The Best Thing I've Seen at PAX.

I've seen quite a lot of stuff this weekend - an almost overwhelming amount, really - and before I leave today I hope to get to see more.  I've seen indie games and AAA titles;  I've seen gaming hardware that might merit the term "excessive";  I've seen folks learning how to make games, and folks teaching the same;  I've met producers and designers and press and a whole lot of marketers;  I've seen some very creative cosplayers... good and bad.

The best thing I've seen at PAX is a play about a group of friends who play D&D, and what happens when one of them enlists to go to Iraq.

Last night at 10PM in the Naga theatre, a staged reading was held for Cameron McNary's play Of Dice And Men, and it was a wonderful surprise at the end of a very long day.  I hadn't heard about the show at all until a few hours before, when I had the good fortune to run into a couple of the cast members wearing Critical Threat Theatre shirts in the elevator of my hotel; when somebody's wearing a shirt with a 20-sided die and the word "theatre" on it, you ask why.  Well, I ask why, anyhow.  And so I ended up laughing, applauding, and occasionally having something in my eye for a few hours last night when I probably should have been sleeping.  It was an excellent tradeoff.

I didn't know what to expect going in - "Great Plays. About Geeks." is a catchy slogan, but I know firsthand that when gamers decide they want to engage in something creative, the results can be fantastic, but can also be fantastically bad.  It's not an entirely untrue stereotype that leads to Youtube videos of hilariously awful live action roleplay, or the infamous "cast magic missile at the darkness" sketch.  I wasn't sure whether I was in for something special, or just a run of really bad dwarf puns.

I needn't have worried.  McNary's writing was genuinely funny the vast majority of the time, and surprisingly touching in the scenes where it needed to be.  The play avoided tackling some of the bigger issues that might have arisen from its premise, but did so honestly;  it isn't a show about the rightness of war, it's just a show about how the reality of it impacts a group of friends.  It's a show about gaming culture, and how gaming together helps people relate to each other, helps them grow, and helps them cope.  In its own words, it's a show about how sometimes (maybe "all the time"), pointless things really matter.  Not coincidentally, that's also what PAX is about, so it played to a very receptive audience.

It also did have some really bad dwarf puns.  They actually worked out pretty well.

The cast deserves mention for coming together very quickly as I understand it and doing an excellent job.  Ordinarily when I'm talking about a play I would put a comma there, and continue with "especially so-and-so", but it was such a strong ensemble (and the play is so much an ensemble piece) that I'll just link to their cast page and tell you that everyone on it performed honestly, with a lot of humor and obvious love for their characters.  Considering the difficulty of getting a work across in a staged reading, it was a very compelling performance, and I would pay to see them do a full run of it.

As luck would have it, I was able to do just that in advance, and so can anyone else who wants to.  Critical Threat is trying to raise money for that cause, as the company itself is basically just the playwright, his wife, and a friend, and putting up a full production isn't cheap.  I wouldn't expect anyone to donate money to them sight unseen, but the good news is you won't have to.  The staged reading we saw last night was filmed, and some or all of it should be online in the not-distant future.  When it is, if you have any love for this sort of thing (games, or theatre, or both - the first is assumed, because you are here), I recommend checking it out and deciding whether you'd like to help them out as well.  [I should mention here perhaps that it is an adult show in language and nature, and while I certainly wasn't offended by anything, it probably shouldn't be screened for your kids without you seeing it first.]

My thanks to Cameron McNary and the cast & crew of Of Dice And Men for lifting many spirits last night and embodying successfully so much of what PAX has come to mean for its attendees.  I wish everyone with a pass could have seen your show, and I hope that someday they get the chance to.  Speaking for the sizable crowd that did make it, it certainly didn't seem like anyone went away disappointed.

Speaking for myself, my time was well spent.  It was the best thing I've seen at PAX.  Bravo.

I Wrote About Civ V. Also Recorded Some Stuff.

Expanded thoughts about a lot of the things I've seen at the show are still "coming soon," since I haven't really had any time today where I wasn't actively running around or recording / writing for Colony of Gamers.  If you're interested in reading about what I saw of Civilization V, that writeup is over here.  I actually forgot a couple details from the demo in that writeup, and I'll cover those here later.

If you'd like to hear some brief chats between myself and the crew I podcast with about that and a bunch of other PC gaming related things (headphones, video cards, indie games, "gaming eyewear" and more), you could go here and do that.

Any other requests, please stay on the line.  Your call will be handled in the order received.

A Very Fast PAX East Update

Boston is beautiful, but cold.  Snow was on the ground (in small amounts) and still falling when we arrived;  that stopped shortly thereafter, but it's definitely still chilly to walk around.  Luckily, my hotel is directly connected to the convention center via a labyrinthine series of shopping centers and skyways, so my feet are tired, but warm.

More thorough thoughts about the things I've seen today will come later, but here's a very quick summary.

I've seen:  Civilization V, Mafia II, Bioshock 2's multiplayer DLC, Tritton's gaming headphones and branded "gaming eyewear" (yes, really), ATI's multi-monitor output video cards, including one that spreads a game across six(!) monitors.  I'm not sure that's actually as awesome as it sounds.  Actually I'm not even sure it sounds that awesome, but Warren sure seemed to like it.

I've lost:  My iPhone.  Well, lost or had it stolen, it's hard to say.  If some nice person returns it to the hotel staff, then it was the first one.  Unfortunately this means I'm only connected when I'm sitting in the media room with my netbook, which is not how I wanted this to go down, but what're you gonna do.

I wish I had:  More sleep.  Also, my iPhone.

I'm looking forward to:  Meeting with Perfect World Entertainment in 20 minutes, hopefully to talk about their MMO iteration on the Torchlight universe; having a nice dinner out with Meghan; the press-exclusive hour tomorrow morning where the crowds will be lessened and we might have a little more time to go in-depth with things.

More updates later, with expanded thoughts about the above and anything else I see.  I'll also be doing some podcast recording and probably some writing for Colony Of Gamers which I'll link to.  Happy Friday!  Happy PAX!

Oh Hey, Torchlight is $5 Again.

I'm not going to spend any more time writing about how great Torchlight is.  I've done a lot of that.  Please feel free to read it.  What's important here is that if you somehow don't have Torchlight yet - and honestly, if you read this blog that seems unlikely, I bought it for like 10 of you guys at Christmas! - Steam has it on sale at 75% off - five dollars - for the weekend.  Go on, buy one for a friend.  Pay it forward.

In other news, Red Steel 2 is actually getting better the more I play it, but I don't have time to write about that right now because I need to sleep, wake up in < 6 hours, and go to PAX East in Boston.  I'm sure I'll be posting more from there.

(Go buy Torchlight.)

I'm Pretty Sure Red Steel 2 is Something Special.

I still haven't had much in the way of gaming time over the last couple of weeks - I can report that Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is a sound investment, but that's no surprise to anybody who reads gaming news at this point; the reviews have been out and everybody know it's a solid product.  I've also had more fun with the Just Cause 2 demo (after applying some minor changes - see the trainer linked from the SomethingAwful page and the one in the notes of the Youtube video) than I've had with some full games.  The 30 minute demo as it stands is great fun, but adding unlimited health and ammunition and removing the time limit turns it into a sandbox of terribly impressive scale.  My suggestion: take a helicopter and fly it as high as you can - this will be very, very high - and then free fall back down.  It may surprise you that it takes literally minutes to do this; the bigger surprise is that it's totally worth it, just to see that you can.

Anyhow.  This post is no longer about that;  it is to tell you that I did make an hour or so last night to pick up my pre-order of Red Steel 2 and give the opening of the game a spin, and that I feel pretty confident in saying at this point that if you have a Wii, you should play this game.  Everywhere that the original Red Steel made a design misstep - and there were several - the sequel makes strides to improve on them.  Your swordplay is no longer limited to scripted encounters, and is now the central mode of play.  Red Steel 2 is in fact a first person beat 'em up as much as it is anything else.  From the combo-based fighting system (which strings gunplay and swordplay together in some really satisfying ways) to the game's penchant for hiding money and ammo in objects scattered around the world for you to smash, it feels as much like an old school arcade brawler as it does a modern FPS, and so far I think that's great.

My biggest concern going into the game, having not had a chance to try it at PAX last year, was that there would be trouble for the player in switching between "sword mode" and "gun mode" - since you can literally do this at any time, but one involves aiming carefully with the IR pointer and one involves wide swings of your arm, this seemed fraught with peril for losing track of where the player wants to go or mistaking a turn for a sword swing (or vice versa).  Luckily, in practice, this hasn't been a problem for me at all so far.  As you roam around the world, the IR pointer controls your view direction and aiming as it does in any other Wii FPS, but as soon as you engage any enemy (or breakable object) at close range, the game switches into a Zelda-esque "Z-targeting" mode where your view is locked to your opponent and the nunchuk allows you to circle-strafe around them.  In this mode, you can swing your arm around for sword strikes as much as you like without worrying about ending up facing the wrong way.  You can also manually hop in and out of this mode in case the auto-lock doesn't catch what you want to focus on, or if you need to switch opponents.  It works really, really well, and in almost all cases I found that the game handled switching from gunplay to swordplay and back again gracefully.

Most importantly, an hour in, that solid control scheme powers a really fun, intuitive, genuinely new experience.  Strolling into a group of bad guys and switching quickly between using your blade to block sword strikes (and bullets, in a completely unrealistic and awesome design choice), shooting foes at range, and slicing / stabbing enemies up close, feels both fluid and powerful.  The Wii Motion Plus does a great job of detecting both the angle and strength of your strikes, and the versatility of the moves based around that seems pretty impressive, especially when I look at the list of moves I have yet to unlock.  From the beginning, the game makes you feel like a competent fighter, and the "Samurai Western" aesthetic they went with - for me, anyhow - just feels right.  The plot is generic and the characterization cliche, but that hasn't taken away at all from the fun I'm having with the gameplay so far.

Bottom line:  Based on my first hour or so with it, Red Steel 2 justifies its existence not only as a Wii title (you couldn't do this game the same way on the PC or on the other consoles, at least not until the Playstation Move shows up) but as a shooter that uses both the IR pointer and motion control well, something very few FPS games have managed to do.  The Wii Motion Plus integration seems excellent, and again adds features to the game that would simply be missing without its inclusion.  I'm genuinely excited to get back in and play the part of a sword-swinging gunslinger badass some more, and I really don't want to see this game's prospects harmed by the memories of its lackluster predecessor.  Red Steel 2 is a whole new thing, and you should check it out if you can.