PAX Prime 2013 – The Disappointments

There were a few things at Pax that I was kind of interested in checking out.  So I went on the hunt to figure out whether or not I’d invest some money into them in the future.  Needless to say, this is a list of things that I probably won’t be picking up soon or at all.

Batman: Arkham Origins – Blackgate:
Batman: Arkham Origins - Blackgate

I honestly didn’t know this was coming to the 3DS.  So I was surprised to see a demo station for it among the rest of 3DS’s on display.   It said Batman, I was in.

What I got was not a lot.  It was a overly simple platformer with not much depth to the combat.  I already got my single button mash Batman with Arkham Asylum for the PC.  While that game looked great and had a lot of atmosphere to offer, the combat was basically one button with the occasional counter button thrown in for spice.  Blackgate offers the same simple combat with terrible graphics.  Please don’t give me that “3DS has terrible graphics crap” either.  Take a look at RE: Revelations and tell me that the graphics suck.  This was a surprise letdown.  (Was more disappointed by the overly simple combat and platforming than the graphics.)

Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD:
I was on the fence about picking up Wind Waker again.  Wind Waker was one of the first Zelda games I beat to completion.  I was only able to do that because the game was just that good!  To this day The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker remains one of my favorites.

To that point, I’ve already destroyed this game.  Nostalgia came and kicked me in the face when I saw this and had it come out before Pax I may have picked it up with no questions asked.  What Pax did was bring me back to the very real fact that I may actually be done with this game.  I already own it on the Gamecube, do I really need a second copy?

I may pick this up later when it’s about $20 so that I can share the love with my kids.  Could they be happy with the Gamecube version?  Sure they could.  Would I be happier if I had the HD version when that time came?  You bet you booty I would.

This is an awesome game and they made it even more fantastic looking for the new HD TV’s.  If they would have added some more content to this game I would have picked it up, but as it stands, I’ll be buying it for less later down the road… or adding it to my Christmas list if I’m short of ideas.

The Repopulation:

Guns in a sandbox MMO, usually those two things together would more than grab my attention...
Guns in a sandbox MMO, usually those two things together would more than grab my attention…

The Repopulation is still is a great concept for an MMO.  There will be instanced PVP for those who don’t want the PVP everywhere servers.  They are still discussing doing either full or partial (inventory only) loot PVP because people asked for this.  They plan on having player build cities and for you to be able to siege them.  If you lose the siege, your house/store is saved in some form to be rebuilt elsewhere.  That’s nice of them.

The crafting will also take more than one person to do.  It’s something along the lines of while you can gather a lot of things, there will be somethings (probably mob drops) that will require more than one person to take down.  Soooo… just like a lot of other MMO’s.

Right now it’s shaping up to be a PVPMMO with an over the shoulder 3rd person point of view.  I know a few that are going to be jumping on this, but I probably won’t be joining them in the near future.  It’s not that it’s bad, but it’s got a bit of work before it’s release to get me to take the bait.

NICALiS (the company):
NICALiS

It’s not that NICALiS had any games to show that I was disappointed in.  What bums me out about these guys is that they canceled and didn’t show up at all.  I had some questions for them like “Where’s my 1001 Lives?”  It was such an awesome game that I really wanted to pick up.  I guess that means I’ll have to go and email them and hope they respond.  I’ll let you know how that goes…

As for Yatagarasu… this is now called Legend of Raven and here’s what they have to say about that:

“We are extremely excited to launch Legend of Raven on the PS Vita,” said Victor Rodriguez, CEO and Executive Producer, Nicalis, “ Originally announced for the Nintendo 3DS, we’ve since moved development over to PSN due to the incredibly overwhelming response from the fighting gaming community.”

Legend of Raven

They probably didn’t show up so I didn’t have to cry in front of them… I can appreciate that.  On the same note… are there seriously that many Vita owners that wanted this game so much?  If I’m lucky, I may be able to get this on the PC still…

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Directors Cut:

It really does look great, and the hacking on the GamePad is pretty sweet!
It really does look great, and the hacking on the GamePad is sweet!

This game looks gorgeous on the Wii U.  It really really does.  It suffers from that one single fatal flaw that I have with all FPS’s on consoles though. I have no mouse and keyboard.  Some of you that have played your FPS’s on consoles for years would not really understand the beauty that is the precision of a well built mouse.  Be that as it may, I would love to pick this up, but the amount of suck I displayed at Pax trying this game out was extremely off putting.

You can say that with practice comes perfect.  However, the fact of the mater is that I’d have to spend money on this first. Then I’d have to suck it up until I didn’t suck at it if that moment did in fact come.  I’ll probably put this on my Christmas list.  I’m willing to try to do it, but not with my own money.

These were the biggest letdowns for me from Pax this year.  While not all of them had to do with the actual games represented, I felt I needed to vent that not everything that sparkles at Pax is gold.  Sometimes it’s just some dude dressed as a My Little Pony and it’s best just to walk away.  Did any of you go to Pax or watch the live coverage? If so, what was your greatest letdown?

Jonathan Amarelo Sig

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