PAX West 2016: Part 2

EARLIn Part Two of my PAX West 2016 coverage, we’ll take a look at games I checked out from smaller developers.  But just because they’re smaller, it doesn’t mean that they’re any less important!  I even got to play a brand new Toe Jam & Earl game!  Also, I was able to try VR gaming for the very first time, so you can read my initial impressions here, too! 

Solitairica

One of the first meetings I had on the second day of the show was with a couple of guys who made a solitaire game on iOS.  But this isn’t just any solitaire game!  They added RPG elements to it!  As you play the deck, you’ll be battling a fantasy monster, and when you match cards of particular colors, you’ll fill up special meters.  When you have enough points, you can use special moves like give yourself extra armor, remove cards, etc.  The only way to defeat the monster is to complete a game of solitaire, so it’s harder than it sounds!  I’m actually going to be reviewing this game in full later, so check back then to see how it is!

GungHo Online

Over the past few years, GungHo has been to PAX and has always shown at least a few eye-catching games.  The title that really boosted them up, the popular Puzzle & Dragons game, even got the Mario treatment on the 3DS a while back.  At this show, they even had ongoing Puzzle & Dragons tournaments!

PUZZLE

Other games they showed were the strategy game Super Senso and the classic styled 2-D mobile shooter Galak-Z (I hope I get to review that one).  Also shown was Let It Die, a console action game from Suda 51.  If you know what kinds of games they’ve made in the past, you’ll know what to expect with this one.  Here is a picture of a lady dressed as the main character from the game.

LETITDIE

Riverbound

Another interesting game that caught my eye was Riverbound.  It’s a four player hack and slash that reminds me of a cross between Castle Crashers and 3-D Dot Game Heroes, as it has pixelated graphics like Minecraft.  It’s viewed from a top down isometric perspective, and up to four players can drop in and out any time they want.  Looks like a great arcade-y kind of game.  I also love the name of the developers who made it: Cococucumber.

Tinybuild

Tinybuild has always had a large presence at PAX, even at PAX South!  Another thing I like about the folks there is that they are all smiles and are super nice!  They also always have a ton of games, and there’s no way I could play them all, but I did try a couple.  One was Cluster Truck.  In this 3D action game, you jump on top of mac trucks driving at high speeds and crashing into each other.  Your goal is to not touch the ground.  Kind of like that “Hot Lava” game everyone played as kids.  But it’s harder than it looks!  Like Extreme Frogger!

Another game I played at Tinybuild that’ll be out next year is Mr. Shifty.  It’s a 2-D action/stealth game that kind of reminds me of an old Capcom arcade game called The Avengers (not related to Marvel), except Mr. Shifty is much better.  In the game, you view the action in a top down perspective.  Punch and kick enemies like any beat ‘em up, but be careful because your enemies all have guns and can kill you very quickly.  So you must try to use stealth and other sneaky tactics to win.  For instance, you can break down doors to defeat enemies, and also whistle to get their attention.  Mr. Shifty has one more special power, too.  He can teleport short distances, kind of like that one guy on the X-Men (can’t remember his name).  Use your teleportation skills to avoid being shot and warp behind baddies to confuse them.  You can even go through thin walls!  It was a really fun game, but pretty hard, too (I’m not good at stealth games).

World of Tanks & World of Warships

My brother Jeff and his friends used to love to play an online tank game called World of Tanks, and now they have one with battleships, too!  I didn’t meet with them or play any of the games, but they did have a really cool LEGO model battleship at PAX that I took some pictures of.

BATTLESHIP1

Here’s a closer shot of the side.  Can you imagine how heavy that LEGO model must be?

BATTLESHIP2

Look at all the LEGO men!  If you look closely, you can see a peace treaty signing and a military band!

BATTLESHIP3

Wired Productions

Here I checked out two games.  One was We Sing, a karaoke party game where up to four players can sing with four microphones.  What’s cool that if you connect your cell phone to the game, four MORE players can join in by singing into their cell phones, for eight total players in all!  That would be one noisy party!  Another game I looked at was Super Dungeon Bros.  It’s a cross between an isometric beat ‘em up and a Rogue-like dungeon crawler.  It has an 80’s rock ‘n roll theme and is very challenging!

Mekazoo

I played this at last year’s PAX, and I was glad to see it here, too.  It’s nearly ready to go now, and will be available on all consoles, even the Wii U (but just a little later).  In this 2.5D platformer, you play as robot animals and can switch on the fly to use their skills.  Like an armadillo who can roll around in a ball, or a frog who can use its tongue to swing across obstacles.  It also has very fluid controls and reminds me of a cross between Klonoa and Sonic the Hedgehog.

The Behemoth

These folks have been at every single PAX I’ve attended.  They make games like Castle Crashers, Alien Hominid, and BattleBlock Theater.  Their newest game, Pit People, is an arcade style strategy game.  I don’t have the console to play it on, but I still always stop by their booth anyway!

BEHEMOTH

One of the characters in Pit People is a walking cupcake.

CUPCAKE

Ysbryd Games:

I’ve never heard of this publisher before, but they must be fairly prolific because they had so many games shown that they spanned two separate booths on different floors at PAX!  I checked out a few.  One was VA-11 HALL-A, a classic looking game where you play as a bartender in space.  Another was YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG.  It has 3D graphics, but they all look very pixelly and classic looking, and dungeon have puzzles like Lufia 2!  With games like Earthbound and Undertale rising in popularity, I think this one will be a hit, too.  And finally I looked at She Remembered Caterpillars, a mobile color-based puzzle game with a strong story.

Cyan

If the name Cyan sounds familiar to you, then you’ve probably played Myst at one point.  Back when I was writing for The Dallas Morning News, I’d take my dad to E3 with me and he’d always want to know about the latest Myst game.  He loved them!  Cyan’s newest game, Obduction, isn’t a Myst sequel, but it might as well be!  It’s the best example of a “spiritual successor” that I can think of!  You walk around weird 3D environments, watch grainy video of people talking, and solve obtuse puzzles.  I make it sound bad, but it’s really not.  My dad loves these games, and he’s pretty smart, so they aren’t bad at all.  The neat thing is that Obduction is available now on Steam, and in a few weeks they’ll even have a VR version!  I thought about getting a Steam code and having my dad review it here, but I think I’ll just get it for him for Christmas instead.  That way he can have fun with it and not have to worry about writing anything.  If I do that, though, it’ll mean my dad will get a Steam account before I do!  Ha!

Adult Swim Games

I hated putting Adult Swim Games into my ‘small developer’ part of my PAX articles because they’re really not small at all.  In fact, they had so many games I couldn’t play them all!  So I just focused on the ones that interested me the most.  So first I checked out a few of their games from their Cartoon Network label.  Teeny Titans is based on the popular Teen Titans Go! cartoon, and in it you collect amiibo-like figures of the Teen Titans and other DC characters, then pit them in RPG battles to earn coins to buy more figures and upgrades!  You can even have an Alfred figure, which is awesome.  The game looks just like the show, which is either a good testament to the game or a bad jab at the show.  Another was Superstar Soccer: Goal, a soccer game featuring various Cartoon Network characters.  And finally was Card Wars Kingdom, a sequel to the Adventure Time card battle game that was first featured in an actual episode.  The new game is free-to-play and focuses more on straight-up monster battles.  All of these games are available now on mobile devices.

Toe Jam & Earl: Back in the Groove

One game I did play at Adult Swim Games was a brand new Toe Jam & Earl title!  I think they were promoting this game more than the others as Toe Jam greeted you as you entered the booth.

TOEJAM

A costumed Earl was also walking around the show floor, sometimes accompanied by musicians laying down some funky bass beats!

EARL

I never had a SEGA Genesis as a kid, so I didn’t play Toe Jam & Earl that much.  But I sure did read about the game a lot, and I think the characters would make for a great cartoon show.  I have played the game enough to know that it’s just a cleverly disguised dungeon crawler with funky hip-hop aliens.  In the new game, if you look far away enough and squint your eyes, it looks almost just like the Genesis classic.  But once you look closer, you’ll see the HD graphics and hand-drawn animated characters.  Other new things include more presents, different enemies, and new levels like dark stages where you must use flashlights to see.  I also like how you can see the floor below you on the next level.  There are even 2-D bonus stages that look like the Panic on Funkitron sequel.  I think this game will really please fans when it comes out later on PC.

Rick & Morty Simulator: Virtual Rick-Ality

Rick & Morty is a popular Adult Swim cartoon for grown-ups.  I’m not really into it myself, though.  I do like adult cartoons like The Simpsons and Futurama, but some like South Park and Family Guy are just not my cup of tea.  Rick & Morty falls into the latter category.  But I wanted a chance to try a VR game because I’ve been really worried about it.  You see, I’ve been blind in my left eye since birth, and I was wondering how I’d be able to see VR games.  They’ve been becoming rather popular lately, and the whole PlayStation booth at PAX was dedicated to VR, heck, PAX even put the Penny Arcade characters playing VR on their programs!  I was worried that if VR becomes the norm, I may not be able to review new games anymore because of my vision.  So I was glad to be able to play the Rick & Morty game in a controlled environment with people around me who were aware of my concerns. 

And I’m happy to report that I think I’ll be able to play VR games fairly well.  I was worried that they’d use some sort of stereoscopic 3D effect like the 3DS does, but it doesn’t.  Things in the background looked a little blurry, but the folks at the booth said that it’s just the technology isn’t there yet to make it more clear.  My peripheral vision may not be as wide, but they also said the games are designed so you have to move your head around a lot anyway, which I have to do in real life to see things around me. 

So they started me up by putting the VR goggles and headphones on, and handing me two controllers.  One for each hand, and they reminded me of the nunchuck parts of a Wii remote.  There was a trigger button so you can grab things in each hand.  At first I viewed a grid screen, with blue lines telling me how far the border is in VR.  You can only move so far right now.  When the game started, I was zapped into Rick & Morty’s workshop, and they said I was a new Morty clone.  One of them even freaked out that I had floating hands!  Forgive me, I don’t watch the show, so I’m not familiar with the characters.  Anyway, to test their new Morty clone out, they first had me pick up some dirty underwear and put it in the washing machine next to me.  That’s a task I’m very familiar with, as I’ve been doing laundry for my family ever since I was in third grade (Boober Fraggle was my favorite character in Fraggle Rock, and he did all the laundry for the Fraggles, so that’s why).  Anyway, it took me a while to get the hang of the controls, because I kept forgetting to open the washer lid with my left hand and hold onto the underwear with my right.  And I also couldn’t get the washer to start, but I was more concerned about how to turn the knob so that it would be on the right setting.

All the while I was doing this, Rick & Morty were lamenting about how lame their new Morty clone was, having taken such a long time to do a simple task.  One of them even said he was going to shoot me right between the eyes.  I wasn’t paying much attention to them because I was more concerned with getting the laundry done, and I didn’t think they’d REALLY shoot me.  I’m lovable Cary, nobody would want to shoot ME!  Well they shot me anyway and next thing I knew, I was in a dark room in purgatory with nothing but a ringing telephone.  I picked it up and the voice on the other end said I was dead and if I wanted to go back to life, to push the button on the phone.

So I did that and was warped back to Rick & Morty’s workshop.  Since I had limited space to walk, they showed me how to warp to the workbench, which had all sorts of cool stuff I could pick up.  Rick & Morty said they had to teleport somewhere for a bit, and to not touch anything.  Yeah right!  I picked up a ray gun and shot out a window, threw some beakers and flasks against the wall, shook some cracker boxes and threw them behind me, and pushed a button on a cube to reveal a smaller ball.  Maybe that has some significance in the show.  I don’t know.  I think the purpose of most VR games is to let you do things with reckless and wanton abandon that you wouldn’t normally do in real life.

So when Rick & Morty warped back, the tall one commented that he saw I was making myself at home.  Shortly after, the weather outside because utterly apocalyptic, and they asked for me to pull a lever somewhere.  I couldn’t find a lever, so eventually the whole house was uprooted and we were left in a grid area while Rick & Morty announced their new VR game, along with a title screen.  One of them even said, “Yay, we’re making a VR game, just like in the 90s!”  And that’s all I did with Rick & Morty!

Carnival Games VR

Later on, I got to play another VR game elsewhere called Carnival Games VR.  It’s a collection of around 12 carnival themed mini-games, and you’ve probably seen the series before on other consoles.

CARNIVAL

The first game I tried was a haunted house where you ride on a roller coaster cart and hold two guns to shoot at targeted cardboard ghosts and other spooks.  It kind of reminded me of Point Blank, and was also similar to the Buzz Lightyear ride at Disney World.  The other game had me holding two plates, one in each hand, and I had to catch and balance as many funnel cakes as I could.  Well, I cheated and held both plates close together so I could hold more funnel cakes.   When the game was over with, I tossed the plates into the air and let the funnel cakes fall to the ground.  I then could pick up the funnel cakes and throw them at the carnival barker.  “Ow, my spleen!” he would exclaim.  Remember what I said earlier about reckless and wanton abandon?  Anyway, whether or not Carnival Games VR ends up being good or bad, I’m glad there are some family-friendly VR games on the market at least.

Anyway, those are my first experiences playing VR.  I’m glad I got a chance to try it, and discover that I really CAN play it, despite my vision.  And a lot of the VR developers I talked to said that they don’t plan on it ever replacing traditional gaming, just moving alongside it.  Unfortunately, it also brought up a few new concerns for me.  One, the VR devices cost anywhere between 400 to 800 bucks, and require a lot of space to move around.  Both of which I don’t really have.  But at least I know that if I don’t get into VR, it’ll be of my own volition, not something I have no choice or control over. 

And that’s all for Part Two.  Stayed tuned for my final PAX West article tomorrow!  –Cary

5 Responses to “PAX West 2016: Part 2”

  1. World of Warships is an awesome addictive game, I love it!

  2. Glad the VR stuff is workable for you. Thanks for the PAX info!

    I’m planning to grab a PS4 setup for the family this fall for Christmas. I’ve been waiting to buy a current-gen console for about a year now, so decided to wait for the new PS4 Pro.

    I just preordered the PS4 pro setup, but need to find a way to get ahold of the VR bundle… I, probably unreasonably, was thinking they’d have a VR/PS4 Pro bundle all in one package but I suppose that would have to be sold at way too high a price point…)

  3. Happy to hear you can do VR and review the games. The Rick & Morty game sounds fun. Yeah for Behemoth! I wonder how Pit People plays. Ysbyrd Games has a lot of games that piqued my interest.

  4. cool about VR! VR Cary!!!

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