I am back home after another great PAX West. Thank you to everyone who came to our various Penny Arcade panels and events over the course of the weekend. I am confident that someday Jerry and I will walk on stage for a panel and find a completely empty room, but that day is not today!
I played some cool stuff over the weekend and wanted to share.
This game wasn’t at PAX but it was what I played back in the room whenever I could on my Steam Deck. It’s an absolutely stunning reimagining of Sega’s classic. The game is structured like a metroidvania and level exploration will have you bouncing between older levels as you discover new tools that let you access different areas of the maps. However the combat is full blown Character Action Game with big combos and tons of awesome abilities that let you tear through enemies with style. It’s also super pretty. It’s got a hand drawn look that evokes the style of the art you saw in the instruction manuals that came with the old games. The entire package feels like a love letter to 90’s era SEGA and I am eating it up!
I actually learned this game existed and played it for the first time on the same day! This is a League of Legends TCG put out by Riot themselves. I love a good card game but I really am looking for interesting new ideas at this point and Riftbound is full of them. You will make a deck based on one of your favorite LoL champions and then you battle your opponent at various locations similar in some ways to how players battle over locations in Marvel Snap. The goal here is not to deplete your enemies health but rather to earn points by capturing these locations with your units. It mimics the feeling of fighting over lanes really well and they have done a great job of making the champions and their decks play like they do in LoL. It’s full of clever twists and new ideas that had me constantly stopping the demo they were giving Jerry and I to ask the developer about the design process behind the mechanics. They were kind enough to send me home with a few sample decks and I absolutely cannot wait to play this with the entire fam.
So many people told me I had to play Deadzone Rogue at PAX that I bought it as soon as I got home. Long story short they were right. This is a first person shooter roguelite which is something we have seen before, but I think what sets Deadzone apart is how rock solid the gunplay is and the killer vibe. It is the ultimate "Let's do one more run!" game.
I used to love the old Light Gun genre but sadly modern televisions killed the ability to play these games. At PAX this weekend though I discovered Gaime which is a technology that lets you play these games on a modern display and even better it comes packed with officially licensed versions of a bunch of great games like Time Crisis! They just completed a successful Kickstarter but you can still pledge.
Jerry has said that we make the space and you all bring PAX and I felt it this weekend. Thanks to everyone who came out and helped make PAX West such an incredible show.
-Gabe Out
