From August 28th to September 1st I’m going to be heading to Seattle, Washington for the Penny-Arcade gaming convention (or PAX) for a weekend full of gaming and drunken debauchery. Just taking a brief look at the convention’s schedule has me almost overwhelmed. There’s so much to do, so much to see, so many people to meet that it literally feels like a tidal wave of sheer awesomeness is washing over me. I’m not sure I can handle it to be honest; I fully expect to spend the first hour of the convention just gawking at everything with stunned disbelief.

Here’s the floor layout of everything that’s going to be at PAX. The amount of developers, publishers, and gaming industry personnel  athat are going to be there is insane. Bioware is going to make an appearance with Dragon Age, Blizzard has a booth set up, Bethesda is bringing Fallout 3, EA Mythic is showing off Warhammer: Online, and Valve is supposed to have Left 4 Dead on hand at the convention.

But that’s just the gaming related stuff. On top of all the video game and Penny-Arcade Q&A panels, the guys from Mega64 are going to be there, Jonathan Coulton, the One-Ups, and Mini Boss are going to be doing a four hour concert, Rooster Teeth is doing a panel, there’s going to be plenty of industry speakers about the current state of gaming and gaming journalism, and I’m hoping that Felicia Day will be making an appearance for the screening The Guild. I love Felicia Day. In a non-stalkerish sort of way that is. But yeah, totally going to get an autograph from her if I can so I can add it to my “I Love Felicia Day” shrine I have in the shoebox underneath my bed.

Oh, and Ken Levine is also going to be there too doing a panel as well.

And this is all just the stuff I remember! There’s also going to be a plethora of gaming tournaments going on (which I won’t be entering since I suck at video games)  for Call of Duty 4, Rock Band, and Super Smash Bros. and allegedly the parties there are supposed to be pretty awesome as well. And if not, there’s all of downtown Seattle to explore. There has to be some good bars around there.

I’m going to be doing a daily update on the217 (complete with pictures and hopefully live footage) from PAX, so keep your eyes peeled for that in a few weeks!

Here’s Kotaku’s impressions on the Madden ‘09 launch.

My Gamestop’s midnight launch wasn’t quite as festive and sadly lacking in Hooters waitresses and chicken wings. We did have hot dogs and free soda, but I don’t think it can quite compare somehow. Big frowns.

I’d post my impressions about the game itself but I’m too busy playing it right now. More on that later.

Spotted this story on Kotaku this morning that gave me a good laugh.

Apparently one of the game’s GM’s (moderators) was caught red handed trying to have cybersex with another one of the players. In an act of duplicity worthy of a Chris Hansen To Catch a Predator episode, a male player posing as a girl playing a male character (confusing I know) recorded the entire conversation between himself and the GM. The conversation log, suffice to say, is simultaneously sexually explicit and unintentionally hilarious.

Honestly, I’m not sure what the GM was thinking. Even ignoring how sad and pathetic having cybersex in a MMORPG is, I’m not sure why he chose to get naughty with a gamers playing as a male character. Granted, the player in question did claim to be female, but I’m not sure that really negates the possibility of a latent sexual confusion or homoerotic fixation on the GM’s part. I mean, seriously, Age of Conan has naked boobs in it for a reason.

Also, it’s a common knowledge fact that girls don’t exist on the internet.

While I can’t say that my brief foray into the world of Age of Conan was hardly anything I would call incredible, one thing that did irk the hell out of me was how long it took a GM to respond to my requests for help. In World of Warcraft it sometimes takes quite a while for a GM to get back to you during peak server hours, but I’ve never had to wait three days before getting any sort of response from the game’s support staff.

I can’t help but wonder if while I was busy glitching in the plains Hyboria, the GM’s were busy getting randy with NaughtyKnives69 in the tropical swamps of the Purple Lotus.

Oh, and the GM in question was fired.

It’s been about a month now since I stopped playing World of Warcraft, and just like the last time I swore I would kick the habit, I feel the urge to log back into the immersing world of Azeroth and work on leveling my many toons to level 70. Why the sudden desire to allow myself to get addicted all over again? I’m sure it has something to do with the sudden deluge of information pertaining to the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King that has me all shades of excited. While I wasn’t able to secure myself a spot in the ongoing beta (and even if I was I’d probably end up selling it on Ebay for $300) merely reading through IGN’s hands on experience with the new Death Knight Hero class is enough for me to feel that all too familiar twitch in my clicking finger.

With Wrath of the Lich King still several months away, there’s more than enough games to keep me occupied before its release on November 3rd. At the end of August, there’s Mercenaries 2, and then over the next two months I have games like Fable 2 and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed to look forward to. On top of all that, I have a spot in Warhammer: Online’s open beta which I’m thinking may actually be a serious contender for World of Warcraft’s MMORPG throne.

But then again, I could spend the next two months turning my Level 50 Blood Elf Paladin into the healer that’s probably going to be high in demand once the Death Knight’s diseases start wrecking havoc in the PVP arena.

It’s definitely a tough decision. School is going to start in a matter of weeks so my already sparse free time is going to become even more limited, but too limited to support my World of Warcraft addiction?

Hm….

Every now and then there are games that truly push the envelop when it comes to societal acceptability, and for the most part, politicians and parent groups are usually pretty quick about making sure they get the public spotlight they deserve by lambasting and crucifying said title through the media. Sometimes the game is Grand Theft Auto, sometimes it’s Soldier of Fortune, and every now and again some political stooge tries to accuse games like Mass Effect of corrupting our youth -the same youth that’s busy doing heroine, downloading hardcore pornography and listening to Insane Clown Posse.

But there was one game that actually managed to sneak underneath the radar without any real political backlash. It was a game that not only depicted, but emphasized all sorts of naughty sexual innuendo including female homosexual relationships, prostitution, and getting molested by a giant caterpillar monster machine. Not even joking, but more on that later. It also had its share of profanity, blood, gore, allusions to the occult, etc. -a literal laundry list of things that would probably earned itself a spot on Fox News prime time (because we all know Fox News doesn’t have anything better to report) for promoting homosexuality, murder, drug abuse, and probably the callous bludgeoning of a litter of baby kittens. That game was Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix for the Playstation.

While the game definitely did try to sell itself using the whole entire “this game has hot lesbians” card (a slew of magazine advertisements for the game had the two female protagonists in their underwear giving each other massages) at its heart was a surprisingly complex third person shooter that certainly had more challenging puzzles than it did scantly clad lesbians. Following the story of a group of mercenaries who are charged with rescuing the daughter of a kidnapped Chinese executive, Fear Effect 2 followed closely in the steps of its predecessor by being a brilliant blend of puzzles, action, dark storytelling, and excellent production value (the 3D cel-shaded graphics were amazing as was the voice acting).

When it came time to shoot you had an arsenal of guns to kill everything from sentry robots with mini guns to ninja scientists to demons, but when it came to puzzles, the game adopted an approach highly reminiscent of titles like Sam and Max or Escape from Monkey Island. You’d often have items in your inventory that you could use to interact with other items, people, or locations throughout a wide area. Other times, the puzzles would have you matching up DNA sequences or other feats that proved to be incredibly mind boggling.

Despite what the ads for Fear Effect 2 might have insinuated (a lesbian orgy for starters)  the game’s sexual undertones were pretty mild and largely forgettable if you ignored the whole entire caterpillar molestation thing (I told you I’d get back to it) which was gratuitious and really came off more juvenile than anything you’d genuinely raise an eyebrow at.  The graphic violence, however, was anything but mild, and the mature themes that underlyed the entire gaming experience mroe than earned Fear Effect 2 it’s Mature rating.

While games these days do get away with lots of pretty edgy stuff at times, I have trouble believing that a game like Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix would’ve been able to slid by without recieving its share of attention. Maybe if it did, however, it might’ve sold better. The game recieved mixed reviews, and while a sequel was originally planned for the Playstation 2, it was ultimately scrapped due to financial trouble over at Eidos.

I loved the Fear Effect series. It offered great graphics, guns, puzzles, and good storytelling -the trademarks of any good video game. Instead of trying and failing over and over again at making a good Tomb Raider game, I sort of wished Eidos would turn their attention to making a third chapter in the Fear Effect franchise. I bet it’d be awesome.  In the meantime, if you’re looking for a blast from the past that is probably more enjoyable and original than the plethora of mindless shooters that currently saturate the market, be sure to grab a copy off of Amazon or Ebay. You won’t regre it (or you will in which case I didn’t recommend it).

Just yesterday John Carmack announced some very bad news to Xbox 360 gamers at Quake-Con. id’s upcoming post apocalyptic racing/shooter hybrid, “Rage”, will more than likely end up taking a hit in the graphics department. Their justification? Simply put, Rage is too large of a game to fit on two Xbox 360’s DVD disc format, and id isn’t interested in investing in a third disc. Instead, the estimated 22 gigabytes of graphics will end up having to be compressed and squeezed onto two discs regardless of the inevitable degradation that they’ll suffer in order to make them fit.

While in the past I’ve voiced my skeptism about the true benefits of the blu-ray disc format, my indifference to having multiple DVD’s as opposed to one large Blu-Ray disc has always hinged on the presumption that the actual quality of the game doesn’t end up suffering. Having multiple discs for the Xbox 360 isn’t necessarily a new thing -Blue Dragon and Lost Odysee both featured multiple discs without any real indication of having lost anything as a result. However, if what John Carmack is telling us is true, this may be the first real instance where Microsoft’s decision to stick with the DVD format may be biting them in the butt. I think it’s safe to say that for a while now DVD’s have been the medium fo choice to publish games on, but now it’s looking as what may have been practical in the past now threatens to hamper the evolution of Microsoft’s home console.

Swapping discs is one thing (I have absolutely no problem with that) but I suppose it’s definitely worth keeping in mind that developers end up getting hit with expenses when their games are too large to fit on a single DVD. Gamer’s only end up suffering the inconvenience of swapping discs and never really pay any additional expense for the extra discs, but rest assured, someone definitely is. Though it may be a developers job to make an awesome games for their fans, at the same time they’re here to make money to. I can’t really say I fault them for electing to cut quality in favor of saving (perhaps) a sizable amount of cash. It’s not their fault that one of the most popular platforms on the market happens to be equipped with last-gen technology.

Is this a precedent for things to come? With games like Far Cry 2 pushing the boundaries of gaming graphics it almost seems inevitable that the trend might depart from the single disc releases that we’ve become acquainted with. First person shooters might start shipping on two discs for the Xbox 360. How many discs do you think Final Fantasy XIII might end up shipping on?

Or will developers just say “no” to paying extra to publish their game on multiple discs and follow id’s example by merely compressing data? Less modes, less options, less maps, less characters, worst graphics -could this be a sign of things to come? I remember back during the days of the Xbox, Playstation 2, and Gamecube that multiplatform games were rarely indentical due to hardware limitations. For instance, Jedi Knight II: Outcast on the Xbox was more or less identical to the PC version, but the Gamecube variant was severely toned down. Will history just end up repeating itself?

Personally I’m not that concerned. This coming Fall is bringing us titles like Fable 2 which looks graphically gorgeous, has the promise of in depth and robust game play, and is shipping on only a single disc. Will the DVD format hamper games in the future on the Xbox 360? Possibly.But with a deluge of top tier titles bombarding the Xbox 360 in the next few months, it’s definitely a worry that Xbox 360 owners will forget for another day.