Have you ever played a game and you become aware of the widening smile that is on your face? I have had that experience today. Today, the 15th of September I picked up Scribblenauts after hearing positive buzz online. I have never in my resent memory seen a game so creative. The point of the game is that you play the role of Maxwell and you have to come up with ways to reach these star items simply called "Starite's". Say there is a Starite in a tree you can write "saw" and a saw drops into the game world . Cut the tree down and take the Starite. You can also burn the tree down, use a lasso, use a ladder, use a ufo, shoot the star down with a shotgun, write a tornado into the game world, this game has infinite options to play this game. Now add that replay ability with over 200 puzzle and action levels and you have one of the biggest, longest games ever to grace the Nintendo DS.
From a game just released to a few games shown at PAX, the first, DeathSpank is the product of Secret of Monkey Island designer Ron Gilbert. Gilbert bills this game as Monkey Island meets Diablo. Now hearing this made me squeal like my wife at a New Kids on the Block concert. When I think of Monkey Island, I think of awesome dialog that is funny. I think of memorable characters. I think of beautiful music. Not the pinnacle of adventure games but an awesome offering nonetheless. Now cross that with Diablo which has a dark action packed story, with sweet loot rewards for killing monsters, designed with a stress free game mechanic, and you have the makings of something special. Diablo and its sequel are the Pinnacle of action RPG's to this day. Hopefully in spring 2010 we will have this game to try out.
The next game dosen't have a publisher or a system to release on but spank is coming along nicely. Not much is known about this one but the hand drawn art style, Prince of Persia style platforming, and combat that is one part Double Dragon and one part Castlevania. I'm sure I'll talk about this one as more info becomes available.
The final piece of the PAX experience was one that I didn't expect to see. A game created by what I think is only a one man design house. He entered his game Dust: An Elysian Tail into Microsoft's Dream.Build.Play competition and won. I am assuming he is using Microsoft's XNA software suite and that now that he has won this game should be published on XBOX Live. Words cant describe how beautiful it is so here is the trailer and trailers to the other games i mentioned.
Dust: Long live the Furries!
Shank
Deathspank
Scribblenauts
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