Two years ago today, I asked a special woman to spend the rest of her life with me. This is the story of it all. I've told it before to people who have asked, but never written it down.

It started more than five years ago. I worked in a laboratory in college, and so did she. Our desks were near each other, and in between experiments, we would help each other out with online crossword puzzles, mahjongg solitaire, and ShyGypsy's Funny Farm puzzle. She was cute, and I felt comfortable talking to her.

One day I invited her over to my apartment to hang out and play videogames. My roommates and I were cheap, and we lived in an old house in upstate New York, so we kept the thermostat at a chilly 50 degrees Fahrenheit. It wasn't the most welcoming environment, but I was able to use it as an excuse to snuggle up on the couch and play Clubhouse Games with my soon-to-be girlfriend. She seemed to enjoy it, and particularly liked my Nintendo DS.

I don't remember what exactly spurred her to get one of her own, but soon enough, she had a DS Lite, along with her own copy of Clubhouse Games and New York Times Crosswords. Meanwhile, I had taken her to see opera excerpts, taken her out to dinner for her birthday, and finally worked up the nerve to give her a kiss.


Image courtesy of Wispilia

Things went well for the next few months, but then we had to face an unfortunate truth: I was graduating and returning to the southwest; she was finished with her work and moving back to Mississippi. Our first summer apart was difficult, though we talked daily. I sent her a gift of a game I thought she may enjoy: Animal Crossing: Wild World. With each of us on our DSes, we were able to run around town together, catching fish, gifting items, and making hearts appear above our heads. It wasn't quite the same as snuggling together, but it was better than just talking on the phone.

We spent a year apart, though we saw each other about once a month. Sometimes she visited me, sometimes I visited her, and other times we both met in an entirely different location. Every time we met we talked about when we'd be together again. After that first year, she quit her job in Mississippi and moved out to California to join me.

Two years passed, and over that time, I played Animal Crossing less and less. As a hardcore gamer, I always wanted to play the latest releases, and I tried getting her into other games, but nothing ever really stuck. She was content to play Animal Crossing, visiting her town and digging up fossils on a daily basis.

It was then that I started planning how I would ask her to marry me. Being a gamer, I wanted it to be something I am passionate about, but I also wanted something she would remember. The decision was obvious: I would ask her through Animal Crossing. But I couldn't just do something small; it needed to be great.

My first idea was to bury letters, sending her on a scavenger hunt, finding each letter one by one, until the last one had the question. To my chagrin, I realized that it's impossible to bury letters, so that idea was mostly scrapped. I still wanted to do a scavenger hunt, but I had to be creative with it.

For weeks I bought red roses whenever I saw them on sale in Nookington's. They would be instrumental to the plan. I created an alternate character on my copy of Animal Crossing named Mysterio, who strangely looked a lot more like I do than my main character did. With Mysterio, I bought a bottle mail, filled it out, chucked it into the ocean, and then went to her town. While I was there, I wrote her a letter and left it with Pelly to deliver later. I had Mysterio return to my town, then go back to hers. I searched the beaches to find my bottle mail, then I got to work gardening, and posted a message on her bulletin board. Everything was set.

Oh yeah, I also bought a ring. Then everything was set.



At the time, I was working a job that let me stay up late and sleep in until noon, so we only occasionally fell asleep together. That night, after she went off to bed, I turned off the TV and followed her in. She still played every night, to the point that she has actually conditioned herself such that the 9 P.M. music causes her to fall asleep. She was facing away from me when she started playing, and I watched over her shoulder.

Immediately after she exited her house, she heard the whirr of a UFO and saw Gulliver flying overhead. She ran to try and catch him, but her aim was off and she missed her chance at knocking him out of the sky. Flustered, she saved her game and closed her DS Lite. My engagement plans were about to be ruined by an anthropomorphic seagull. "Hang on," I said, "I think you had mail to check," hoping I wasn't being completely obvious.

She seemed a little confused that I was interested in her reading her mail, but she opened her DS back up and restarted the game. She looked in her mailbox and saw a letter from Mysterio, telling her that something important had washed up on the shore of Dogtown. Intrigued, she set off south to the beach, and combed it, until she found an arrow of red roses pointing to the bottle mail. I had to cut down one of her coconut trees to plant that arrow. Inside the bottle mail, the message instructed her to go read the town's bulletin board.

She trekked back north, toward City Hall, where she found the following message on the bulletin board. Meanwhile, I had stealthily grabbed the ring from inside my nightstand and waited.



She rolled over with excitement in her eyes. Two years ago today, I asked a special woman to spend the rest of her life with me. She said yes.

Finally, a worthwhile WiiWare game that doesn't start with the word(s) "Bit.Trip." Liight debuted way back in September of 2009 as one of the PAX 10 finalists, and it seemed interesting enough for me to call it second best among the group. After not hearing about it for a year and a half, one couldn't be blamed for assuming it had been quietly killed.

Fortunately for puzzle fans, that isn't the case. Liight tasks players with lighting up several targets, using only red, green, and blue spotlights, along with additive color theory. With hundreds of built in levels and a level editor to create your own, Liight seems like a worthwhile purchase at 500 Wii Points ($5) for most puzzle fans. Liight is out now, but no demo is currently available. Anybody else plan on picking this up?

This is the header image, because it's okay to use misogynistic images to drive hits as long as you condemn the image. Bad image! Bad!

Game journalist journalist: n - And individual who writes (professionally?) about computer and videogame journalists, although may not adhere to a professional work ethic. May hypocritically condemn hyperbole while posting an article titled "Gamer Limit hates women," after reading an article written by one person. May criticize journalists for being unprofessional and offensive while posting an article with "Herp Derp" in the title. May start calling a person "Jeff," without fact checking whether the name is actually "Jeff." May not be particularly forthcoming about his own identity, in order to avoid any reprisal for his professional writing. May be incapable of recognizing blatantly obvious satire. May be unable to handle criticism. May claim that "gamers deserve better," which is absolutely true. See also: pompous hypocrite

Some guy of Game Journos a few days ago posted a rebuttal to a list of "Top Five Female Role Models," and by "rebuttal" he presumably means "I have no idea what the hell I'm writing about" or, at least, "I can't detect satire laid on as thick as molasses."

For those following along, "as thick as molasses" is a simile. I don't actually mean that satire share characteristics with the viscous syrup. This paragraph is necessary because unless the writer tells the reader precisely what he means when he writes something, there's no possible way to divine the actual intention.

(By the way, that last sentence was an example of sarcasm.)

But I digress. Let's take a look, shall we?

"Kyle tells us exactly how he feels about Aya - she's a piece of meat, and he gets an erection. Boy, what a role model!"

Wait, being a piece of meat and giving guys erections isn't the sign of a strong female role model. Why would the author say "what a role model!"? That doesn't make any sense! Wait a minute! Sarcasm? That's STRICTLY FORBIDDEN from professional writing.

"Wow. That first sentence aside, there is not a single part of that paragraph that doesn’t come across as misogynistic, demeaning, degrading, objectifying and offensive. Way to be, Kyle. Really, are you actively setting out to prove my claim that feminism is relevant to the industry and to game journalism? Because honestly, I don’t know whether to thank you or to stick a grenade up your sphincter and pull the pin."

It's true, there is not a single part of that paragraph that doesn't come across as misogynistic, demeaning, degrading, objectifying, and offensive. It's almost as if the author of the original article were trying to write something so extreme that it's not even fathomable for a reasonable person to believe that the author is genuine. Of course, Kyle didn't anticipate that writing something 100% ridiculous could be taken seriously by anybody.

"It’s just occurred to me that none of the female characters in their header image... are actually featured in the article. Well-rounded, fleshed out characters such as Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2, the Tetra incarnation of Princess Zelda as seen in The Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass, Jade from Beyond Good & Evil and Sarah Kerrigan as seen in StarCraft: Brood War are seemingly to be featured in this article, but aren’t mentioned anywhere at all. Not only is this misleading, but the omission of Alyx from a list that is supposedly about female role models is appalling."

Yet another red flag that should have tipped off anybody with an iota of reading comprehension, the "misleading" header image clearly lets (most) readers know that the characters in the header are actually strong female role models, and their absence from the text in the article illustrates that the women featured in the countdown are truly the opposite. So, rather than being "misleading," the header exists as even more evidence that the article is satire.

Kyle later issued a statement, spelling it out for the slow people in the audience. "If you didn't understand the article was satire, for that I am sorry." Others have pointed out that the statement "isn't an apology."

Damn right it isn't! He doesn't have to apologize to you, because he did nothing wrong. If I were required to issue a statement, I wouldn't have even been as accommodating. Mine would have gone something like, "I am sorry that you are actually so stupid that you couldn't recognize the article as satire."

And that's what it comes down to. If you got offended by Kyle's article, then you are one of two types of people. You either are scouring the Internet looking for reasons to be artificially offended, or you are just plain dumb. And I honestly couldn't tell you which is the better of the two.

I mentioned in my PAX blog that a post on the PAX 10 would be coming. Here it is. In its third year now, the PAX 10 is a tradition at the Penny Arcade Expo, in which ten independently developed games are showcased as some of the best examples of low budget videogame titles. They are typically released as downloadable games on a variety of platforms. However, not all of the PAX 10 games were created equally, and like I did last year, this countdown list intends to zero in on the indie games to look out for.


10. Plane Weaver
Platform: PC
Release date: available now
Price: free

Plane Weaver is a 3D puzzle-platformer developed by a team of students out of Denmark. As a result, the game is free to download from the link above. It details the journal of a girl named Silke who is trying to return her brother's soul from a race of machines who feed on human energy. She has the ability to assume three different forms: an agile human form that lets her run and jump, a massive demon form that allows her to push items and destroy machinery, and an ethereal soul form that can pass through certain objects, but restricts movement from player control to only being able to ride on steam jets.

The idea is an interesting one, but there are a couple of hangups in the control department. As a PC game, movement is controlled with the mouse, but with no means of camera control, some of the platform locations are difficult to judge. The checkpoints are relatively frequent, but there is still a pretty substantial amount of frustration involved in missing a jump and having to redo an entire difficult section. Another issue with control is that the three forms are mapped to the same button. Pressing the C key toggles between Silke's human and demon forms, and holding it puts her into soul form. The problem is that after holding C, the game interprets it as a long button press, so going into soul form from human form returns the player into demon form, and another quick button press is required to revert to human form.

Aside from the missteps with the controls, the game itself is impressive in that it was built from the ground up by a relatively small team in only a single month. It also pushes into relatively uncharted territory, as puzzle platformers are typically relegated to two dimensions, so many of the issues the game has are probably a result of being pioneers of sorts.


9. Hegemony: Philip of Macedon
Platform: PC
Release date: available now
Price: $29.99

Hegemony: Philip of Macedon is probably the one game in the PAX 10 that seemed most out of place. Despite being independently developed, it initially appears to be a big budget release, with impressive 3D graphics, and extremely deep real-time strategy gameplay. It follows the real historical events around Philip II of Macedon's life, and it covers the entire area of ancient Greece.

One cool bit in Hegemony is that the map has several levels of zoom, each with different representations of the occurrences in a particular area, and transition between the levels is smooth. The really interesting part of the game is that it is not focused entirely on combat, but puts an emphasis on managing supply lines; the player can cut an enemy's supply chain and starve out a defending force, or raze his own farms to avoid their capture.

The irony of the situation is that the real downfall of Hegemony in comparison to its peers among the PAX 10 finalists is that it is so deep and complex, that a significant amount of time would have to be spent with it to really get a feel for the game. Whereas other titles on this list could be picked up and played immediately, many seemed daunted by the sheer amount of information involved in this one.


8. Fowl Space
Platform: PC and Mac
Release date: holiday 2010
Price: unannounced

Fowl Space is a run 'n' gun shooter starring a spacefaring rooster. Developed by Pixelante, who have several free Flash-based games playable on their site, it began as a joke that the creators came up with in order to deal with boredom. It has a stark silhouetted art style, but its main selling point is in its juvenile humor and not-so-vague sexual innuendo.

For example, the protagonist, being a rooster astronaut, goes by the title of Astrocock, and he rides in a phallic rocket ship called the Thruster. His main weapon for fighting the lingerie-wearing Viking enemies is a caulking gun that fires out unspecified sticky white goo, and it requires time to recharge to full power.

Past the humor, there appeared to be very little to make Fowl Space stand out. The gameplay is pretty standard fare; navigate levels, jump from platform to platform, shoot enemies. It's solid, but it's not groundbreaking by any means. If Pixelante keeps up with its tradition of providing free online Flash games, then this may be worth checking out, but if the company decides to start charging, then only a person who has significant appreciation for low-brow humor should look into it.


7. Solace
Platform: PC
Release date: available now
Price: free

Solace joins Plane Weaver as the other student project among the PAX 10 finalists. It is a shmup with five levels, representing the five stages of grief. Along with the beautiful minimalistic visuals, audio plays a significant role in the game. Each shot fired contributes to the game's soundtrack, and depending on the level, it can encourage or deter the player.

Really, the element of Solace that makes it stand out from other shmups is that each of the different levels plays significantly differently from one another. In the Anger stage, enemies fill the screen and litter it with bullets, but pacifism is rewarded as enemy deaths spill even more bullets onto the stage. In the Depression stage, the player's shots are rendered useless, so he must focus more on dodging than attacking. Finally, in the Acceptance stage, the game turns the player into a total powerhouse, blanketing the entire playing field with bullets the way a boss in a shmup typically would.

The only negative point about Solace--and some may view this as a positive--is that it is very short in length. The entire game can be completed in about fifteen minutes, but for a free game developed by students, it tells a strong story of grief in those fifteen minutes.


6. Puzzle Bots
Platform: PC
Release date: available now
Price: $10

Puzzle Bots is a cute point and click adventure game, starring five tiny robots who go on adventures to help the engineers who created them. Each has a different ability and personality, and the player must switch between them in order to solve the environmental puzzles. It almost has a Lost Vikings vibe in that each character has a special ability, but it focuses more on puzzle solving than action.

One of the real treats in Puzzle Bots isn't in the gameplay, but rather in the presentation. The humor in it is great, ranging from silly puns to snarky one-liners, and it never seems particularly forced. Each robot does have a distinct personality, and the player can pick up on that after only a few minutes with them. An unfortunate byproduct of indie development does rear its head in the presentation, and it has to do with the lack of animation for the characters. It's an understandable omission, but it really gives the game an unpolished feel.

Another minor complaint is that while most of the puzzles are clever and intuitive, there are a few pixel hunting puzzles where the player may know what he has to do, but still has to find exactly where the developer wanted him to click in order to effect his plan. Still, even with these faults, the charm of Puzzle Bots really stood out among the PAX 10 finalists.


5. Altitude
Platform: PC
Release date: available now
Price: $10

Altitude is a 2D team-based flight combat game that is primarily played online. It has some relatively simple controls to pick up on, with buttons for turning, thrusting, primary and secondary weapons, and not much else. Despite the ease for a new player to begin playing immediately, it has such a huge breadth of game types that it could easily keep a gamer occupied for a period of time much longer than $10 normally would, provided that said gamer enjoys competition.

There is a healthy selection of different planes to choose from, though many of the choices result from having a particular body with different weapon loadouts. Still, there are at least five different bodies to choose from, ranging from the quick and nimble to the slow but heavily armored. Like many team-based games with different classes to play as, a strong team will have representatives from each class, and the members of the team should coordinate with each other in accordance to their strengths and weaknesses.

One of the most popular (and most fun) gametypes on display was the soccer mode. Much like real soccer, it involves getting a ball into the enemy team's goal. However, it plays out with much more action, given that the players are constantly blowing each other up, and since they are planes, everybody is constantly in motion. All in all, Altitude is a solid game, and it would be great for a PC gamer looking for something he can pick up, play for a bit, and put down for later.


4. Shibuya
Platform: iPhone and iPad
Release date: available now
Price: $1.99

Shibuya is a simple touch-based puzzle game that tasks the player with matching colored blocks in order to clear them from the field. It sounds like something that has been done a thousand times before, but strangely, it is set up in such a way that it makes the player think in a manner completely backwards from normal. It takes a few games to un-learn strategies from other puzzle games, but once it clicks, it becomes supremely addictive.

Unlike most other puzzle games that involve falling blocks, there is only a single lane into which the blocks can fall in Shibuya. The game provides information on the colors of the five upcoming blocks, and it is the player's job to arrange them in such a way that combos are formed and the playing field never fills up entirely.

Shibuya is by far the simplest of the PAX 10 finalists, taking a single game mechanic and running with it alone, but luckily, it is a solid mechanic that makes for a particularly addictive game. Achievements and Leaderboards are present, but only the most hardcore puzzle fans will ever finish all of the Achievements or post a score near the top of the Leaderboards. Even so, at only two dollars, Shibuya seems like a great value for something that could potentially provide hundreds of hours of time wasting gameplay.


3. Super Meat Boy
Platform: XBLA, WiiWare, PC
Release date: October 20th on XBLA, unannounced on other platforms
Price: $15

Super Meat Boy is a 2D precision platformer starring an anthropomorphic cube of meat, who is tasked with saving his girlfriend (an anthropomorphic cube of bandages) from an evil fetus in a jar. Meat Boy is a free online Flash game that gained popularity and inspired the creation of a bigger, more heavily featured downloadable release.

Super Meat Boy showed off the first three world at PAX, which included several warp zones that either transported Meat Boy back into a older, lower resolution console world, or allowed the player to use a character other than Meat Boy, taken from one of many other indie games. Gish, from the game of the same name, the ninja from N+, and Commander Video from the Bit.Trip series all make an appearance, each with his own special abilities.

Super Meat Boy was poised to take the number one spot in this countdown, and indeed it has won the title of Best in Show from Destructoid, but there were certain issues with the demo at PAX that keep it from top honors here. Some sort of lag between pressing buttons and having the actions show up on screen was present, and in a precision platformer, it's nearly gamebreaking. While it was likely an issue with the hardware present (as the Flash game controls perfectly), it was frustrating to fail a level at the fault of the game rather than the fault of the player. Still, with instant respawns and bite-sized levels, one could only be frustrated for a few moments before getting right back into it and trying to compensate for the lag.


2. Retro City Rampage
Platform: WiiWare
Release date: unannounced
Price: unannounced

Retro City Rampage is an open-world sandbox action game, with a graphical style that hearkens back to the 8-bit era. It follows the misadventures of a generic thug through a story so ridiculous it could only have been thought up during the 1980s, or in a game that so expertly lampoons the decade.

In addition to the graphics and gameplay ripped from the early days of gaming, Retro City Rampage is chock full of gaming and pop culture references. Within the first few minutes of the campaign, the player can spot not-so-subtle allusions to Mega Man, Duck Hunt, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the A-Team, Frogger, and several others. Retro City Rampage is the 1980s distilled, bottled, and then spilled all over the TV. Half of the fun comes in spotting references and feeling nostalgic for the old days.

The other half of the fun is in the solid arcade style gameplay, and sheer vastness of the game. More than simply having a large world map, the number of options given to the player is staggering. There are standard guns, a rocket launcher, a flamethrower, a bionic arm, and vehicles to use in order to maim enemies and random pedestrians, but if all else fails, the player can always just jump on people's heads to kill them. Retro City Rampage is pure fun, with a whacked out sense of humor and more variety than some current open-world games.


1. Bastion
Platform: consoles first, PC afterward
Release date: summer 2011
Price: unannounced

Bastion is an action-RPG starring a white-haired kid known only as "The Kid." It follows his journey to the Bastion, in order to rebuild the world that has been mysteriously torn asunder. The narrator specifically details that what precisely happened is muddled, with the line, "Proper story's supposed to start at the beginning. Ain't so simple with this one."

Speaking of the narrator, he plays a significant role in the game. He details what The Kid is doing, as the player is going through the actions. It gives Bastion a unique feel, as if it were a novel that has been brought to life with lush visuals and music.

As far as the visuals go, Bastion contains some of the most beautiful graphics ever seen in gaming. The environments are hand drawn and reminiscent of those seen in Vanillaware titles such as Odin Sphere or Muramasa: the Demon Blade. Elements of the world are constantly rebuilding themselves around The Kid, which puts an emphasis on exploration, as certain destinations are unclear until the player nears them. The Kid himself is cel-shaded, but done so well that it's initially difficult to differentiate his polygonal body from a set of well done sprites. It seems an exaggeration to say it, but Bastion may very well be the best looking videogame ever.

The gameplay itself is solid, with the player finding melee weapons, ranged weapons, and defensive items pretty early into the demo. Combat is smooth, and requires a bit more patience and skill than simple button mashing. The build shown at PAX hinted at more gameplay than combat and fetch quests, with a range of possibilities open for areas further into the game. More details are bound to emerge as Bastion's release nears, but there is unfortunately still about a year until the full game sees the light of day. Until then, all there is to do is wait.

So what do you think? Did you get to play the PAX 10 games? Is my ranking totally wrong? Do I just suck at platformers, which is why Super Meat Boy ended up in third? Sound off in the comments!

PAX Prime 2010 has come and gone, far too quickly, as usual. Everybody has slightly different memories of the extravaganza; indulge me for a moment to hear about mine.

I got in on Thursday evening, and called up Wedge, because I was staying in his hotel room the first night. I knew the Sixth Avenue Inn was on Sixth Avenue, but I didn't know if it was north or south of the convention center. Apparently Wedge didn't either, and he told me I had to go away from the convention center. I assumed I knew what that meant, and went off south. After walking about twelve blocks, I realized that if a person is at the convention center, literally every direction is "away" from the convention center. Oops.

After finding the Sixth Avenue Inn (PROTIP: It's north of the convention center), and dropping my stuff off, it was time to head to GameWorks. We had a pretty large group there, and I'm pretty sure we pissed off this one dude who just wanted to watch the Seahawks lose to the Raiders, because we kept standing in front of the TV. I got to glimpse the Brournal, which is every bit as ridiculous as you could hope.

On Friday morning, I woke up on my own before my alarm went off, because I was so excited for the day. I spent all of Friday at panels. bluexy and I started with the keynote, given by Warren Spector. He made a point that I have to consider from here on out: gaming is mainstream now, and we don't have to be ashamed of it in public any more.



After the keynote, bluexy left, but I stuck around for the Penny Arcade Q&A panel. As usual, those guys are funny, and it was a good time. After that, the Rooster Teeth guys had their panel, where they did Q&A, but more importantly, showed the last two episodes of the current Red vs. Blue season. The second to last one is effing amazing, and you can watch it now here.



After Rooster Teeth, I had to head back up the hill and get in line for LoadingReadyRun's panel. If you're not familiar, LoadingReadyRun is a sketch comedy troupe that puts out some pretty good stuff. The highlight of the panel was an advance showing of this week's Unskippable, which you should totally watch if you haven't already. After LoadingReadyRun, I was off to the GameTrailers panel, where we got to see an advance showing of the current Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin' episode, which you should totally watch if you haven't already.



After that, I ended up at the Friday night concerts. I had never heard any of the stuff by the Protomen before, and it is incredibly ridiculous. I'm not entirely sure how they relate to video game culture, aside from their name, but the lead singer has a really powerful and impressive voice. However, I was mainly there to see Anamanaguchi, so it was lucky that they were up next in the lineup. Unforunately, they suffered from a couple of technical issues, where the chiptunes were almost inaudible during the first song, and one of the monitors wasn't working later on, causing one of the guitarists a significant amount of stress. Still, it sounded fine to me, and I couldn't help but rock out to "Dawn Metropolis."

I took off after Anamanaguchi so I could meet up at the Elephant and Castle with the rest of the Dtoiders, and luckily I ran into Hamza on the way saying that the party had moved elsewhere due to staff douchebaggery, so we headed back to GameWorks. I was starving at this point, having not eaten since that morning before the keynote (roughly fifteen hours before), and I was devastated when I got to GameWorks just after the kitchen had closed. I could watch other people eat, but couldn't order anything myself. I tried to buy Samit's half-eaten sandwich from him, but he wouldn't let me for fear of spreading conSARS. Dejected, I decided to go back to the hotel to drop off my stuff, and find food elsewhere.

I texted Polo Guy, one of my temporary roommates to see if he wanted to head to the Whiskey Bar to meet up with some people, and he told me that they were eating at the Elephant & Castle. I had him order up the most delicious hamburger ever for me, but in hindsight, it probably only tasted so good because I was about to die from starvation. It was funny that we were back at the E&C with Hamza, since just an hour earlier he said, "Never go here again, these people are dicks to us." The tune changed when it turned out it was the only place still serving food that late into the night. Polo Guy is an awesome dude, by the way. he bought my hamburger for me, despite my offers to pay him back. I got him a beer at the Whiskey Bar later, but it didn't cover what he paid for me at the E&C.I didn't spend too much time at the Whiskey Bar on Friday. The Destructoid LIVE! panel was early the next day, so I wanted to make sure I could wake up the next morning. I got back to the room and into my sleeping bag at two in the morning. I woke up on Saturday at around eight on the floor with my legs propped up on the loveseat, ready to start off the day.

I got myself a burrito at the convention center, then headed up to the sixth floor to wait in line for Destructoid LIVE! I was the first in line, but the Enforcers kicked me back down to the fourth floor, saying that the sixth floor wouldn't be open until ten o'clock. When I was finally let back upstairs, I was still near the front of the line, but not first. While in line, throughout PAX, I canvassed for Dragon Quest IX travelers, and was able to upgrade my Quester's Rest to what I think is completion.



Destructoid LIVE! was just what you'd expect. Niero came on with the serious business stuff (N33T sounds pretty cool), and then Jim, Chad, and Jonathan brought the irreverence. The entire panel is going up soon, so keep an eye out for that. Everybody saw the Bit.Trip FATE reveal coming once Jim posted the obvious teaser, but it was cool nonetheless. And of course, it's always a pleasure to see Lost Crichton in tiny shorts; that he also devoured a sinner's sandwich was icing on the cake.

I will say though, to the guy who got up and asked, "When I come to Destructoid, should I leave my brain at the door?" Screw you, pal. Jonathan Holmes had a very graceful answer to the question, "You should bring your heart to the door," but if I were up there, I would have just said, "Eff off if you think you're so much better than us." If you can't find the intelligent discussion on Destructoid, then you're not looking, and if you can't stand the less-than-intelligent discussion that much, then get out. I'm all for promoting pertinent discourse, but there's a line you cross when you get up in front of a bunch of editors and hundreds of community members and insult us all right there.



After Destructoid LIVE!, I had what might have been my memory of PAX 2010. As lame as it sounds, it doesn't involve any unreleased game, but rather a game that has been out for nearly a year, that I play almost nightly. One of DJDuffy's PC gamer friends challenged us to settle a debate once and for all: who is more skilled, PC FPS players or console FPS players? So DJDuffy, Mid3vol, Kryptinite, Knivy, BigPopaGamer, Storytime, and I assembled our team and headed to the console freeplay area for some Modern Warfare 2. Due to unfortunate limitations, the best we could do was 2v2, but we played about five matches and won every single one of them.

"It's okay," we said to them, "You're going to school us on the PC." When we first started up the game in the PC freeplay area, it seemed that would be the case. However, we played their preferred gametype (Team Deathmatch) on the console, and played OUR preferred gametype (Domination) on the PC. So even though we kept hitting the wrong buttons (I could never find the melee button when I needed it), and most of us ended up with a negative kill/death spread, we finished the first game (Domination on Afghan) with just a few points ahead. The second game was Domination on Sub Base, and we really got more into the groove of it. Despite still being underskilled in terms of pure shooting, our teamwork got us through to a pretty commanding win.

At this point, we maybe started to feel bad that we were beating these PC gamers on their own platform, so we decided to play some Team Deathmatch on it. The PC gamers got their first win of the day, but their victories wouldn't last long. On the last match of five, on Favela, we started with a deficit. I still needed to get my bearings on how to effectively play without being quick with all of the buttons, so I took on the Overwatch class (default classes only) so I could shoot down UAVs. After awhile, we made up our deficit and took a pretty commanding lead. I managed to accumulate a 5-kill streak, and I tucked the Predator missile away for later. Near the end, I saw the scores at 47 to 30-something, and announced, "All right, let's end this." I called in my Predator missile, and once I saw the screen, a flurry of unusual trash talk came out of my mouth. "Oh man, here it is, triple kill, suck it!" Boom. Three kills with a Predator near the soccer field. I stood up and shouted out an uncharacteristic "Fuck yeah!" and high fived Storytime and Duffy. It was probably one of the greatest gaming achievements I have ever accomplished.

The PC gamer guys were pleasantly good sports about losing to a group of ragtag console gamers, but I'm pretty sure this settles the debate; console gamers are better than PC gamers, fact.



After the Modern Warfare 2 games, I made my way off to one of the more professionally important panels I've been to, about studying games academically. At my core, I am an academic, and it would be a dream for me to do scientific research on games. It was enlightening, for sure, and I will definitely follow up with some of the panelists soon. Fingers crossed that it will lead to something good in my future. After that panel, I was tasked with babysitting Storyr while he gallivanted with the robot helmet. We got some pictures with a Katamari cousin, headless Zero Suit Samus, and some completely lame Kinect action. It was good times, but when it was over, I really wanted to finally hit the show floor for myself and check out some games. Of course, I only had about an hour to do that, so I didn't get more than a few hands-off glimpses of the PAX 10 indie stuff.



When the show floor closed, I decided that I'd call up my first night roommates Wedge and bluexy for some board games. They brought everybody from the room, including GrumpyTurtle, to my surprise (I thought I was the only person who was nerdy enough to enjoy strategy board games but also like Call of Duty). We all played a game of Shadows Over Camelot, which is a fantastic cooperative board game based on the Knights of the Round Table, but it was unfortunately the least perilous instance of the game I have played. Not once throughout the game did I think we were going to lose, and we beat the game pretty handily 10 to 2. It probably has to do with the fact that I've gotten more experienced with it (everybody else was playing it for the first time), and we lucked into having no traitor among us. I apologized that the game wasn't as fun as it usually is, but my fellow knights seemed to enjoy it just fine.



Once we packed up and turned in Shadows Over Camelot, I figured it was time for me to hit up the meetup at the Chapel. At this point, my phone was dying, so I was avoiding talking on it, but rather just texting people for directions. For the second time this trip, I was given poor directions (Polo Guy meant turn right but he said turn left), and I ended up going about three miles out of the way in total. After some lifesaving help from J-Ro, I got there, and got to enjoy some of the most delicious-yet-strong beverages I've had.

The venue itself was kind of a bust in my mind, because I'm not really into music so loud that you can't talk to each other, or bartenders so busy that it takes twenty minutes to get a drink, or transsexuals. Still, there were other Dtoiders there, and there was plenty of drunk to go around, so it wasn't all bad. I spent the majority of my night outside, as far from the oontz as possible, chatting it up with one of my former citymates, Zero Atma. When it was time to leave the Chapel, I was instructed on just how easy it was to get there, and I cursed my lack of a smart phone.



Back in the hotel room, Stella, Mikey, and Trevkor just stayed up chatting about random things while sobering up. It sounds like a minor event, and I don't even remember anything in particular, but after an exhausting day, it was just what I needed to get geared up for Sunday.

I was woken up on Sunday morning at around eight by Polo Guy coming back to the room finally (that man can party). I got myself all cleaned up for the day, and set out to enjoy the final day of PAX. The only panel I had on my schedule was for Gearbox, but I wrote that down when I was expecting something about the future of the Borderlands franchise, and after hearing the buzz on Friday, I was pretty sure it'd be all about Duke Nukem Forever, a game that I care nothing about.

So I started the day off completing my PAX XP quests. It was a neat little thing they put together for people new to PAX to get a feel for the layout, but it was still helpful for me now that there were so many areas offsite from the actual convention center. I also sort of did it just out of curiosity; the loot promised was a "PAX XP Zipper Pull," and I had no idea what that was. So I went around the convention center, performing random tasks (like rolling a 20-sided die or escaping from a Sumo bean bag) and gaining XP for it. It turns out that a zipper pull is a little button with a clip on it so it can attach to zippers. I was a little disappointed, but hey, free stuff, right? I clipped it on my hoodie and made my way to the show floor.



Almost all of my time on Sunday was spent at the PAX 10 booth, but my experience with those games will be saved for a future blog, so keep an eye here in case you're interested in cool indie games. Other than those, I also played some Monaco, and I watched several rounds of SpyParty. Monaco seemed very interesting, but I think I would have to have a set group of people with specific types of personalities to really enjoy it. As a cooperative game, it was really frantic when played on the PAX show floor, but I would have much preferred a slower paced, more methodical approach to the game. From what I could tell, the game is completely playable that way, but it requires the players to want to do it. I can't say much about SpyParty that hasn't already been said by people who have actually played it, but suffice it to say that I've always been really interested in asymmetric multiplayer, and Spy Party really looks like an interesting take on stealth and subterfuge.

Another indie game I played was the much-buzzed-about Slam Bolt Scrappers. I only got one game with it, and it was against more experienced players, so I might be wrong about it, but it just didn't click with me. When I wanted to play it like a thoughtful puzzle game, Alex Barbatsis would come over to my side of the screen and kick the crap out of me, and when I switched to playing it like a fighter, my tower got destroyed. It was altogether too frantic for me; I couldn't tell what was going on a lot of the time, and I couldn't place pieces where I wanted to with the speed an precision I would have liked. Perhaps it just takes some getting used to, but it's certainly not a game that I could immediately pick up and play.

Outside of the indie area, I spent a bit of time in the Nintendo booth. I watched somebody else play a cool looking platformer called Fluidity. It looks like a cross between LocoRoco and PixelJunk Shooter,
in that movement is controlled by tilting the world from side to side, but what the player is moving is an ever-growing mass of liquid. It looks cool, and I wish I could have tried it out. But alas, I spent my time at the Nintendo booth standing in line to play Kirby's Epic Yarn.



Let me just say that Kirby's Epic Yarn looks beautiful. It might be the best looking Wii game I've ever seen, and if I hadn't known any better, I would have said it was running at 720p. Of course, it's on the Wii, so it's doing 480p at best, but you wouldn't know it by looking at it. Secondly, I don't think the smile left my face during the entire demo. I played cooperatively with LK4O4, and while he was collecting gems and other knickknacks, I just kept double tapping left or right so Kirby would turn into a car and drive around. Also, when one of the characters swims in the water, he turns into a submarine, complete with propeller and periscope. It's not a very difficult game, but it is by far one of the cutest games I've seen.



The last thing I did at PAX proper was to attend the final round of the Omegathon. Not many Dtoiders care about going to it, but I always enjoy it for two reasons. One, it is sort of like the PAX closing ceremony, and two, there is nowhere else in the world that you will be in a room with thousands of other like-minded individuals, cheering on two guys playing the claw-grabber crane game. Of course, the game changes every year, but this year we were treated to the Omegaclaw. Watch the video above, and tell me you wouldn't like to have been there to see that.

After PAX, I met up with Polo Guy (have I mentioned how cool he is?) to get some Thai food at one of my favorite restaurants in Seattle, but it was closed, so we ended up just walking aimlessly until we found something. We smelled something good, and popped into a slightly overpriced Japanese place, only to see Tactix and company. We sat down and had some delicious katsu curry, before heading out to the final Destructoid meetup at Rock Bottom.



I was impressed when we got to the Rock Bottom; we actually had an entire huge section cordoned off just for us. And doubly surprising, there were several people there on time. I mostly stayed in my booth, but I got to talk to the ridiculous Jon Carnage, and I spent time with the talented and insightful Sean Carey. Also, I ate some bacon brownies, which were probably the best idea somebody has ever had. Afterward, I was awarded with a coveted Destructoid bobblehead, just for volunteering to chaperone Storyr with the helmet, something I had done simply to be helpful.



Unfortunately, I had to turn in early, so I left long before all of the shenanigans were over. I got back to the room and got a good five hours of sleep before waking up to catch a cab with Knives up to the airport. My last memory of PAX 2010 was drinking a Frosty milkshake with my Mexican friend before hopping on a plane and sleeping forever. Looking back at this blog, I really did quite a bit, and still, I wish I had more time to spend with you all. This was the best weekend of the year. PAX is better than the last day of school. PAX is better than Christmas. And so long as my finances allow it, I will see you people at PAX every year from now on until I get too old to fly my ass up there. I miss you guys already, and I'm looking forward to PAX 2011!

With little fanfare, Aero Racer was released last week as a PS3 Mini. Indeed, so little effort is being put into marketing this bite-sized gem that developer Halfbrick Studios makes no mention of it on its website. This may have to do with its status as a free downloadable for PlayStation Plus members, however for the rest of us, the going price is a paltry $2.99.

The idea behind PlayStation Minis is a noble one: offer small, simple titles at budget prices. Aero Racer takes that idea and runs with it. On its surface, it's a simple racing game, with one button for thrust, two directions to turn, and not much else. Despite its initial appearance of simplicity, Aero Racer ramps up in challenge pretty quickly. A lot can be said about making a compelling, deep game with controls that could have worked on the NES.

The racers drift a substantial amount, which is frustrating at first, until the player gets to understand why. The main conceit behind Aero Racer is that while thrusting against open air can get you where you want to go, thrusting against a wall will get you there faster. The introduces the idea of "grinding," where racers want to get as close to walls as possible, without hitting them.

It introduces an interesting risk/reward scenario, where skilled racers can speed around corners, assuming they can keep their vehicles right on the edge of disaster. Aero Racer capitalizes on this idea with tracks that have multiple paths; yet unlike any other racing game before it, the shortest route is typically not the fastest.

In addition to its minimalistic control scheme, the game also has an old school feel in terms of difficulty. It starts off easily enough, with tutorial levels allowing the player to get a feel for the floaty racers, but pretty quickly ramps up to asking the player to achieve a certain number of grind points and complete the track in a particular amount of time, which can be extremely taxing. However, many of the tracks last only ten to fifteen seconds each, so retrying one multiple times to get a perfect run isn't unreasonable.

Still, it takes a particular kind of person to enjoy a game like Aero Racer. It's fast, it's exhilarating, but more than anything else, it is challenging. If you miss the days of twitch action that requires precise player input for success, then you'll probably love it. If you prefer your downloadable games to be relaxing, mindless fun, you may want to look elsewhere.