PAX 2010 - Day 1: Rock Band 3 details, Duke Nukem Forever now playable, Portal 2 co-op, Comic Jumper, Raskulls and Instant Jam

This year's Penny Arcade Expo is unbelievably huge, yet somehow seems much more organized than past years since it made the move to the Washington State Convention Center.

Still, stepping into the staggeringly large Exhibition Hall is an overwhelming experience. It now encompasses the main hall, the sky bridge and two additional rooms (including what used to be a cavernous Queue Room for the main theater, now relocated to Benaroya Hall). With so many booths, you'd think the lines overall would be shorter, but they're not discernably so except in small pockets.

For Day 1, we went straight from our breakfast tweetup to the Rock Band 3 panel by Harmonix (full audio; 56MB, NSFW due to explicit language). We recorded the session and will include highlights in our next Busy Gamer Podcast, but here's what we learned:

• Rock Band 3 has 62 achievements and 800+ goals. Among them is a new hardcore player achievement that's harder than Bladder of Steel in Rock Band 2: "Obssessive Compulsive: Hit every note in Rock Band 3." We believe that means 100% on all songs with all instruments in pro mode.
• The keyboard bundle will ship day and date with the standalone game. So there's no need to buy Rock Band 3 twice (as we did with Rock Band 2!) unless you're holding out for a full bundle with all of the new instruments, which isn't coming any time soon - if ever. If you want a full pro mode band setup, your best bet for now is to buy the keyboard bundle and add on the other instruments that you need individually.
• The Mustang guitar is pro mode capable with hundreds of buttons instead of strings. I tried it briefly and can tell it will take some geting used to. The Mustang will launch at or near the Rock Band 3 launch, though it's only offered separately (again, no bundles). The Squier Stratocaster controller with real strings will be priced in the range of a real guitar of the same name, probably a little more due to added expense to make it game capable. Don't count on it for the holidays; it might slip to 2011.
• Rock Band 3 will have Facebook and Twitter integration, linked via your RockBand.com community login.
• Rock Band Network songs will be fully integrated in Rock Band 3, both in the revised Store and in playlists. Not all Rock Band 2 tracks will be exportable for Rock Band 3. Details are due in the next few weeks on which songs and how much exporting them will cost. Old DLC can be updated for Rock Band 3's pro mode, and Harmonix is looking for community help in prioritizing the tracks to update from their 2000-song library. Visit RockBand.com to suggest what you'd like to see patched first.
• There will be no further The Beatles: Rock Band DLC in the foreseeable future. They don't have the licensing for any more songs. "Imagine" by John Lennon will be in Rock Band 3, but it's the only track that won't support Pro mode on guitar.

Other news and observations from PAX:

• Duke Nukem Forever is indeed being completed by Gearbox, makers of Borderlands. It's playable at the show; we're going to try it as soon as we can and see if doing so wipes away the stain left by so many unfulfilled promises!
• We saw a co-op demo of Portal 2. The game will be about double the content of the original for both single-player and co-op campaigns, and what we saw was extremely polished! If a player dies in co-op, it resets you to a point where you can easily pick back up without a lot of redoing of puzzle steps. There's a newly announced sky bridge, which you can extend and redirect with portals to reach new areas.
• Comic Jumper is a challenging platformer shooter for Xbox Live Arcade. Despite a high level of polish, I was still on the fence after playing it for several minutes. We're meeting with TwistedPixel tomorrow, so stay tuned for more impressions.
• Raskulls is a puzzle platfomer, also for Xbox Live Arcade, that looks both family friendly and engaging. It has these cool water pillars that let you swim to new vertical spaces. The challenges range from very easy to very hard, and you can play both co-op and competitive. No release date yet, but this is one to watch!
• The Web-based Instant Jam music game is made by the same people who brought you the InstantAction demo of The Secret of Monkey Island (which we shared in May and received positive feedback). This Rock Band-style rhythm game pulls songs from your personal music library to unlock playable note charts (hand charted, they say, with some 2200 songs in the database including Foo Fighters, Matchbox 20 and Metallica to name a few). You can even plug in a USB guitar if you don't like tapping the notes on your computer keyboard. I tried it, and it was fun. It's worth a look, especially considering the depth of features and the fact that it's free (unless you don't own a song, in which case they'll offer to sell it to you via Amazon or iTunes so you can license it for play both in the game and your personal music library). Currently in beta on Facebook, Instant Jam will be playable on our site once it's launched. We also expect to get playable demos of Braid, World of Goo and Penny Arcade Adventures in coming weeks.

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