One of my favorite traditions as a gamer is attending Boston’s annual PAX East conference! As someone who’s still in high school, it’s the only con I can realistically attend, so I’ve been doing just that for the past couple years! (This has been my 4th year at PAX, so I’m definitely well-versed in navigating the expo center.) This year was my first time going all three days, and I thought I’d commemorate that by documenting my experience with pictures!

This is the first pin I got at PAX, and it was given to me before I even entered the show floor! I was intrigued by Harmonix’s presence at PAX, but I’ll dive into that a bit later.

This was the sign that welcomed me into the expo floor hall on Friday morning – suffice to say, I was excited to be back at PAX!

After entering the Expo Hall, I was pretty overwhelmed by the amount of games that I could play. In an effort to not wander around dumbfounded, I sat down at the first game I saw – Masquerada. An isometric strategy game, Masquerada was in very early alpha stages – this much could be seen during my demo, as a lot of the environments felt very empty, and the art felt incomplete for many of the areas. (This isn’t to be taken as a strike against the game, though – what art was present was very pretty!) Combat (which was said to be akin to Dragon Age, a game that I haven’t played) was pretty simple – you could direct your characters to attack certain enemies by selecting the enemies on-screen, and you could also use a character’s four abilities in the same way. There was a unique twist in the combat that was reminiscent of Transistor – with a tap of the space-bar, you could stop time, allowing you to plan out your attacks accordingly. I didn’t find myself using it often, though, because the enemies were incredibly easy. The game didn’t demo too well, either – it was seemingly very story-based at heart, so dropping me into the world without little context was jarring. (A dev explained the story a little to me afterwards – the top 1% of the population could obtain masks with magical powers, and you played as one of these masked men investigating a crime. It seemed cool, if not a little disjointed!) The voice-acting definitely needed work, too – the main character, Cicero, sounded very strange throughout the entire demo.

I had heard about Y2K before PAX, and it had piqued my interest. (A 3D RPG that was going to be on Vita? Count me in!) Naturally, when I saw its booth, I jumped right into line to try and get a taste of it! Unfortunately, I was kind of disappointed with what I saw there. The main character, Alex, provided a monologue about almost everything he did, and it started to get annoying throughout my demo. (Some things, like House of Cards, manage to pull off this communication between character and audience – Y2K was not one of those things.) The entire experience was very odd and quirky, and I felt as if it was being weird for the sake of standing out. The puzzles were frustrating to play through at an event like PAX, because I didn’t want to spend a good 25 minutes deciphering how to progress. (I actually ended up leaving about halfway through the demo.) This could just be a case of something not demoing well, but I’m definitely going to wait for others to play through Y2K for reviews before I decide to drop money on it.

This was the booth for Yacht Club Games’s wildly popular indie, Shovel Knight. I still haven’t had the chance to play Shovel Knight (I’m waiting for its PlayStation debut), but I think what they’re doing with the DLC is awesome. At PAX, they were demoing the Plague Knight campaign DLC, which is free to anyone who buys the base game!

This was a section of Harmonix’s booth, where they were selling a lot of merch for their newly announced game, Rockband 4. Seeing as they announced the game a day before the convention itself, I thought it was impressive that they (all the people involved in setting up PAX) were able to keep its existence under lock and key. Nothing about Rockband 4 was announced during PAX, and no gameplay was shown, but that’s not really a big deal – Rockband 4 is pretty predictable, as games go. Harmonix’s Amplitude was one game I really regret not trying – it looked like a cross between Rockband: Unplugged (the short-lived PSP exclusive) and a space shooter.

The Weaponographist, an indie game developed by Puuba, drew me in with a contest – if I was one of the fastest three people to clear their demo, I would receive a “Golden Pass”, which would allow the owner to download all Puuba games, past, present, and future. (They have a total of 2 games out currently, The Weaponographist being one of them, so it’s not as big of a deal as you might think.) You play as a knight named Doug, who’s cursed with an ever-dropping experience bar – the only way you can keep your experience is by maintaining a combo. (By extension – the larger the combo, the stronger Doug will become.) You travel through randomized floors and slaughter a myriad of enemies in an effort to maintain your combo, picking up a variety of weapons from all the different enemies. (Each enemy dropped its own unique weapon, which urged you to try out all of them.) I had a lot of fun with The Weaponographist, and it showed a lot of promise – if the developers are able to fill the game with even more enemies than were shown at PAX, it’ll be a great amount of fun! I wasn’t the biggest fan of its artstyle, though – it looked like a cheaply made Flash game.

The crowd as I was waiting in line to play Nintendo’s new multiplayer shooter, Splatoon!

More Splatoon line shots.

Some more Splatoon shots – I was getting pretty close to playing at this point, and I was very excited! Doesn’t the paint look so colorful and fun?

This is the last picture of Splatoon, I promise. I took this one just as I was about to play in order to showcase the Nintendo booth a tiny bit. (The only game they had really worth playing in my opinion was Splatoon – the only other unreleased games there were Codename: S.T.E.A.M., which has a demo IIRC, and Xenoblade Chronicles for the N3DS, which is just a port of the original Wii game.) Splatoon was really fun, and surprisingly strategic! Our demo included 2 games of a mode that was, for lack of a better phrase, a “turf war” – whichever team covered the floor of the stage with the most paint would come out victorious. The first game, we lollygagged around the stage without much strategy – we were getting a feel for the controls and the mechanics of the game. (We had to use motion controls on the GamePad, though, to aim – hopefully this is optional in the main game, because it was very jarring at first.) During our second game, we devised more of a strategy – two of our team members pushed towards the other team’s spawn, aggressively spraying and trying to “kill” (splattering another player with enough paint would cause them to respawn) other players, while the other two members would defend our spawn point. I had a ton of fun with my demo of Splatoon, and I’m really excited for its release – the mechanics are fluid, gameplay is wicked fun, and the graphics are gorgeous. My only hope is that they add more control options – I don’t want to have to adapt to motion controls.

Now, for my favorite game of PAX East – Titan Souls. Developed after a successful Ludum Dare with the theme of “You Only Get One”, Titan Souls asks players to kill a plethora of bosses as a fragile girl with one HP. You have one arrow throughout the boss battles that can be recalled back to you after you shoot it – recalling is a double-edged sword, though, as it leaves you motionless during a game that requires constant diligence. I can’t stress enough how much I liked playing this game – battles were tense, exciting, and challenging. The demo included 4 bosses on “Normal” mode – I beat all 4 under 10 minutes, for which I was rewarded a T-shirt! I was worried about how quickly I had beaten all of the bosses, though – for a game that’s planned to have 18 bosses, it wasn’t seeming like it would take me that long to beat. Later at the convention, I revisited the booth to see how people were liking it, and I was pleasantly surprised to see the addition of a “Hard Mode” demo the devs had set up – after trying for about 15 minutes on a single boss, I realized that Titan Souls was going to last me much longer than I had initially thought. I’m definitely buying this game the 1st day it comes out.

This was the shirt I snagged from beating the Titan Souls demo in under 10 minutes! The graphic on the T-shirt looked really cool, so I wore it around on the Sunday of PAX!

This was the first panel I went to at PAX – it was about atheist characters in video games, and how they could be developed in interesting ways! It was a bit different than what I expected, but I still gained some interesting insight from the three panel members (Charles Battersby, Chris Avellone, and Ken Levine) about some of the atheist characters that had already been created in games.

A picture I took as the expo hall was closing for the night!

A picture with me and the illustrious Greg Miller of KindaFunny! This picture was taken after a panel about reviews of video games, and if they’re currently transforming into a new form. (The general consensus was incredibly mixed among the platform members, which was totally confusing and yet incredibly interesting for someone who’s looking to make a foray into the games journalism industry.) This panel was definitely my favorite panel, as it gave very engaging information while still being absolutely hilarious.

This was one of the concerts that was happening late Friday night – the people on stage at the taking of this picture were the Super Guitar Bros.! (They were great!) I sat down to listen to some music with my brother around 9:00pm-ish, but I ended up only staying for about half an hour or so – I was very hungry, and all of the concession stands within PAX had closed along with the show floor. I ended up heading to South Station for some Cajun food, which was just “alright.”

Pictured here is the thrilling indie, Just Shapes and Beats – you and three others are shapes, who have to avoid other pink shapes who are looking to mess your day up. These pink shapes were increasingly abundant throughout the level, and usually followed the awesome beats of an electronic song playing in the background. What resulted was an almost rhythm-based bullet hell that was a blast to play! This definitely was at the top of my list for games I tried throughout PAX.

20XX is a game heavily inspired by the Mega Man series (as the title implies), but with a unique twist – every level is randomly generated, preventing you from experiencing the same level twice. You can also play with a partner (I played through a couple levels on more than one occasion throughout the convention – all of my friends really enjoyed themselves), which didn’t detract much from the integrity of the game in any way. 20XX definitely excited me, and I’ll probably grab it upon release – it also finally pushed me to make a purchase that I’ve been debating for a while, now.

This is that purchase – two Mega Man collections for the PS2! I can’t wait to play through all of them – I’ll probably do a post when I’m finished playing each collection!

I saw Social Justice Warriors after watching some of IGN’s PAX South coverage, and I thought it was a humorous take on some of the real issues happening throughout the games industry today. You play as a “Social Justice [Warrior, Mage, etc.]” who does battle with the “trolls” that populate the Internet, and the battle is waged with words instead of weapons. I sat down to play a demo of it when I saw it on the show floor, and I was kind of disappointed – a lot of the jokes throughout the battles were very repetitive, and the game lost its charm quickly. If you were thinking of picking this game up, I’d advise you to avoid it – look up a quick playthrough on YouTube for all of the comedy bits, because the actual game itself is pretty lackluster.

One of my friends from work was working as a PR guy for Flippify’s Race the Sun, so I figured I would go and try out their game! To my surprise, they had an Oculus Rift hooked up, ready to deliver an experimental demo of their game in virtual reality. This was the first time that I had tried both Race the Sun and the Oculus Rift – the Rift didn’t add too much functionality to the game itself (you could look around to see the environment around you, but that’s about it), but it was incredible to have the game right in your face. The game itself was alright – you controlled a solar powered spaceship that needed to travel as far as possible, all the while collecting items and avoiding the obstacles that’ll slow you down. Wasn’t really my cup of tea, and I wouldn’t buy it, but the Oculus was really cool. (I’d have to try more games w/ it to really make any sort of solid judgement on it, though.)

Enter the Gungeon intrigued me when I saw it on the PlayStation Experience conference – I was drawn to the pixely art style, but I didn’t really know much about how the game was even played. That changed at PAX – it’s an interesting rogue-like (reminiscent of Binding of Isaac), twin-stick shooter that was all about constantly grabbing new guns. I really liked it – you could interact with some of the environments in the level, which added an interesting dynamic to combat. (I could kick down a table and take cover from behind, or kick it in front of an enemy to block his fire.) This was another great game that I’m definitely buying upon its release!

Downwell was another game that grabbed me with its art style – the simplistic reds, blacks, and whites drew me to play it. It was a simple game where you controlled a gun-boot wearing man who’s objective is progressing farther and farther down a well. Your gunboots are the only way you can kill enemies, and you need to be in the air in order to hit your enemies with the bullets from the boots.The catch comes with your gunboots’ clip size – every “x” number of shots (as this can undoubtedly be upgraded throughout the game) you have to touch the ground to reload, leaving yourself vulnerable to enemies. Everything about Downwell was very tight and fun, though, and I’m definitely going to get it when it debuts on the App Store!

Next, I tried Drinkbox’s (developers of Guacamelee) new Vita-exclusive game, Severed! I didn’t really know much about Severed before playing the demo, and after playing it, I can say the same exact thing. I learned what the general gameplay would be like (a 1st person perspective w/ limited exploration and some unique and cool swiping combat that slowly morphs into a puzzle as enemies become more frequent), but I don’t know much about the actual game and why I’m doing what I’m doing. I’m still definitely interested in Severed, and I completely trust Drinkbox to develop a great game – the demo simply didn’t answer many of my questions about it.

Another panel I attended during my PAX trip was a competitive Smash Bros. discussion! It definitely wasn’t what I expected – instead of being some commentary on the state of the meta and recaps of some of the recent tournaments or drama (such as PM being excluded from many competitions), they spent about 45 minutes explaining the ins and outs of certain techniques. (They started off with the basics, but proceeded to get more and more in-depth.) Definitely an interesting time, but took me a bit off guard!

I actually had a “prize card” wedged under my seat during the panel, so I was given an amiibo of my choice! (Not any amiibo, though – they had a select few on stage, and I was able to pick from said selection.) I ended up with a Sheik amiibo!

We also saw Dylan Sprouse (from Suite Life of Zack and Cody fame) attending the Smash panel – he’s super into Smash, and wants to commentate some tournaments in the future! Who knew?

The last panel I attended during PAX was the GameOverGreggy show! I’m a huge fan of everything KindaFunny does, so of course I had to go! It was great as always!

I managed to snag a picture with Colin Moriarty after the GameOverGreggy panel – say whatever you want about the KindaFunny crew, but they’re definitely thankful for their fan-base! (They spent 2 hours after the panel at an impromptu meet and greet!)

Overwatch, Blizzard’s new first-person shooter, was one of the only huge lines that I waited in during PAX – it took about an hour and a half from when I first lined up until I was able to finally play. It was definitely a very fun time – I played Winston, a gorilla donning a mech suit, and managed to defeat the opposition in half of my matches. It felt very reminiscent of TF2 (which is what Blizzard was definitely going for), but I feel like there’ll be much more variety and diversity than TF2. One thing is for sure, though – Overwatch needs to be free-to-play, without any gameplay elements effected by IAP, in order to come close to denting TF2’s player base. If it did both those things, though, it would absolutely be a contender – I would prefer it over TF2!

I stopped by the booth for indie publisher Team17 with one of my friends to try out some of their games – the first one I gravitated towards was Overruled, because it was multiplayer (and we were looking to play something together). Overruled is a competitive platforming-brawler with multiple objectives that change throughout the level, and I wanted to talk about it simply because it was really bad. There was no sense of urgency to beat your competitors, and everything about the game felt cheap, especially the character movement and the graphics. It definitely wins my “Worst of PAX” award for 2015.

While I was checking out the Team17 booth, I checked out The Escapists for the first time – it was the only game I could recognize on-sight that they had published, so I figured that it had something going for it. I definitely was intrigued by the prison simulator gameplay after playing, but the game didn’t exactly demo too well – I was dropped into the prison without any semblance of an idea about what to do. I’m curious about this game, though, and I think I might pick it up at a later date when my backlog is a bit smaller!

The last game I played in the Indie Megabooth (where I spent most of my time on the show floor) was Forced 2: The Rush, which was a twin-stick shooter with deck-building elements. At the end of every level, you could cast a card from your ever-growing deck to deliver buffs to your character. After that, you were thrusted into increasingly difficult levels that were surprisingly deep and strategic – I learned to be very careful about some of the actions I was taking. I didn’t think I would’ve liked this game at all upon starting, but I really grew on me – if I had a PC capable of running it, I would’ve totally grabbed a beta key!

In a last-ditch effort to play more games before the show floor closed on Sunday, I ventured into the congested Indie Minibooth. Sadly, though, I only got to play a few games there.

This was one of the games in the Minibooth that really stood out to me – Dad By the Sword is a first-person swordplay simulator developed by Rocketcat Games, the team who created one of my favorite iOS games, Wayward Souls. This 3D combat was definitely a far departure from their debut game, which is why I was so interested in the game! (It ended up being really clunky, but I’m very interested in how it’s going to turn out by its final stages.)

A final picture as I exited the convention center on Sunday night – I’ll see you next year, PAX!

This year was absolutely the best PAX that I’ve attended, and for a variety of reasons. (I’ve become much more of a knowledgeable gamer since last year’s show, and I had 3 days to explore this year.) My three favorite games, in order, were Titan Souls, Enter the Gungeon, and Just Shapes and Beats! I played plenty of other games during my time (I think I played a total of ~35 games on the show floor) but I didn’t have enough time to mention them all here! (My honorable mention goes to Viking Squad, a 3-player beat-em-up with similarities to Castle Crashers.)