I just got back from the exceptionally long train ride and the sweet, sweet comfort of my own bed, so while I work on compiling a PAX In Photos recap (there are a couple hundred pictures over two cameras to sort and upload) let’s start with the bad news:

I’m not pronouncing PAX dead quite yet, but it’s not easy to stop myself.

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Last time I played Fallout 3 I played with no particular goal, simply trying to experience the game as if I just bought it and started a game. And I loved it. But I also fired a total of about four shots

This time when I got to Bethesda’s awesome retro trailer for another hour of game time I went in with a plan: Violence. I wanted to run up a body count. So I was directed to an elementary school swarming with raiders to dispense some indiscriminate justice and get a feel for the combat system.

First thing I noticed is that there are two combat systems. While you’re free to shoot raiders, robots and giant fire-breathing ants freestyle like an FPS, there’s also something called the VAT system.

The traditional FPS style speaks for itself so I’ll jump right to VAT. What it boils down to is a more tactical, less twitch combat system for Elder Scrolls fans and old-school Fallout fans who don’t really want a shooter. You hit the right bumper to freeze the action and zoom in on your target. From there you can highlight different body parts, for example on a human you got head, torso, left and right arm and left and right leg. Listed over each is your percentage chance of hitting that body part. You select where you want your shots to go, as few or as many as you have the action points for, then watch what happens.

I expected that what amounts to a cutscene would take you out of the action but it really doesn’t, not any more than watching your attack in a turn-based RPG. It’s exciting and cinematic. For example on critical hits the camera follows the bullet to its destination in slow motion so you can see the arm or head come flying off.

The best part is that you can also target weapons. For example I shot the gun out of one raider’s hand, which prompted her to run away, grab a tire iron and come charging back…which was like bringing a tire iron to a gunfight but it’s the thought that counts. My favorite moment was when I shot the grenade on a raider’s belt. It was a low percentage target but was totally worth it - there weren’t any pieces of him left that were big enough to loot.

I already gave a glowing preview of the RPG, exploration and story elements, and now I’m pairing it with a glowing preview of the action. If it was just a shooter, if it was Halo 4 rather than Fallout 3, it would still be a hit title. I’m up to 90 total minutes of play time and I’ve yet to find an element of the game that wasn’t deep to an almost obsessive degree.

Unless Bethesda has the greatest PR team of all time and has been successfully burying some massive flaw I’m not sure I can see a circumstance in which this doesn’t win Game of the Year, even over Spore and The Force Unleashed.

In short you should be excited about this game. I know I am.

Well on the rails I guess, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it.

It’s time to bid adieu to teen idol Wil Wheaton (pictured above), PAX is done. As you read this I’m hopefully getting on a train and heading home. Unless the train is late, then I’m at the train station shaking my fist at the empty rails, getting stared at and possibly running from security.

I have a few more things to write up including a preview of Fallout 3’s combat and a sizable rant about why PAX is on the road to ruin, but they aren’t done yet because I spent so much time in line, which is the major reason PAX is on the road to ruin. I’ll try to write them on the train and put them up on arrival in 21-27 hours. Failing that I’ll write them when I wake up, since I woke up around 7:30 this morning and won’t get any real sleep for 21-27 hours.

Wish me luck. More to follow eventually. Hopefully. If I’m lucky.

Iron Chef America Supreme Cuisine for the Wii is easily the game of the show. Fallout 3, Starcraft II, Spore, they all pale in comparison to the Iron Chef game.

Ok, so maybe I’m stretching it a little. But I played it expecting the worst and had a surprisingly good time.

It’s basically just a collection of cooking-themed minigames. A quick sequence of chop, grill, mix, boil, and so on, at a quick Warioware Smooth Moves pace. Player 1 does it, then Player 2, then Player 1 does the next one, and so on and so forth until you get to plating. Then you’re scored on the standard Iron Chef criteria and one of the players wins.

I’m not sure how fast it’s going to get old but it blew most of the other minigame collections out of the water on first play. It’s going on the list of games I’m looking forward to.

(First rule of journalism, always lead with a math joke.)

I was a little wary of Left 4 Dead. Sure it’s a zombie game, but it uses the numeral ‘4′ instead of the word ‘for’ which made me wonder if it’s a game about zombie text messaging (”omg u go 2 mall 4 brains?”).

However, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover and you shouldn’t judge a game by its name. Left 4 Dead is a lot of brutal, run-and-gun, zombie-blasting fun.

I got my hands on it for a game of four-player co-op multiplayer. The goal is to shoot your way through an abandoned city overrun by zombies (fast zombies, for connoisseurs of the genre) to get from one safe house to the next. Seems straightforward enough, except that you really do need the other players.

The zombies come in massive Serious Sam scale waves and they swarm to weakness. Take it from me, if you get separated from the group you won’t last very long. Then if you’re overrun, pinned to the ground or knocked out expect every zombie to be there surprisingly quickly and hope your teammates are nearby to open fire. Then you need a teammate to help you up off the ground or revive you before the next wave shows up.

Additionally, the different weapons available at the beginning of each stage let people coordinate and pic roles. One person can take a shotgun and lead the charge, another take a sniper rifle and hang back to save people, another can take an assault rifle and provide cover fire. It doesn’t require coordination but it’s entirely possible.

And the potential best part? There will be a versus mode where two sides switch off between controlling the survivors and the zombies. But, sadly, it wasn’t done yet so I didn’t get a chance to play. We’ll get a chance to try that out when the game is released this November.

One of the few games playable at PAX that I didn’t get a chance to see at E3 is a big one: Starcraft II. I was a big fan of Starcraft so I was anxious to see if they’d left the gameplay more or less alone, or if they’d tried to fix something that wasn’t broken like they did with Warcraft 3.

The good news is that it’s still Starcraft but with drastically, exponentially improved graphics. The bad news is that there’s not a whole lot to report, it’s basically Starcraft with really great graphics. From the 10-15 minutes I had with it I didn’t notice a whole lot of changes.

That’s not to say it’s the exact same game, it just keeps the fundamental formula the same. Think of the difference between The Sims and The Sims 2. New units, new environments, same core gameplay. And considering that there haven’t been a lot of games with Starcraft’s staying power that’s a very good thing. It should keep the hardcore fans happy and hook any new ones who missed it the first time around.

Unless you’re trying to write about it. Then it just makes for a boring post.

So far all my PAX posts have featured the people, the culture and the lines, and none have featured an actual game.

This is why I didn’t really want to have a fixed schedule. What I was talking about when I said it’s not a media event. PAX is about the people, the culture and the lines. The games are there but the focus is more on the community and having fun. The expo hall is the sideshow, a cool diversion between tournaments and panels. And lines.

That said, there are games there.

I’m heading down now to wait in line to try out some of the games seen below. If I’m not back by tomorrow assume the line won.

(Slideshow)

(Gallery)

I just got back from a concert headlined by the one and only, the man, the myth, the legend, your hero and mine, international rock superstar Mr. Jonathan Coulton.

The man puts on quite possibly the best show. At all. I know that’s saying a lot, people think of him as a novelty act, but I can’t say enough about the man in concert. Rumor has it he’ll be playing San Francisco soon and if you all don’t go see him I just don’t know, I’ll have lost a lot of faith in you. You’ll have let me down.

Anyway, in previous posts where my man-love for Coulton shone through I got some negative feedback about the, let’s say, excess of the references. If you’re one of those people I apologize for this, feel free to ignore it and move on.

The video game news presented in the concert is as follows:

• Jonathan Coulton’s Skullcrusher Mountain will be DLC in either Rock Band or Rock Band 2 at some point in the future.

And that’s it. Unnecessary fawning over the concert follows.

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That picture is half the line to get in to the main theater and expo hall.

One half of the line.

The line to get into the expo hall took two hours. Then of course once I was in the expo everything was too packed to do anything except look over the crowd and see the signs. And that was the success story.

After a full ninety minutes waiting in line to see the keynote they closed the door with at least 250 people still waiting, myself included. They didn’t bother to tell us before making us wait. And they aren’t clearing out the room between panels and events, so if you want to see the Gabe and Tycho or Red vs. Blue panels after the keynote you have to wait in the Line Room until enough people leave voluntarily.

I love PAX. I love the expo, the concerts and many of the people. I just don’t understand the logic behind a line with a higher capacity than the event the line is for, and I certainly don’t understand letting people wait for nothing. Hopefully they rework the logistics before next year, or if I’m lucky before tomorrow.

If you were thinking of coming to Seattle this weekend you’re out of luck. Seattle is pretty much full. There are four events in the city this weekend drawing a sizable crowd, the streets are packed shoulder to shoulder with an odd mix of geeks, hipsters, hippies and two sets of jocks. The Pike Place Market is standing room only. Hotels are booked solid. And from what I’ve heard it’s only going to get worse.

Another note: The expo hall opens up to the public at 2 p.m. but the line to get in started at 8 a.m. One recurring theme from PAX is lines. Long, long lines to get into the event, to get into panels, concerts, the expo hall and everything else. People even line up for things with no wait just out of habit. By Sunday people form a single-file line to cross the street. It’s like Disneyland but with people dressed as a different set of characters. And yes, I’ll get pictures of the best cosplayers.

It’s all going to make for an interesting time.