We played a lot more games than we've written on at PAX Prime, but a lot of them just didn't show us enough to really warrant a whole article, so we decided to do a quick hit list here and get most of them out of the way, so strap in. This will be quick enough, and then we'll never speak of it again. That's what she said.
Jurassic Park (360, PS3, PC)
A non-fun version of Dragon's Lair, essentially. Telltale was leading a modern Reanaisance of adventure titles, so why they decided to make an extended quick time event out of a CG movie that's even more boring than the third Jurassic Park movie is beyond me. And this is from someone who liked the SNES Jurassic Park game...
HAWTwired Hype Level - 4/10
X-Men Destiny (360, PS3)
Champions of Norrath with mutants. The demo didn't really excite, but since it was only the first few maps of the first few levels, there really wasn't enough to make an accurate judgement. The Champions of Norrath assessment was the quickest point of reference I could come up with such limited exposure. You beat up bad guys, you advance your skill tree, you min-max your abilities. We'll have to wait till release to say any more about it.
HAWTwired Hype Level - 6/10
Spider-Man: Edge of Time (360, PS3)
There was a lot happening in Edge of Time, and it was hard to keep track of it all. Combat appeared to be deep, but since there was no primer on what the control scheme was, it was frustrating and lead to a string of hard-attack-light-attack combos while I played. Like X-Men Destiny, the short demo didn't really showcase the game's selling mechanic (altering events in Spider-Man's timeline to affect Spider-Man 2099's timeline), so again, it will be hard to judge until release.
HAWTwired Hype Level - 7/10
SSX (360, PS3)
I'm still addicted to SSX3--at one time or another I've owned it for Xbox, PS2, and Gamecube. This ended up hampering me a bit on the new SSX, as the control scheme has been modeled more to the sticks than to the buttons (the demo rep compared it to Fight Night's punching mechanics), so it took me some getting used to, but yes, it is still SSX (and not that crappy SSX On Tour nonsense). EA's "Mountain Man" program that generates courses based on real world mountain slopes works, and in a big way. I'm looking forward to tackling the slopes and meticulously trying scoping out the best lines when this game drops in January.
HAWTwired Hype Level - 8/10
Forza 4 (360)
There are two major problems with a Forza demo--first, if you're playing it right, the demo (a single race) shouldn't take longer than about two minutes. Secondly, if you're properly focusing for a driving game, the details in the graphics and sound are the last thing you're concentrating on. But in it's own way, that's a compliment--if I hadn't been consciously trying to examine the graphics and sounds of the game, I never would have noticed them, which means that they are, in effect, creating a world complete enough that it doesn't distract with things that don't belong, and "enough, but not too much" is a damn hard target to hit with any creative exercise, so hats off for that. I was hoping John Q Public would have a chance to get their hands on the Kinect controls for the game, but the demo ran with gamepad only.
HAWTwired Hype Level - 8/10
Batman: Arkham City (360, PS3, PC)
This was the same demo that WB Games brought to E3, so nothing here was exactly Earth-shattering. The combat as Catwoman was fun, possibly more fun than playing as The Bat, and her voice acting didn't annoy me as much as it seems to some other people. Granted, it's not a voice that people are going to associate with "strong, positive heroine figure", but realistically, with all the bad puns an innuendo Catwoman has delivered as a character over the years, I think she's probably a bit more sex kitten than progressive women's advocates want to admit. Outside of Catwoman, the demo didn't really show anything that you didn't see from Arkham Asylum, but even if left at that, is more Arkham Asylum a bad thing?
HAWTwired Hype Level - 8/10
Capcom Booth (360, PS3, 3DS, PC)
We didn't play anything at the Capcom booth, and I want to tell you why. I don't know if they were Capcom employees or PR representatives, but the folks working the booth kept turning people away from lining up for demos because they didn't want their lines to get over an hour long. This is PAX. People waited in line over an hour for Citizen Skywatch, and they didn't even know what the hell it was. I waited two hours for Uncharted 3, and I don't even own a PS3. Turning away people so your booth has a better aesthetic sends a message to your audience that your games are more important than they are. Of course, so does re-releasing all your most popular games a year later, so I guess that just kinda tells us where Capcom sits these days.
HAWTwired Hype Level - 2/10
