer to find out. The point is: if you're going to "show off" your biggest title of the year at PAX, make it accessible to the players. PAX isn't about being the first to play something. That's what E3 is for. People want to appreciate your games, and it should be the developer's duty to make it so.
Speaking of things fans couldn't really appreciate at PAX: how much longer do we have to wait until Nintendo starts showing off a brand-spankin-new line of Wii U games that knocks our pants off? It's starting to seem like it's too much to ask the multi-billion dollar hardware/software company, who not too long ago basically had a monopoly on motion-controlled and handheld gaming. We're getting Mario Kart 8 and Yoshi's Epic Yarn pretty soon, but there was not ONE taste. Nintendo's continued isolationist attitude doesn't make any sense. What's worse is that there really aren't any third-party titles, either. Is no ONE interested in making games on Nintendo's platforms? The Wii U could especially use some loving. After PAX East, we're STILL waiting...
Okay, now that we got that out of our system:
Knight Squad from Chainsawesome Games was one of our absolute favorite indie games at the show. It's just great, simplistic fun. It's basically a Pacman-style capture-the-flag multiplayer game that really focuses on speed and technique. It brings a sporty/competitive element to this retro form of gaming by including Gauntlet-like power-ups, which will come in very handy when trying to score against your opponents. It was definitely a highlight for us.
Tetrapulse was perhaps the best of all the Kickstarter games at the show. This game is going to be awesome when it's finished. It was beautifully drawn, colorful, and creative. The basic idea is that you and up to three other players have to drag along this hearthstone that heals you, and when you see a baddie you get off the stone, kill the baddie (you lose health when you're off the stone and when you take damage), and then get back to the stone to refill your health bar. The hearthstone sorta floats (think like an air hockey table). It made for a really fun co-op game. Oh, and the levels are procedurally generated, which means you'll constantly feel liek you're you playing something new. You can pre-order it now on Steam.
Meanwhile, in the racing genre, Krautscape is game on Steam Early Access that you should definitely check out. Focusing on competitive multiplayer, the game features race cars with wings. One minute, you're racing on a rainbow track (which immediately triggers the Mario Kart alarms in our head) and the next you're soaring in the sky to get ahead of your opponents. Strange...to think of it, we can't think of all that many games where race cars turn into flying machines all of a sudden. If we're missing something, drop us a note in the comments. Either way, Krautscape is a crapload of racing fun, reminiscent of the best racers in the genre.
Finally, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetimegave us the final scifi kick we needed before heading back home. This local co-op game has players frantically running up and down a spaceship to defend themselves from a deep space attack. Developer Asteroid Base has cleverly created a game that fuses platforming and shooters in a very unique way. We found ourselves trying to figure out rhythms and strategies in order to man turrets, lasers, and shields before being completely crushed by asteroids and robots. We definitely went out with a bang!
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