We played a lot of games, but here are a few that stood out to me…

Transistor
Which is being made by the same team that did Bastion. The art style and narrative remind me of Bastion, but the combat is different. You have a sword with a few different skills, including one where everything pauses, and you can plan out your movement and attacks. Once you commit to it, everything unpauses and your character performs those moves quickly.

It needs time to regen though, and in that time, you actually can’t attack, not even with your normal attacks. It’s an interesting balance of knowing when and how to use that special ability. I’m really, really looking forward to this game. It looks amazing so far.

Smashmuck Champions
This game is pretty much another League/DoTA type game, but it has a capture the flag mode (plunderball), which I really like. When I played WoW, Warsong Gulch was my favorite PvP battleground, and that was also capture the flag. After we got back, we actually downloaded the beta. When it works, it’s fun. Currently, it is still really buggy though. I think it has potential, so we plan on following it so far.

Divekick
This is the type of game that is soooo ridiculous and silly, it’s good. I mean, yes, it looks really stupid, but it’s really funny. It’s basically a fighting game except your only moves are jump, kick, and DIVEKICKKK. In other words, a jump kick going downwards. It seems that each divekick is actually a KO too. Anyway, it’s on Steam Greenlight right now, so go vote it up!

We didn’t line up for demos from a lot of the big name companies, mainly because the lines were ridiculously long. I saw WildStar, though I didn’t stick around to play it. It’s the MMO by NCSoft and Carbine Studios. The look and UI looked a lot like WoW, though the gameplay sounded sort of Guild Wars 2-ish.

I tried the Marvel MMO, and it felt very similar to the Diablo style. You know, the usual bar of skills with a default attack and some sort of energy that you use up.

Blizzard announced a new game, HearthStone, an online card game. Not very exciting to me since it’s a genre I don’t play.

We also tried a bunch of Indie games, including mobile ones. I thought it was interesting that mobile games are starting to show up at PAX.

One of the indie games we tried was Mercenary Kings with 4 players, and we were each able to pretty much go where ever. We weren’t stuck together as a group on the same screen, which is both cool and confusing. (We lost each other a lot.) We didn’t really get to see the crafting stuff, but it was a fun and retro-type 2D game.

Anyway, I’ll end with a photo of stuff I got!

The plushies are scumbags from Bastion, and the Portal turret was a PAX East exclusive design from ThinkGeek. The rest were freebies we got, which include a Transistor bag (from buying the plushies), Smashmuck shirts, and some League of Legend bracelets and pins.

I also found out today that I got a couple Indie games from completing the “Indie passport” thing some of the booths were doing Overall, a great trip!

I finally got a 3DS XL (a pink one, haha!), and the first thing I decided to play on it is Theatrhythm Final Fantasy. This game is brilliant. It is like Final Fantasy meets Elite Beat Agents. It’s addicting, and I am enjoying the fact that I can play a rhythm game with FF music with some elements of RPG added to it.

Sorry, Tales of the Abyss, but I’ll be too busy with this game for a while!

The first thing I should point out is that the Wii U is actually a console, not some sort of handheld thing. Many seem to think that the gamepad with the screen on it is the Wii U. Well, that thing is really just one of its controllers and doesn’t work unless the Wii U is on and nearby. The rest of its controllers are Wiimotes, the same ones you use on the Wii.

About the Wii U itself:

• I guess Nintendo assumes that if you buy a Wii U, you have a Wii already? It doesn’t come with any Wiimotes or nunchucks. (Good thing we already had like… 8 sets of them…)
• This thing is slow. I am amazed at the delay just to return to the Wii U menu, or enter a settings menu, or start up a game.
• While it can play Wii games, it forces you into the Wii menu. This means it pretty much shuts down and comes back up as a Wii. The gamepad can’t even be activated in this mode.
• Updates, updates, updates. If you get it, I recommend starting it up immediately and just letting it download all of its updates while the gamepad charges. It’s updated with every game or app we’ve started up too.
• I do like the gamepad a lot though. I think it has a lot of interesting potential, and I like that I can start up the Wii U and mess with things on the gamepad without turning on the TV.

We started off with 2 games. First, is Nintendo Land:

• When I demoed it at Wii U Experience, I said it wasn’t very exciting and reminded me of Wii Play. Well, I take that back. It’s surprisingly fun, and we especially enjoy the co-op games.
• There are co-op games, versus games, and even single player games. We haven’t tried them all yet though. (There’s 12 games.)
• It makes good use of the gamepad. I like how it gives the gamepad a separate tutorial while Wiimote users see a different tutorial on the TV.
• Overall: this is better than I expected.

We also got New Super Mario Bros. U:

• Not much different from the Wii one really. The annoyances are still there like the slight pause when someone gets hit or just getting in each other’s way all the time.
• We’ve been playing it such that my husband uses the Wiimote, and I’m on the gamepad. That way we don’t get in each other’s way.
• The gamepad user helps the other players by hitting enemies or adding blocks they can step on. There’s also hidden items that only the gamepad sees.
• Overall: fun with the wiimote + gamepad combo. Still annoying with more players.

Oh, and I set up my account to post stuff on Miiverse. I really just use it to post random doodles.

You can friend me if you want. Look for the alias I always use (twitter, deviantart, etc).

I’ve heard that they’re working on the performance issue, which I hope is fixed soon. The menus get annoying to use because of how long it takes. I am excited about games that will come out later though, like the Yoshi’s Story sequel, Bayonetta 2, the Wind Waker remake, and the new Zelda game. I wish they were out already!

This game is so, so, so addicting. I love how the RPG elements are combined with a dating/interaction simulator. Really, I thought Persona 3 Portable was fantastic, so I wasn’t expecting this one to be just as good despite all the rave reviews . . . well, I am wrong!

Funny. I have both Persona 3 and Persona 4 for the original PlayStation 2, but I never got around to them. Instead, I played their ports instead!

Anybody else tried this game?

Like I said, the plot twists have completely left me in an awed state. I love what the creators did and how they made it connect to 999. It is much longer than 999 and infinitely more complicated — in fact VLR is an even bigger cliffhanger than 999, and now I am wondering what’s going to happen in the third game of the series that is currently in development.

Honestly, VLR is good. The puzzles are more challenging, and there is a lot more happening in the game, but I find myself preferring 999 more. I think that’s because I enjoyed the Titanic references and the characterisations were better in the first game. The characters in the second game were portrayed well, but something seemed missing from the second game. Also, Junpei felt like a much more rounded character and protagonist than Sigma. That’s just me, though.

If you enjoyed 999, VLR is recommended. Both games are suspenseful and will leave you constantly wondering what’s going on with the plot and the characters.

It actually reminds me of Minecraft in the way you play it. You start with nothing, collect things around you, and build things that help in your survival. The point is to survive as many days as you can.

Though the game is called Don’t Starve, and you have a hunger meter… I’ve actually never died from starvation. Instead, I end up doing stupid stuff like accidentally pissing off beefalos, or being hunted down by wolves, or picking a fight with a spider nest.

To build newer and better things, you have to build a science machine and feed it things to increase your research points for learning. I was addicted at first because there were a bunch of things I wanted to learn and a lot of places I wanted to explore.

I originally thought my map was small because I was completely surrounded by water, but then I found a land bridge that went over to another island… and that had bridges to others, etc. I even found this uh… fat pig king.

Unfortunately, the frustrating part is when you die. Unlike Minecraft, things you’ve built don’t stick around, only your research points do. While that’s nice that I don’t have to redo the research part… it’s annoying that I have to redo everything else. I mean, I always spend the first few days just gathering stuff before I can really do much, so this gets repetitive.

After dying a few times, I’ve at least researched a good amount of things, explored a few islands, and know what to build first and to take it easy until I have enough materials to build a Meat Effigy that will revive me.

Anyway, I’m liking it so far, so if you want to demo it, it’s actually a Chrome app. If you want to buy it on Steam, the price of one gets you 2 copies while it’s in beta!

Right now I am playing Zero Escape for the PS Vita, a game localised by Aksys.

Someone on Aksys’ localisation team is using “donno” for “dunno” — like “I donno” versus “I dunno” — in both games.

. . . It’s a very, VERY minor thing, honestly, but it’s still getting to me since I am used to seeing “dunno” as opposed to “donno”. You’d think after a month, I’d be used to it, but that’s not the case. I still get distracted by the “O” whenever I see “donno”.

On a related issue, Zero Escape is asdfjkl;asdfjkl;!!! I’ll post a more coherent review/reaction when I beat the game!

Favorite single player: Mass Effect 3
I am a huge fan of the Mass Effect series, and though I agree that the endings left me feeling empty and disappointed, the journey up to it was emotional and satisfying. I also liked that the game play required more movement than just taking cover in one place.

Favorite multiplayer: Mass Effect 3
Yes, ME3 wins both for me. I was skeptical about the multiplayer, but it is good fun, especially after they added better kits (like the N7 series). I’m normally not that into shooters, but adding in powers and skills definitely makes this more interesting for me.

Favorite indie: Orcs Must Die! 2
Though I haven’t played the first one (yet), I had a lot of fun doing the co-op in the sequel. It’s a different take on the tower defense games since you control a character that runs around setting traps and can also shoot the enemies yourself.

(* = beat/finished)

DS

* 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors
A game that is supposed to be played more than once since there’s 6 different endings. I thought this was different than most other visual novels and a lot of fun too. I was immersed in figuring out the story through multiple playthroughs, and the puzzles are not too hard nor too easy.

Professor Layton and the Last Specter
This is the prequel to the first Layton game. It’s still fun, but it’s really nothing different from other Layton games, and that can get tiring after a while.

* Time Hollow
An interesting story of altered timelines and the consequences of time travel, but I thought the gameplay was on the boring side.

PC

* Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
I enjoyed every AC game that Ezio is in, but I thought this one became too bloated. Even though I like side quests, there were so many, I lost track of the main quest all the time.

* Assassin’s Creed: Revelations
A smaller, compact game compared to Brotherhood, though the pacing was a little weird. (I was able to get the best items right in the beginning.) I still enjoyed it though.

Borderlands 2
As popular as this game series is, I can’t get into it that much. I’ve played and beat the first, and this second one doesn’t feel that much different. It is fun though. It just doesn’t motivate me to play it as much.

Don’t Starve
I only played the demo, but I included this since I have the full (beta) game now. It’s Minecraft-like in the way that you start with nothing, gather a bunch of stuff, and start building things that help in your survival.

Fallout 3
I’m still trying to get into this game, as the beginning is quite slow, even after you leave the Vault. I’m hoping to write more about this next year.

* Mass Effect 3
See above

* Orcs Must Die! 2
See above

Recettear
A combination of dungeon crawling and owning a store to raise funds. It’s a cute game, but some of it, in terms of interface and game flow, isn’t designed that well.

PS3

* God of War 2
More hack and slash goodness, much like the first game. I found this game to be very mean, but I think it’s a good thing that it was actually challenging.

Wii

* Kirby’s Return to Dreamland
Though a 3D Kirby game, it was side scrolling and returned to how Kirby games traditionally are. I thought this was really fun.

Now I will wait for Persona 4: Golden and Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward!

Well, I was greeted to the store not having any 3DS XLs (they still had the regular 3DSes), but I saw that they had the Assassin’s Creed III Liberation bundle for $250. Then there’s the system-only thing for $250 minus a game and a memory card.

. . . Guess I’m going to go for the AC3L bundle since it does come with a free game and a memory card — albeit a free game I have NO interest in playing.

The store also lacked the games I wanted. They had no Persona 4: Golden for Vita, Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward for Vita or 3DS, and Theatrhythm Final Fantasy for 3DS. Amazon will be my best friend for the games, apparently. Guess my plan now is to get the Vita at the store, get the games from Amazon, and get a 3DS XL whenever the store has them.

(Ordering a system from Amazon is not an option for me. I live overseas, and I’ve worked in one of the mailrooms here to see how they treat their incoming packages, so I do not trust them with anything electronics.)