PAX Prime Day 3: The Last 4 Awesome Games We Saw

Our last venture into the PAX Prime show floor revealed four fantastic looking titles we can't wait for.

We spent three days wandering the PAX Prime 2011 show floor in Seattle taking pictures, playing games, interviewing developers, and just straight up having fun. We've already revealed Day 1 and Day 2 coverage, but here's our final venture out into the convention floor that revealed four fantastic looking titles that we can't wait to get our hands on. 

Keep your eye out for more coverage, as we bring you our interviews we conducted on the show floor in the weeks to come. 

The Secret World

This one has been on our radar from inception. MMOs can usually feel like an exhausting process filled with level-grinding and typical quests that no one cares to read (cause it’s always all about the loot). But The Secret World’s twisted setting and moral/socially-entwined factions make this MMO a unique one that we definitely wouldn’t feel ashamed in investing time into.

We watched four Funcom developers take on ridiculously sized enemies under interesting conditions. You won’t have just the enemies to worry about, though. You’ll have to tread carefully, as the water you’re absentmindedly running through may very well be electrified. Paying attention to your enemies and surroundings, you’ll be able to gauge how to come equipped to the battle. You can alternate between your own abilities and weapons as you see fit, with myriad options to choose from. Your character’s progression in The Secret World isn’t like the usual RPG leveling you’re undoubtedly used to. It ultimately comes from equipping weapons and one of 500 unique abilities to complement them.

The absolute most intriguining aspect of this MMO, however, is certainly the three secret societies. A personality test deemed us as members of the Dragon society, but there are two others with very different, contradicting ideals. Being on opposite ends of what appears to be the impending end of the world, the three societies work against each other in both PvE and PvP gameplay. Factions can construct traps against you, which Funcom intentionally set up to feed the flames of hatred between the societies. There is a palpable difference between the societies, and as players you will all adamantly fight to defeat (or just troll) one another.

Whether you choose to rep the side of the corporate bad boy Illuminati, the tradition-focused Templars, or the mysterious Dragon societies is up to you. But who you choose to play as will influence what missions you undertake. Sure, the most obvious of these is that your starting area will be affected. The Illuminati are based in NYC; the Templars in London, and the Dragon in Seoul. You can even interact with players of other factions. The predominant task at hand is, of course, to defeat the threat of monsters. But ultimately The Secret World incorporates a much bigger, greedier dilemma of a struggle between the secret societies to gain world dominance.

In the beginning of our demo, we were led through the murky waters around Kingsmouth that have become infested by the Draug, creatures based on the Norwegian mythology of the Draugr who are drowned spirits of Vikings. After watching the developers at the helm take on co-op missions, Funcom took the role of one of the Iluminati to investigate a suspicious disappearance of one of the society’s informants. We broke in to find things have gone awry, and the lights are completely out.

Here, dynamic lighting impacts gameplay. You can choose to brandish your flashlight, thereby causing a bit of a scene that aggros the mutated enemies, or you can wander on by blind. If you were playing as one of the Templars, however, your mission here would have differed. The Templars are the ones that turned off all the lights in the area to begin with. The Dragon’s involvement in this particular quest-line leads them to mutate the humans that we were watching attack the Illuminati character. Funcom explains that putting the three factions against each other creates a much more interesting, unpredictable storytelling as compared to a two-sided conflict where one group will always inevitably be stronger than the other. In this three-sided storytelling, political alliances will constantly be shifting to disrupt the balance of the currently-winning faction.

It will take some time in building your character from its initiate status to a trusted member of the secret society. In doing so, you’ll learn more about the very complex, in-depth lore that takes place in The Secret World. This MMO is all about investigating the context of The Secret World, becoming involved in it and experimenting with the many, many abilities and roles your character can take while fighting against the myriad monsters and mini-bosses strewn about every location. These experiences all play out between the PvE play as well as the PvP play. Persistent war zones are set up all around the world that, when captured, grant that society particular bonuses based on the relics that are stowed away there. You’ll find everything from the Stonehenge to the lost kingdoms of Shambhala to the city of gold in El Dorado. It’s here that you’ll go up against 100 players in PvP battles. Strategy and tactical fighting will be even more important with swarms of (non-monster) enemies.

The Secret World is an expansive, fictional realm based on tons of lore. We can’t wait to explore more of it when the game comes out in April of next year.

Rage

Alright, alright. We get it. You’re sick of zombies. But, guess what? These are mutated humans. They’re not actually zombies. They don’t want to eat you alive, they much rather just beat the living shit out of you. And, man, are they vicious about it. These fiends will scale walls and swing from the ceiling to leap at you. There is the occasional foe attacking from behind cover, but piss them off enough and they’ll eventually get into your face to slash at you unrelentingly.

Playing Rage at PAX Prime this year, we kept jumping back at the intensity of each battle. The first thing NPC Dan Hagar tasks you with after rescuing you is to kill off a bandit threat nearby. While you’re tackling them in their cave-like dwellings, don’t be caught off-guard by the mutated goons that look like they’re traveling with gas clouds floating around them. Rage is full of enraged enemies that make for thrill-filled battles.

If you’re a Fallout fan, some of the themes in this game will be immediately familiar to you. Going between towns and meeting haggard-looking friends and foes that are in the middle of a ravaged world and decaying society is definitely one of them. But Rage elevates the quality on many fronts. The graphics are unarguably fantastic, with small details like rubble professionally spitting out from under your tires seriously sealing that deal.

You’ll soon upgrade from your ATV courtesy of Dan Hagar when your next mission takes you on a supply run to start work on a new vehicle. We didn’t get to experiment with too many vehicles in our short time with Rage, but we’re promised there are more, bigger, and badder ones to come.

The PAX Prime demo we played set up the world of Rage for our quick preview with it. In one hour, we killed tons of enemies and experimented with several weapons. Heck, you can even toss boomerangs at your enemies if that’s your style. We’ll definitely be keeping our focus on Rage next month (October 4 release date) to see what other mutations and weapons we’ll be playing with.

Batman: Arkham City

One of the most mouth-watering games at PAX Prime this year was most assuredly Batman: Arkham City. With such a fluid combat style from the first game, Arkham Asylum, we’ve been biting our nails in anticipation for the sequel set in a much more expansive world. Plus, you get to alternate between playing as Batman and the sexy Catwoman, too.

We love kicking ass, and we love games that make you feel like you are. Playing as Batman (and Catwoman), you would imagine that kicking ass is even more paramount in trying to expressing to the player. Batman is equipped with swift moves, fancy cape movements, and gadgets galore. Tired of drop kicking your enemies? Try the grapple gun to grapple your enemies towards your direction and finishing it off with a nice, harsh elbow to the face. There is nothing more gratifying than watching that go down in slow motion. So, we’d say that you definitely feel like not just a badass when playing this game, but just like Batman himself.  

Catwoman of course has a very different fighting style. She’s light on her feet, and likes to work the room while throwing in a few kisses of death and cat whips here and there. Batman is much more about making every one of his hits count. Besides kicking ass and taking names to save Catwoman’s ass a multitude of times in our demo on the PAX Prime show floor, we got a chance to meet Harvey Dent while infiltrating his mansion. The half-mint condition, half completely torn apart building is representative of both Harvey’s physical and mental condition.

Gameplay in Batman: Arkham City is still just as sneak-focused as the first title. Even more immersive, however, is the way in which you are given new quests and how you are directed to them. So, instead of some cheesy arrow metaphorically holding you by the hand, you’ll use Batman’s investigative skills and gadgets to determine where the next place of interest is. Maybe you’ll use his gadgets to track the trajectory of Joker’s bullet to determine where he was sniping you from. His Cryptographic Sequencer (version 2) and hacking skills will show you where to go next - a process determined by you. Rocksteady explained that one of the more important details they wanted to focus on in this sequel was to ensure that players never felt lost in the game. After all, Batman would never be lost in Gotham.

The bat-signal appropriately directs you to your next mission. Whenever the city of Gotham wanted to call on Batman, they would use the bat-signal. Focusing on being as close to canon as possible in a way that suits the gameplay is certainly going to be one of Rocksteady’s strong points in Batman: Arkham City.

After spotting the bat-signal, we grapple-boosted to the highest gargoyle to glide down towards our next objective. With the bat-signal looming in the foreground, we pulled out of our glide just in time to land on our feet on the floor. This is one of the cooler new movements you’ll find in the upcoming sequel. Along the way to your mission, you can feel free to wander and find some of the legendary landmarks in Batman’s history, too. You can unlock side missions, track down the Riddler; whatever your bat-heart desires.

Personally, we just love to fight. Swinging from enemy to enemy, using quick batterangs, countering melee attacks to disarm enemies, grappling, and using the combat gel all combine to form a diverse, and intense battle scenario of which every one feels unique. Each one of these battles will leave their scars on you, as well. By the end of the game, expect to see a ravaged Batman, weathered from his many fights and even gunshots to the chest.

We can’t wait for October 18 to pick up this new title in WB’s Batman series and experience Gotham in both the perspectives of the city’s triumphant, bad-ass hero as well as a sly criminal.

Lollipop Chainsaw

First thing’s first: we’re huge Suda 51 fans. He’s got the most twisted mind we could hope for, and Lollipop Chainsaw is full of playful humor and gore-filled fighting. Playing as San Romero High School cheerleader, Juliet, you travel around your school grounds with a chainsaw to tear the recent zombie infestation to pieces. You were born and trained to do just that: hunt zombies. Although your classmates were heretofore unaware of your side profession, they’re certainly getting a taste of it now as some of them are being turned into flesh-eating fiends themselves.

Producer Scott Warr at WB led us through our demo on the PAX Prime show floor. We were told that the predominant emphasis on this in-development game at this juncture was to show off Juliet’s combat moves. And, boy, we were having fun with them. You can smash on a series of light attacks - known as the cheer attack that groups zombies together or pushes them away - as well as heavy (chainsaw) attacks to get some really gruesome moves, splitting bodies in half and decapitating (called “Sparkle Hunting”) others. Fighting against a series of zombies, we noticed a particular player requirement of balancing your attacks with your dodging. Don’t get trapped into a corner with these zombies, because it’s hard to get away from their grips once they’ve grouped up on you. Juliet can jump around them to slash them apart with her chainsaw, but if you do end up getting surrounded you can leap frog over your enemies to slice them up their spine. The combat is all about a manner of managing your waves of zombies and not get overwhelmed.

Juliet racks up these visceral deaths to gain bonus advantages even outside of raising her Special Ability meter that allows her to be invincible during battle. The details of these other advantages are still under wraps, but we’re told that collecting zombie medals will open up certain parts of the story that would otherwise be hidden. There will apparently also be other rewards involved with these decapitations (most likely gameplay related), but they’re so far also unrevealed. What we do know, however, is that you can gain heavy rewards by rescuing your classmates. If you do (which we chose to do in our demo), your classmate will drop a ton of zombie medals. If you choose to ignore them, however (because, you know, it’s high school and maybe they were a jerk to you) they’ll turn into even more aggressive zombies.

Each zombie with a name that you encounter is a sub-boss, with their own peculiar personalities. After a relatively boring boss battle with our old teacher, Mr. Fitzgibbons who utilizes a desk to attempt to smash against you, we went up against Zed the Punk Rock zombie who attacks you with his words. Literally. You’ll have to jump over the letters of his insults a la Scott Pilgrim, while avoiding his other nefarious attacks. Eventually he’ll start skipping from speaker to speaker, while you try to cut them down with your chainsaw. Zed has a real diversity of attacks, using everything from his damaging insults to his microphone and lithe qualities.

The character himself is a riot, and however cliche he may be, he is entertaining in that he is crazed and unrelenting. Even slicing him up the spine won’t do any good. The insistence of maintaining a thematic quality really does this boss battle well. We were told that each boss will mandate a different style of attack that represents something of their personality in order to take them down. We can already tell that the boss battles will be unique, so long as Suda maintains the kind of hilarity we saw with Zed.

Of course, there is still much work to be done on the game. They’re currently in the process of tweaking the difficulty, for instance, as the team at Grasshopper Manufacture are hoping to have Suda fans new and old feel like the game is accessible to them. With such a stellar line-up of talent working on the game - including Akira Yamoaka doing the music composition and James Gunn on writing - we’re hopeful that the game will have appeal to a wide-ranged audience.

We left the PAX Prime demo with a ton of questions. What are Juliet’s connections to these zombie bosses? We were hinted at that these bosses may have a more significant role in the story line than even Juliet knows. Juliet is also a born-and-raised zombie-hunter. Who trained her, and what set off this zombie outbreak? What are the other bosses like? Who is the mysterious “Nick” head that hangs at her waist? How old is Juliet? (I know some of you were wondering that.) But the important thing to take away is that we’re still just as curious to learn more as the instant we heard Suda 51 was tackling a zombie game, and that’s very promising. The game has as much blood as it does rainbows, and the juxtaposition of the two couldn’t be more comically beautiful. We can’t wait to see more of this ridiculous, and uniquely fun game in 2012.

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