I spent most of the final day of PAX trying to get as many free shirts as I could, but in the course of doing that I still managed to see and play a few more games.  Sorry for the delay; there was all that packing and flying halfway across the country to do.

Let's bring it home.

Hands-On:  Dead Space: Extraction

I've been going back and forth on this one; as much as I loved the first Dead Space, I didn't see how a rail shooter -- sorry, "guided experience" -- could follow up on that experience.  And I really wasn't sure how the co-op gameplay was going to work.  I was afraid it would turn out that the second player would be someone who just shows up for a few minutes, and then says, "Well, good luck.  Maybe I'll stop back later."  And it also seemed like having more characters would ruin the whole "alone in a place with monsters" vibe the first game did so well.

As it turns out, Visceral has come up with a clever in-game explanation for the second player:  they control the protagonist's other hand.  It's a great idea, it works well, and it encourages players to work together, since there is still only one life bar between them.

The demo was good, if a little plot-heavy; between taking down waves of Necromorphs, we were treated to a scene in which the main character administers an antibiotic to another survivor (thrilling!), and they had a lengthy conversation about what exactly was going on (woo!).  It would have been fine if time weren't an issue; my girlfriend and I just wanted to shoot stuff.

Hands-On:  No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle

I spent my time in line for this playable demo trying to figure out if that subtitle had anything at all to do with pooping, and I'm still not quite sure.  But I like to think it has everything to do with pooping.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun with this one, too.  As in the first game, combat is handled mainly through button pushes, and not waggling; motion controls are reserved for incredibly graphic finishing moves.  And it works -- chopping a guy in half by slashing the Wii Remote after a series of button presses feels a lot more satisfying and less accidental than if I had been flailing the whole time.

This is probably a good time to mention the Expo Hall bathrooms had No More Heroes 2 toilet paper.  Pictures will go up later in the week.

Live Demo:  Splinter Cell: Conviction

Today was apparently the day I spent with games whose titles feature colons.  I assure you this was not intentional.  Colons are just in this year, I guess.

The live demo of Conviction didn't show us anything we haven't seen before, but it was notable for the presentation.  There were two guys on stage -- one guy talking, and one guy playing -- and the guy who was talking used every available opportunity to mock the way the other guy was playing the demo, and he always managed to bring his antagonism around to game features.  Example:

"Okay, John's going to take these two guards out and then go right in the front door."

John ignores those two guards and sneaks around to climb in a side window.

 "What are you doing?!  I told you to go through the front door!  But that's the great thing about Splinter Cell: Conviction.  There are multiple ways to approach every situation, and you can do what you want."

This was obviously all part of the plan, but it was unique and entertaining as hell to watch.  That demo was always packed, and I went at least twice.

Also worth mentioning was the tag line with which most sessions ended (which was always, always shouted):  "Ubi Soft:  Making Games That Don't Suck."  I don't think we're going to see that on any official press releases, but it did make an impression.

Live Demo:  Brink

Splash Damage had a little theater area set up on the show floor, and did live demos of a pre-alpha build of Brink every hour.  I walked by a few times and thought, "FPS...meh," but I made it for the last demo of the show because at that point I really just wanted to sit down for a few minutes and the bean bags were, like, way over there.

Brink is a multiplayer first-person shooter with free-running elements.  The visual style is a little cartoonish; characters at this point resemble characters in TimeSplitters or Guitar Hero (big jaws and tiny eyes), and one of the main features game director Paul Wedgwood played up was the incredible level of character customization.

Armor includes shoulder pads made of halves of tires and held in place with seat belts, and one of the facial detail options is a giant wound down the length of a character's face, held together with staples.  It's still a little early, but at one point in the demo the camera panned across a couple dozen different custom characters, and the variety was impressive, except that there don't seem to be any female characters at this point.

Gameplay consists of weapons combat and capturing command posts, but at any time players can take on side missions to gain experience and open up different paths to victory (e.g. blowing open a door to create a new entry to the enemies' base, or "interrogating" -- read:  ball-shocking -- a fallen enemy for tactical information).

Brink was probably my biggest surprise of the show; I didn't know anything about it going in, and it's definitely one I'm going to be following now.

I'll be writing up some of the panels I went to in the next few days, and I'm going to have a photo post as well.  The Mario and Peach Experience will make an appearance, so be on the lookout for that.