PAX South 2019 is drawing nearer, and Sub Cultured will once again be there, keeping you up to date with the latest news from one of the south’s biggest gaming cons!
In 2004, the folks at Penny Arcade decided they wanted a show exclusively for gaming. Sure, comics, anime, and other nerd hobbies were cool, and those activities all had their own shows, so what about games? From that idea spawned a small 4,500 person event in Bellevue, Washington, focused on the culture and community that is gaming.
In lieue of a string of celebrity guests, the events at PAX conventions center around the gamers, with an exhibition hall full of publishers, developers, and table tops to be found at every turn of your head! Large booths include Sony, Bandai Namco, Discord, Mixer, Astro, and Tinybuild. While the large booths tend to dominate, the majority of the show floor is dedicated to representing smaller companies so be sure to support booths like Gunnar Optiks, Level 99 Games, and the PAX South Indie Showcase!
Beyond the huge expo hall full of games, tabletop, and console gaming rooms, there’s also a number of tournaments from console to PC, handhelds, and tabletop games. And of course there’s the PAX staples of the Omegathon, Penny Arcade Q&A, and Penny Arcade Make-A-Strip.
The panels this year also have a lot of really interesting topics. Notable events include, PAX 102: You’ve PAXed, But Maybe You Missed Some Things on Friday at 4PM in the Bobcat Theatre, Build Your Kingdom – Managing a Career in the Game Industry on Saturday at 2:30PM in the Cactus Theatre, and a quite a few panels to be found that put a larger focus on Dungeons and Dragons. You can print the full schedule of PAX South 2019’s programming here!
PAX South will be held Friday January 18th, 2019 – Sunday January 20th, 2019 and takes place at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, which is conveniently located in the heart of San Antonio, Texas! Tickets are still available online, so come soak up some of the panels and programming, and be sure to say hi! Follow us on Twitter @SubCultured for live updates from the show floor or keep an eye on our convention coverage! Anything in particular we didn’t mention? Come join in the conversation and let us know on our Discord channel!
Aquaman is the Embodiment of “Fine”
REVIEW | The Punisher Season 2
REVIEW | The Batman Who Laughs – #1
Sub Cultured is Heading to DakuCon 2018!
REVIEW | Spider-Man PS4
PaxSouth is a hub for intriguing and inventive games, and the first two video games from movie studio, Annapurna Pictures, are no exception.
Gorogoa
Gorogoa caught my eye firstly because of the art. It looked like a coloring book brought to life, like a dream you could wade through via computer. I spent a solid half hour diving into the story, figuring out some puzzles with lightning speed and stumbling through others while feeling judged by the character when I got stuck. That said, I can’t wait to get my hands on the entire game!
Designed, developed, and illustrated by Jason Roberts, Gorogoa is a completely unique game. The overall story is equal parts myth and magic as a boy sees a colossal monstrosity in his city and decides to unlock the secrets to finding it. Each gorgeous scene is split into four panels that you can explore through a simple point and click mechanic. Solving each puzzle reveals more of the story. Elegantly simple and perfect for fans enamored of lovely storytelling.
Gorogoa is scheduled to hit mobile devices and Steam in Spring 2017.
What Remains of Edith Finch
I adore morbid games, and when I saw that What Remains of Edith Finch ‘s premise revolves around about different characters dying, I immediately signed up to demo What Remains of Edith Finch.
What Remains of Edith Finch is a collection of short tales about a family in Washington state. As Edith, the player will explore the colossal Finch house, searching for stories. Each story you find lets you experience the life of a new family member on the day of their death, with stories ranging from the distant past to the present day, and culminating with that family member’s death.
In the 20 minute demo, we experienced the final moments of two different family members. The macabre interactive narrative is completely fresh in its storytelling and the attention to detail reminds the player that this title isn’t suited to the run-and-gun. I don’t want to spoil anything for those of you picking it up, but prepare yourself for some feelings. Oh, and remember to breathe.
What Remains of Edith Finch is due out Spring 2017 on Steam and PS4. Check back here, because this is the standout title that we absolutely cannot wait to get our grubby little hands on and review in depth!
Want more PAX South 2017 coverage? All you had to do was ask!
Prisma and The Masquerade Menace, Sundered, and RiME
Minit, Beat Cop, and Strikers Edge
Arms, Splatoon 2, and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Monster Boy, Warlock’s Tower, and Has-Been Heroes
Daku Con 2018 Photo Gallery
Daku Con 2018 Convention Recap!
PAX South 2019: Splitgate Arena Warfare, World of Horror, JackQuest, and Disjunction
PAX South 2019: Jump Force, Skellboy, A Fold Apart
PAX South 2019: Devil May Cry 5, Young Souls, Magequit
Nan Desu Kan 2018 Photo Gallery
Minit
Devolver Digital’s been on the forefront of publishing interesting indie titles and their latest is no exception.
Minit is about as minimalist as you can get — NES level fidelity, black and white colors, and chiptune sounds. In this game, you only have one minute to live and must complete tasks within that one minute before dying and respawning at your house. Any key items you collect in that time will stay with you, so you’re able to unlock more and more of the game each time, but you still only have one minute.
It’s an adventure puzzler — think Link’s Awakening — with a cool twist that’s definitely worth watching.
Coming to PC and “maybe consoles” mid 2017.
Beat Cop
Beat Cop is the story of Jack Kelly, a detective who has been disgraced and thus demoted to a beat cop.
The player will write parking tickets, catch petty thieves, and try to make the neighborhood a better place. Or you can take bribes, encourage dissent, and get rich off of the suffering of the community all while trying to find out who framed you for murder.
The gameplay is like a point and click adventure game, except the game is always running even if you aren’t. It’s totally possible to be called to be in two places at once and just have to make a judgement call on which is more important. It’s a really interesting game that’s part Papers, Please, part LA Noire.
Beat Cop is coming to PC this spring.
Strikers Edge
Striker’s Edge is a game with a simple concept — throw projectiles at your opponent until they die.
The system is reminiscent of Windjammers in that there’s two sides separated by a barrier and you have to use your reaction time, prediction, and special abilities to try and outplay your opponent. There’s not a tacked on story mode, no city building side quest minigames, just intense 1v1 or 2v2 action.
Striker’s Edge is coming to PS4 and PC in 2017.
Want more PAX South 2017 coverage? All you had to do was ask!
Monster Boy, Warlock’s Tower, and Has Been Heroes
Prisma and The Masquerade Menace, Sundered, and RiME
Arms, Splatoon 2, and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Aquaman is the Embodiment of “Fine”
REVIEW | The Punisher Season 2
Sub Cultured Heads to PAX South 2019!
REVIEW | The Batman Who Laughs – #1
Sub Cultured is Heading to DakuCon 2018!
Prisma & The Masquerade Menace
Prisma & The Masquerade Menace is in the early stages of development, so early in fact that it’s not even on Kickstarter yet. That didn’t stop the developer from having a fully playable level from the demo at PAX South.
It’s got some rough edges, but it’s already rather polished. At its core, it’s a platformer game in which you take control of Ray, a girl who can switch between different colored dimensions to make objects appear or disappear. Each of these dimensions also gives her abilities like high jumping, fast running, and block destroying. Once you get used to switching between dimensions, it becomes much more like a Sonic game in which you feel compelled to go as fast as possible, switching dimensions quickly and trying to think on your feet.
Prisma is still in its early stages, but give their Kickstarter a look when it goes live later this month!
Sundered
Sundered is a game that leaps out at you from a sea of titles at a gaming convention. It’s art style has a way of pulling you in, making you want more.
Sundered is a Metroidvania style platformer/exploration game in which you take control of Eshe, a wanderer exploring seemingly endless, always changing caverns filled with eldritch horrors. The controls solid and responsive and the game’s difficulty is a little more than Super Metroid (we died 3 times in the demo), making it feel like a substantial single player experience. Details like the hand drawn art and pencil marks when the camera is really zoomed in all combine to make this a visual feast that also delivers on a tight experience.
Sundered is coming out to PS4 and PC in July but you can Kickstart it right now here!
RiME
In RiME, you play a boy exploring a strange island trying to work your way to a pillar in its center. Along the way, you’ll solve puzzles, meet a super cute fox, and try to figure out the mysteries of your surroundings and what could have happened to make it the way it is now.
RiME feels a lot like Zelda mixed with Journey in the best possible way. The art style is stark and gorgeous, varying dramatically for different areas in the game. The world is all laid out in a way that’s easy to understand visually, which is a good thing since the game features no dialog or text, so you’re relying on just trying things out and being observant to solve puzzles.
RiME is due out summer 2017 on PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch.
Want more PAX South 2017 coverage? All you had to do was ask!
Monster Boy, Warlock’s Tower, and Has Been Heroes
Minit, Beat Cop, and Strikers Edge
Arms, Splatoon 2, and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
REVIEW | Salt and Sanctuary
PAX South 2019: Splitgate Arena Warfare, World of Horror, JackQuest, and Disjunction
PAX South 2019: Jump Force, Skellboy, A Fold Apart
REVIEW | Spider-Man PS4
Review | Re-Exploring No Man’s Sky Next
REVIEW | Downward Spiral: Horus Station
Arms
If you watched our live stream of the Nintendo Switch announcement, you will know that we did not have a kind word to say about Arms.
After having played the demo at PAX South, I may as well be Shrek – because now I’m a believer. For a game with such a strangely picked title and looking like the least fun game on Wii Sports, Arms has no business being as good as it is. The controls are responsive, the customizing of characters feels good, but isn’t overwhelming, and above all else, the game is really fun. I also have a feeling the developers knew it was kind of a goofy game. I mean, it’s called Arms and one of the characters is called Master Mummy. Someone is in on this joke.
The game is also surprisingly deep with strategy, given how much jumping, dashing, cancelling, and your special can really make or break a fight. Overall, it’s quite fun and actually gives you a bit of a work out if you’re competitive. The only downside is you need two pairs of Joycons to play it, and jeepers, those are expensive.
Arms will be out at launch for the Nintendo Switch on March 3rd.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7s3UB_8dFM
Splatoon 2
Did you like the first Splatoon? Good, because Splatoon 2 is just like that, but slightly better.
Remember when Left 4 Dead came out, then a year later Left 4 Dead 2 came out and it was almost identical, but had better stuff in it? That’s exactly what’s happening here. Splatoon is a great game that just didn’t reach a wide enough audience because the Wii U’s sales were so poor, so it’s actually a great idea to add some stuff to it and release a sequel on the Switch where the user base will be, presumably, much larger.
There’s not much different between the two games, other than the addition of the Splat Dualies, dual pistols that focus more on PvP than painting the ground. They give you the ability to dodge roll, which is pretty powerful especially if your opponent is using the gyroscope and having to contort their torso just to see you.
Splatoon 2 is out this Summer for Nintendo Switch.
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
It’s hard to say anything new about Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. That being said, videos don’t quite do it justice.
We’ve watched trailers and gameplay videos showing the opening scene of Link coming into the world for the first time. It was impressive seeing it the first few times, but actually experiencing it live, immersed by the sound, experiencing that transition into the cut scene is like the first time you realize Final Fantasy VII doesn’t just take place in Midgar. Seeing Death Mountain way in the distance and knowing you can go there is mind boggling.
The game isn’t without its faults — some button mapping could use some work and if we’re being nitpicky, the lines on the edges of textures can be a little jagged — but none of it even comes close to tainting the sense of adventure, freedom, and wonder felt from the first time you pick up the controller.
In the short demo, we only activated a tower, fought some bokoblins, and did part of the magnesis shrine, but the world felt alive. The concerns about it maybe being too open and sparse may still prove to be correct, but at the present, no Zelda game has given us this many goosebumps since Ocarina of Time.
You can play Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on either Nintendo Switch or Wii U March 3rd.
Want more PAX South 2017 coverage? All you had to do was ask!
Monster Boy, Warlock’s Tower, and Has Been Heroes
Prisma and The Masquerade Menace, Sundered, and RiME
Minit, Beat Cop, and Strikers Edge
Daku Con 2018 Photo Gallery
Daku Con 2018 Convention Recap!
PAX South 2019: Splitgate Arena Warfare, World of Horror, JackQuest, and Disjunction
PAX South 2019: Jump Force, Skellboy, A Fold Apart
PAX South 2019: Devil May Cry 5, Young Souls, Magequit
Nan Desu Kan 2018 Photo Gallery
PAX South attracts a number of small indie studios to showcase their wares. This year saw a number of really cool ideas from even cooler people.
Screencheat
You know when you were playing Goldeneye with your friends and two of them knew the drill — no screen looking. But then there’s that third guy who always claimed to be cheating, BUT HOW ARE YOU GOING TO PREFIRE IN A LOCAL MULTIPLAYER GAME, BRADLEY? WE ALL HEAR THE SAME NOISES, BRADLEY. YOU’RE FOOLING NOBODY.
This game is either a giant middle finger or pat on the back to all the Bradleys in the world. The game is a simple enough multiplayer death match with various weapons, but the catch is that everyone is invisible. You can only find out where your opponents are by looking at their screens to see what they see. There’s also other cues like gunsmoke or particle effects, but mainly, you’re just looking at everyone else’s screen.
The result is a frantic, sometimes confusing, always entertaining competition to see whose spacial reasoning is the best, or who has the most luck. The only flaw is its local multiplayer only status, since there are some of us who don’t go over to friends houses anymore because when we punched Bradley in the teeth for Klobbing us one too many times, we don’t get the invite anymore.
You can pick this game up right now on Steam.
Knight Squad
Ever wanted to play Bomberman capture the flag with 8 players?
Me too.
Now there’s Knight Shield! Up to 8 players are in a top down maze structure all struggling to get a chalice in the center of the map and bring it back to their spawn point. First to X amount of points wins. The map also has powerups like bow and arrow or drill about to make the game more interesting.
Inevitably you have a tangle of deaths and it somehow winds up near a little dweeb like me who just spawned, so I grab it and score a point pretty easily. Then I do this:
It’s great fun, especially with the max of 8 players. Luckily, you don’t need any real life friends to get that since this game has online multiplayer. It’s definitely more satisfying to do the laugh in real life though.
You can get it right now on Steam.
REalM Walk of Soul
The first thing you’ll notice about this game is how striking it is. It’s aesthetics are equal parts Tim Burton, Madoka, and the random scrawlings on the walls of horror games. In it, you take control of Iris who wakes up in a mysterious, bizarre world just begging to be figured out. You’ll solve puzzles, meet weird characters, and feel slightly unsettled the whole time.
The gameplay is kind of like an action/adventure game. It’s nothing revolutionary in that it’s a puzzle game and there’s really only so many puzzles one can put in a game. What is really interesting, though, is the world the game is set in. It’s not necessarily scary, but it is very offputting and unnerving, like a fever dream after watching Corpse Bride. It’s also not necessarily not NOT scary either — there’s definitely times in the trailer where I question whether or not I should play this in the dark. If the full game is anything like the demo, it should be a really interesting ride.
The game is coming out in the first half of 2016. You can find out more about it here.
Daku Con 2018 Photo Gallery
Daku Con 2018 Convention Recap!
PAX South 2019: Splitgate Arena Warfare, World of Horror, JackQuest, and Disjunction
PAX South 2019: Jump Force, Skellboy, A Fold Apart
PAX South 2019: Devil May Cry 5, Young Souls, Magequit
