In this week’s episode:

• Goodbye Geocities
• Andrew’s First thoughts on Uncharted 2
• Fan Made Halo Warthog – Operation Chastity
• Bill and Dave went to GameX
• Bill loves Global Agenda the Game

Download this Episode Here

Listen to it below

Here are the photos that we tried to upload during the weekend of the show. But as you read from Bill’s articles, the internet was non-existent due to a lame hotel and internet problems at the con. Also, there were hardly any cosplayers and/or booth babes to take photos of. Nonetheless, here they are. Enjoy them past the break.

Again, big thanks to the GameX staff for a kick ass event.

Cosplayers

 

Booth Babes

 

Around the Show Floor

 

Ah yes, the dreaded Day 3 of a good con.  Dread because it comes with an accompanying feeling of “Damn, I wish this wasn’t over so soon” as well as wondering if you should be there at all, because the last days of most cons are always notoriously lacking, for obvious reasons.  GameX did come with the feeling of wishing it wasn’t over so soon, but surprisingly, seemed to maintain about 90% of exhibitors and celebrities throughout the third and final day.  We left mid-way through the day only because of scheduling issues with getting back to Pittsburgh at a decent time.  Barring that, we would have, without a doubt, stayed the entire third day.

The addiction of the convention and clear winner of Game of the Show in my mind was not from the industry juggernauts of Ubisoft, EA or Sega.  No, the winner was Global Agenda from Hi-Rez Studios.  Global Agenda is addicting, promising, fun, pulse-pounding and seems to being crafted by people with a passion for the game they are making.  I’m going to give a detailed write-up on it very soon, so I’ll leave it at that for now.  Watch this game, it is going to be epic, mark my words.

I have two small complaints about GameX.  First was the floor plan.  The booths seemed a bit too tightly packed in the front of the hall, and too sparse in the artist area in the back.  I think they could have used that oddly unpacked space in between those to kind of spread things a little more evenly out.  But again, that is very minor I suppose, it didn’t detract from my experience in the slightest.  The other problem was a little more, well, problematic for us.  The internet was spotty at best Friday and Saturday, non-existant on Sunday.  I truly feel for Mythic and their WarHammer setup they had running, which depended fully on having a working internet connection.  Their game lagged Friday and Saturday, and their booth was literally dead weight Sunday.  No internet, no online game.  Poor guys.  Knowing a thing or two about that type of situation, however, I hesitate to blame GameX for the problems, as it likely had more to do with the convention’s actual infrastructure than anything GameX did or didn’t to.

BAWLS also had a major presence at GameX as well.  Their booth had way under priced BAWLS cases, singles, 4 packs and a new invention called SnoBAWLS (Which we named our Rock Band 2 team after!), a frozen slushie like verson of classic BAWLS.  Not to mention their contests and giveaways they had like the chugging contest.  BAWLS wins the gamer drink market, as far as I’m concerned.  G33K B33R is the last word in delicious.

My bottom line?  Not only one of the most fun cons I’ve ever attended, but I found out this was its first year.  Wow.  I’ve been to bigger cons that have run for much longer that didn’t run this smoothly.  I highly recommend that everyone with any sort of means to get there next year attend.  BRING COSPLAY! A big thank you to the staff, exhibitors, celebrities, industry people, attendees and our fellow press for making this an excellent weekend full of win and funnel cakes.

Day 2 of GameX, while starting an hour late for us due to an alarm clock failure, has proven to be just as fun and successful as Day 1.  More, actually, on both fronts.  I’ve never managed to have this much fun at a gaming convention before.  The staff is smart, hard working, friendly and willing to help with whatever anyone needs.  The exhibitors were, with one small exception I will mention later, top notch and full of win.  The floor? Packed today, people old and young, hardcore gamer and people new to the scene.

Let’s start with the booths, shall we?  There is a clear winner at GameX as far as booth quality.  EA’s Dante’s Inferno booth was sheer perfection, the pinnacle of what you would expect to see at a con of this size.  As you’ll see in our photo gallery it was a gothic looking both with obvious hellish themes, quality enough in and of itself, filled and covered with screens to play the game on, both inside and out.  The most notable feature, to me at least, was the life size, highly detailed Dante standing inside the booth.  The rest of  were noticeably less flashy than the EA setup, but none were in any way insufficient to deliver the content they were designed to.  My one complaint?  A severe lack of booth babes.  Now, I do not require them to be present to enjoy a booth in any way, but it just seems like some unspoken tradition to have at least a handful at each con.

Just like the book! Or not. Still badass.

The panels at GameX were all well though out and all of the ones I managed to attend were well executed and more informative than I could have hoped for.  The panel schedule was divided into “Left Brain” and “Right Brain”, each matching up to their content as expected.  The panels themselves were constantly changing, happening and flowing smoothly.  My personal favorite was the one about how next gen MMOGs can succeed without trying to follow in WoW’s footsteps.  Being my favorite genre, that has captured most of my attention since 1999, I was very happy with the content the three speakers put out for us, very insightful to the world of what a MMOG designer has to think about and go through.  Also, this panel sold me on Fallen Earth.  Cannot wait to get in that game!

GameX’s  theater area was not a huge draw for myself or Dave., so I cannot coment with much authority on this subject.  The schedule posted looked like solid content, ranging from a Clerks panel with Brian O’Halloran and Marilyn Ghigliotti and a panel about The Guild with the three attending cast members, to panels about how younger adults and kids about to enter college can break into the gaming industry.  I sat in on The Guild panel for a few moments as well as the Clerks Redux one.  Both were very well done, entertaining.

The worst failure at GameX was not on the con’s behalf, but on the fans, if it can be blamed on anyone really. The cosplay was damn near nonexistent, though the little that was there was generally of high quality.  There was so few cosplayers in fact that the cosplay contest had to be canceled due to lack of sign ups.  Lame, but I understand their reasoning.  Watching 4 people compete is a bit lackluster at best.  Next year people, you need to encourage all cosplayers to come! All other elements of GameX fell into place nicely, we just needed more shows on the cool costumes, is all.  But, I suppose it being this con’s first year played a part in the cosplayers not knowing much about it.  It can only get better.

We managed to get two really good interviews with a community manager and producer of Mythic’s WarHammer Online, as well as a producer from the very fun, very promising MMO Action Shooter Global Agenda, from Hi-Rez Studios.  Keep an eye out for those to appear here on the site in short order.  Day 2?  Complete and awesome!  Day 3, here we come!  Possibly.

The levels we got to play were limited to two, both under the title “Foreplay”. It was a series of linear, beautiful, large environments littered with over-sized weapons to use and even more over-sized ridiculous but cool enemies and bosses. The first level culminated with a boss battle with a rather gigantic gentlemen who looked like a demonic version of The King, from Burger King. After a few minutes of button mashing and over the twop use of the environment, the boss fight ends with Bayonetta’s hair demon-dragon-thing ripping through a building, and destroying The King. Impressive, laughable, but always fun. The second level was even more ambiguous story-wise, but it was a wall and ceiling walking fight with what appeared to be a teacher or rival of some sort. All in all, the game looks to be a keeper and it may even prompt me to but a new 360 just to play it.

Keep checking back for our GameX coverage.

Wandering the floor post press badges, we happened upon the amazing display set up for EA’s upcoming new title, Dante’s Inferno. Dante’s Inferno is loosely based on Dante Alighieri’s epic poem Divine Comedy. I say loosely, because having read the literature before, I do not remember double jumps, spine-scythes, giant boobed demon tossing women, Dante being a Templar, O-Button mashing or the other multitudes of over the top cheesy things I saw in this game. Granted, I only played one level, but I see one glaring problem already with Dante’s Inferno. It seems to take itself *very* seriously. Almost “We’re re-writing a classic” seriously. I don’t care for that. The game play itself is a direct rip-off of God of War, down the the exact basic combos and souls/orbs mechanic. Though, God of War was amazing, so while a rip-off, it makes for solid game play.

The level we got to play was “Lust”, as each level is based on a different layer of Hell. Lust was filled with disturbingly rendered – but beautifully as well – naked people, dismembered sex organs on the walls, constant vagina-shaped portals and phallic objects jutting out of every possible area. Visually disturbing at times, but very fitting for the setting, I will admit. After solving quite a few frustrating puzzles and slicing more naked demon chicks with tentacle vaginas than I care to remember, I found myself in a boss battle with a genre-typical GIANT sized sex-demon queen. I’ll leave specifics of the fight out, but suffice to say, one of her more annoying moves is her nipple opens up and spits out demon babies, which she promptly removes from her naked breast, causing a giant jiggle as she throws them down onto the platform you are on. Yes. You read that all right.

Keep checking back for our GameX coverage.

GameX, day 1 has been for the most part fun, organized and impressive. I would judge it on a peer basis with VGXpo (Useless piece of shit con, not worth the price of admission), but to be honest, from my first day here, it seems to be more on a peer with a PAX type event. Granted, it is a mini-peer of PAX, but the quality is here, do not doubt. There were a few minor organizational hiccups, not worth mentioning in specific really, but it seemed to be on the “Good” end of the disorganized spectrum. Meaning I just don’t think they expected this to be as large and popular as it has been. But, all in all, I cannot say enough about how much the con staff and volunteers have done an excellent job making this go so smoothly.

Before even receiving our press passes, Dave and I entered the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center and our nerdy gamer senses were immediately overloaded by the beautiful seemingly endless field of Alienware computers set up as the LAN center here. Row upon row of sleek, shiny black alien motif computers that somehow reminded me of Gandalf’s description of the death and heaven to Pippin in Return of the King. In the evening, we attempted to get a Team Fortress 2 LAN up and running, but as with everything beautiful, ugliness sometimes lies just beneath the surface. Ugliness in the form of cheap power strips that kept blowing out and shutting down entire rows of computers, mid flag cap! They said the issues would be fixed by tonight, so here is hoping for another night of TF2.

The rest of Day 1 consisted of us wandering the floor some more, getting autographs from Brian O’Halloran and cast members of The Guild and drinking BAWLS. Oh, we also formed a Rock Band 2 team called SnoBAWLS, in homage to the delicious frozen slushie treat the BAWLS folks have us all addicted to. We did terrible, but hell, it was fun. Saturday we’ll be taking a close look at a new MMOFPS called Global Agenda, some of the new changes going on in WarHammer Online as well as getting the low down on some hardware and peripherals floating around.

I heartily recommend that anyone in the Philly area or in close driving distance try to make it out Saturday and Sunday. GameX is the one of the most fun conventions I’ve ever attended, and the best on the East Coast without a doubt.

Keep checking back for our GameX coverage.

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Stargate, Clerks and JackAss cast appear on red carpet at Northeast game expo

Philadelphia, PA—Friday, October 16, 2009— GameX (Games & Media Expo) today announced their final line-up of Hollywood and pop culture celebrities set to appear on the red carpet in Oaks, PA next week October 23-25, 2009. Celebrity guests will be participating in media interviews, panels, screenings, autographing and photo sessions, and walking the red carpet at GameX.

GameX fans will meet film actors Marilyn Ghigliotti, known as “Veronica Loughran,” and Bill O’Halloran, recognized as “Dante Hicks,” who both notably launched their careers in the cult classic film Clerks, directed by auteur Kevin Smith. Ghigliotti has enjoyed her various character roles over the years, while O’Halloran has appeared in Chasing Amy, Dogma and Clerks II. Ghigliotti and O’Halloran will share the stage at GameX in a special Clerks panel session, scheduled for Saturday, October 24.

Read the rest of the press release which names more celebrities that will be at GameX after the break.

Another Hollywood veteran, Jsu Garcia, will appear at GameX, to the delight of horror fans everywhere. Garcia, an accomplished film and TV actor, got his start in Wes Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street. Garcia went on to act in features such as The Cotton Club, Wildcats, Day Of The Dead, Predator 2 and Oscar-winning Traffic. More recently, Garcia had roles in We Were Soldiers, Collateral Damage, Along Came Polly and The Lost City. While at GameX, Garcia will be screening his short film, Who Are You, on Friday, October 23, followed by a Q&A session.

Syfy regular and Vancouver native David Nykl, well known as “Dr. Zelenka” on Stargate Atlantis, will make a special appearance. Nykl’s character is a brilliant scientist and engineer, who traveled with the international expedition to the lost Ancient city of Atlantis in the Pegasus Galaxy. Nykl, a longtime film, TV and stage actor, will be participating in autographing and photo sessions with fans at GameX.

Web celebrities at GameX include cast from the critically-acclaimed award-winning web TV series, The Guid. Actors Sandeep Parikh, “Zaboo,” Robin Thorsen, “Clara” and Jeff Lewis, “Vork.” The Guild is a independent sitcom web series about a group of online gamers. The show started in the late summer of 2007, was financed solely by Paypal donations. Since then, The Guild has been distributed by Xbox Live and Microsoft and sponsored by Sprint. The Guild has won numerous awards: the SXSW, YouTube and Yahoo Web Series Awards in 2008, and 3 Streamy Awards in 2009.

Rake Yohn of MTV’s JackAss and Viva La Bam fame is joined by members of the CKY video series: King Arthur, London Lancelot, Gunner and the Asian Sensation. Rake and the CKY Crew are at it again with Game Casa, a brand new TV and web show dedicated to providing entertaining news, reviews and information about the video game industry. Cast members, known as “Casanians”, include Brandon DiCamillo and Rake Yohn from MTV’s Jackass, Viva La Bam and CKY. Other cast members include King Arthur, London Lancelot, The Asian Sensation and Gunner, who will also be at GameX, participating in a Q&A panel on Sunday, October 25.

From the games world, celebrity guest Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, video game review icon and creator of its groundbreaking online series, Zero Punctuation, will be at GameX to meet fans. Yahtzee, an Australia-based writer, video game designer and journalist, is well known amongst the video gaming community for his work in Zero Punctuation, a weekly online web video series reviewing the latest video games, starring a British-accented stick-figure. What began as two video reviews uploaded to YouTube by Yahtzee out of boredom, has since, following The Escapist’s acquisition and development of the series, become the most viewed video game review series on the web, acclaimed by both the industry and gamers.

“We’ve gathered a wonderfully eclectic, high-energy group of celebrity talent at GameX who are sure to be complete crowd-pleasers” said Fiona Cherbak, vice president of business development. “Our celebrity guests represent a broad cross-section of gaming, film and TV pop culture that is exceedingly relevant to our core audience.”

Presented by NBC Local Media in Philadelphia, GameX has quickly ramped up to be high-visibility entertainment, tech and media show with games as its main attraction. GameX features games-focused exhibits and demos from companies such as Electronic Arts (Dante’s Inferno and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning), SEGA (BAYONETTA) and Ubisoft, as well as pop culture elements such as advance film and TV screenings and trailers from Syfy and Lionsgate, celebrity guest appearances from TV, film and games, high stakes game tournaments, live video game music, robotics demonstrations, cosplay, video game comedy improv, animation festival, steampunk fair and competitive steampunk art exhibit, and much more.

About GameX
www.gamexpo.us/
GameX, the Games and Media Expo, is a national game consumer show and ‘pop culture’ festival produced by Virtual Rush Gaming in Philadelphia, designed to draw from local, regional and national audiences of game players, film and TV fans, comic book buffs and tech enthusiasts. GameX is supported by NBC Local Media with media and marketing, as well as participation from NBC Universal brand partners. GameX sponsors and partners include QVC, A-List Promotions, Arnold’s Family Fun Center, CD Baby, Creative Talent Network, Dave & Buster’s, Disc Makers, Entertainment Consumer Association, GameDev.net, Half Off Depot, Hoopla Marketing & Public Relations, Innovation Philadelphia, MAGFest, PR Newswire, PWNED.com, Steam Gear Lab, Weston Mason and 93.3 WMMR, with significant game media support from The Escapist.

About NBC Local Media Philadelphia
www.nbcphiladelphia.com/
NBC Local Media Philadelphia is an owned and operated entity of NBC Universal in the 4th largest television market in the country, comprised of a Television Station (WCAU NBC10), an Internet site (nbcphiladelphia.com), two Digital Channels (Universal Sports and NBC Plus), a Production Company (StudioTEN Creative Group), and out of home opportunities (The University Network and Fuelcast). NBC Local Media Philadelphia broadcasts to over 2.8 million households and reaches over 1 million uniques per month on their digital platforms.

NBC Local Media is comprised of ten NBC owned-and-operated television stations reaching 27% of US TV households; the NBC Everywhere operation focusing on the growing Out of Home digital market; LX.TV, a content production company that produces lifestyle and cultural programming; and Skycastle Entertainment, an award winning entertainment marketing and promotion company. Together, the NBC Local Media properties distribute NBC Universal content and produce local content for broadcast.

GameX here we come! It seems like only yesterday Bill and I were in Philadelphia covering vgXpo.  Now we are heading back for what is fixing to be a much brighter experience.  EA, Mythic, Sega, Alienware, Ubisoft, The Escapist, and so much more.   I can’t wait to get a peek at Dante’s Inferno.  And jebus cripes, Alienware is going to be setting up over 100 machines with some of the latest gaming titles so poor people like me can know what it feels like to game on one of their cherry computers.

If you haven’t already purchased tickets check out this contested hosted by GameX.  They are giving out 2 free weekend passes to GameX.  Thats right, 2 FREE WEEKEND PASSES TO GAMEX! You better hurry and register, the contest ends 10AM Tues.

Just follow the link below.

http://twitter.com/gamexpo/status/4819572853