pax-2009 posts

As we exclusively reported earlier today, the seventh edition of PAX Prime 2010 brought in 67,600 attendees to Seattle last weekend, making the fan-oriented games convention the largest of its type in the US. The first annual PAX East event last March in Boston brought in 52,290 attendees and next year will move to a much larger venue in the same city.

With two successful Penny Arcade Expos, is there room for a third PAX event? Gamasutra reports that the answer is, "Maybe." During a press Q&A with Penny Arcade co-creators Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins during PAX Prime 2010, the report says the team hinted that a third PAX event might happen and that it "would likely take place in a different country; preferably somewhere the duo want to visit." Might we suggest Bermuda?

It's not a secret that NCsoft has avoided having an official presence at E3 for the past few years and E3 2010 will be no exception. That means that they won't be showing off Guild Wars 2, the long awaited MMO from developer ArenaNet. In fact in ArenaNet's latest blog entry, its marketing head Chris Lye has called E3 an "anti-fan" event. He added, "As the marketing guy, if I'm going to spend a boatload of money on a booth, videos, props, etc., I want to be able to share it with the folks who'll geek-out on it the most – the fans!."

Which is why ArenaNet has chosen to give Gamescom 2010 in Cologne, Germany the honor of being the first public place to play a build of Guild Wars 2 when the consumer/trade event is held on August 19-22. In addition the game will be playable at PAX Prime in Seattle a couple of weeks later on September 3-5. And if you are lucky enough to be attending San Diego Comic-Con on July 22-25 you can still meet up with ArenaNet team members (although the game itself won't be there).

If you attended the 2009 edition of the Penny Arcade Expo earlier this month you might have gotten lucky enough to get a free copy of The Art of Guild Wars 2, a hardcover book with lots of concept artwork for the upcoming fantasy MMO game. Now NCsoft and the game's developer ArenaNet are selling the book to everybody else.

The 128 page book is now on sale at the official Guild Wars 2 web site (which takes you to the Penny Arcade Store site) for $30. There's also tons of lore info about the game's locations, characters, creatures and more in the book and will likely be the biggest source of info about the long awaited game for some time until ArenaNet reveals more info in 2010.

Looks like high-speed car chases and all out gun fights will be regular occurrences in All Points Bulletin (APB), an upcoming online action game where gangs battle against cops (and each other) for control of the city. Just try to remember where you parked your car. This trailer was shown at PAX 2009 and the game is expected to release sometime in the spring of 2010.

"APB is a new breed of online game. Set in a persistent living, breathing open-world urban environment where fame and fortune awaits all players. Some players will achieve this by feeding on the city, its people and its businesses...the Criminals. Some will live by a higher code and instead feed on the criminals and their organizations...the Enforcers. This dynamic where players become the core content for other players is one of the many unique features of APB. Its deep, rich customization system provides players with the ability to completely personalize their identity. Looks, clothing, vehicles and even music, all to astonishing detail and quality."

Download HD APB PAX 2009 Trailer (385 MB)
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One of the most important planets to be include in the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic is Coruscant, the planet that's one giant mega city and the capitol of the Republic. It is generally regarded in tge Star Wars universe as the most important planet in the galaxy, so it's very important for the developers at BioWare to properly capture its look at feel. This in-game footage, shown at PAX 2009, should put any doubts to rest.

Download HD Star Wars: The Old Republic 'Coruscant Revealed' Video (130 MB)
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Thanks in part to the H1N1 scare, it's taken a little longer than normal for organizers of the Penny Arcade Expo to tally up the final attendance numbers for the 2009 edition of the show that was held last week in Seattle. However, today Big Download can exclusively report that PAX 2009 officially had 60,750 people show up at the show this weekend.

That's only a slight increase from last year's number of 58,500 attendees but it's important to note that this year PAX 2009 had a limited amount of tickets to sell due to concerns of overcrowding and safety from the show's venue at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. All the previously alloted tickets were sold out a few days before the show opened. However, after the convention center saw how well PAX 2009 was handling the large crowds, they gave show organizers the thumbs up to sell a limited number of Saturday and Sunday day tickets, both of which quickly sold out.

In a quick phone chat today with Penny Arcade's Robert Khoo he told us that next year they hope to allow more people to attend the show due to some expansion plans that are taking shape around the convention center. And then there's PAX East, which is scheduled to be held in Boston in late March. Khoo told us it's still too early to say how many people will attend that event but that he's been surprised at the number of people who actually plan to come to both PAX shows in 2010.

It's not exactly a surprise to learn that at a three-day event where tens of thousands of people show up in relatively close quarters some people might come down with something. The official Twitter site for PAX 2009 has confirmed that a case of the H1N1 flu was discovered in one of the attendees at the show this past weekend.

In a brief phone chat with Big Download today, PAX organizer Robert Khoo stated that they wanted attendees to be informed of the confirmed H1N1 flu case which is why they sent out the info via their Twitter account. It's important to point out that while there is no current vaccine for the H1N1 flu it also doesn't appear to be any more dangerous than the common everyday flu. If you attended PAX you can find more info about H1N1, including common sense info on keeping healthy, at the Center for Disease Control web site.

This trailer for DeathSpank, an upcoming hack-and-slash action RPG developed by famed game designer Ron Gilbert (Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island), was shown at PAX 2009 and reveals quite a bit of gameplay. Complete with humor and plenty of monster stomping action, the upcoming episodic series is really living up to its "Monkey Island meets Diablo" description, especially with the final scene in the trailer.

There's currently no official release window, but we're hoping DeathSpank will come out some time in 2010. Also check out Big Download's DeathSpank impressions from PAX.

Download HD DeathSpank PAX 2009 Trailer (127 MB)
Check out all DeathSpank downloads

As we mentioned earlier, PAX 2009 was a big, big show. Yet another presentation we missed during the event was Ubisoft showing off more gameplay from this fall's Assassin's Creed 2. Thankfully our sister site Joystiq managed to cover the event this weekend.
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The demo showed some never-before-seen footage from the upcoming open world action game set in Middle Ages Italy. The new lead character of Ezio was shown picking pockets from stray folks and getting money so he can buy items and even mercenaries that can help him with some of the missions that he doesn't want to be personally involved with. Combat will have new features like using a human as a shield. Nasty but very cool. Finally the sequel will involve traveling under city streets for the first time. It's looking like the sequel could as good or better than the original. Assassin's Creed 2 is still due for release this fall.

It was short but sweet; that's how we would decribe our brief but hands-on demo with an Xbox 360 build of Mass Effect 2. You can't really go too deeply into gameplay for a huge sci-fi RPG ffrom BioWare with just a few minutes of gameplay but at least we got an idea of what the combat gameplay was like at our PAX 2009 demo this weekend.

The demo had us control Mass Effect 2's lead character, the human hero Commander Shepard, as he and two other members of his team storm a building in a vast super-city (think Corasaunt in the Star Wars movies) to get to an alien female baddie. The end result is that Shepard and his team end up with some help in the end; a new alien lizard like character who thinks nothing of sneaking up behind someone and breaking his or her neck.

Check out more info after the jump: