PAX 2010 - Day 2: Rock Band 3, Tron, Move, LittleBigPlanet 2, Epic Mickey, Reach, Lego Universe, Puzzle Agent and Ratchet & Clank

We made it through Day 1 of PAX Prime 2010 relatively unscathed but Day 2 was packed with interviews, games, panels, and more interviews! We'll sift through the audio and share the best bits in our Busy Gamer Podcast over the next few weeks. For now, here are the highlights:

• Rock Band 3. We stupidly skipped right past the 2K Games booth where Duke Nukem Forever was enclosed in a private viewing space to try out the new Rock Band title shipping in late October. At past shows, the Harmonix booth was a major highlight of our visit - but not this year. They weren't even ready when we arrived, so we spent 10 precious minutes waiting for things to be plugged in and the staff to play through a track to test things out. GrrlGotGame was so annoyed that she left to try Fallout: New Vegas (already a must-buy for us), never to return. I was determined to try the keyboard (and also wanted to play with the Mustang pro guitar we saw Friday, but alas it was "off limits" for actual play). I chose the piano-heavy "Sister Christian" to see if my guitar skills translated to the "keytar" - and they clearly did not! The keyboard has a lot more buttons (well, keys) and even at the medium non-pro skill level, I had to traverse 6 note streams instead of the 5 on guitar at the same level. There's also a much different feel to this controller; I'm used to how the guitar buttons are marked so you can move up and down the fretboard and know your position by touch. That said, I view the keyboard as an interesting challenge and expect I'll try it more when the game launches to see if I can improve. Our biggest concern is whether letting our 7-year-old, Pikachu Fan, play with a keyboard in the game will help or hurt his piano lessons.
• Tron: Evolution. After rejecting what had become a 1-2 hour line for Duke Nukem Forever (and which would eventually stretch 4-5 hours long!), I dove into the eye-popping Disney booth and its new Tron game. The visuals are stunning, but the demo levels came from several hours into the game - and being dropped into the middle of a difficult lightcycle challenge and then having to learn advanced wall jumping skills didn't sit well with me. Tron: Evolution does look deeper and more interesting than past Tron outings, but it remains to be seen whether it can evolve beyond the stigmatized classification of "licensed movie tie-in game."
• PlayStation Move. After trying the Kinect a few weeks ago during their Seattle tour, we were curious to give the Move a whirl. GrrlGotGame and I picked up the glowing batons to battle in Sports Champions, the Move pack-in game, and I was quickly schooled by the mightier warrioress (though I did take her down once!). We then switched to archery, which took a little practice but we quickly mastered. I even split an arrow with a second shot to the same spot! Our main complaint with Move was the need to constantly recalibrate between rounds, something we have not encountered with Kinect. But our first impressions were net positive and, though we'll probably still get a Kinect at launch, the Sony solution may ultimately work better in our narrow living room.
• LittleBigPlanet 2. I thought the original Sackboy game was a brilliant concept but it ramped up in difficulty too quickly, leaving me and our then 6-year-old stuck only about a third of the way in. I had hoped the sequel would grab me and make me forget the lack of difficulty balance in the first one - but it didn't. The first level I tried was multiplayer only, so I was stuck until a booth employee rescued me and joined me for a round. The next level I did solo, and it rocketed me around like a pinball - which was fun - but it did not seem notably improved over the original. Perhaps it was the lack of a tutorial, but I got stuck a few times on what to do next. I suspect we'll still get LittleBigPlanet 2, but may hold out for the inevitable Game of the Year edition.
• Power Gig: Rise of the Six String. I stumbled hesitantly into the booth for what appeared to be yet another Rock Band knockoff and was quickly handed off to a staffer designated to demonstrate it to media. The game features a real guitar controller, which seemingly will beat the Harmonix/Fender Squier stringed-guitar controller for Rock Band 3 to market. The strings lock into place for the game, but can be snapped out if you want to plug your axe into an amp and use it as an electric guitar. My problem with the game is that I'm not a real guitarist, I'm a fake guitarist, so I lacked the callouses on my fingers to actually complete a single song in the game. It hurt my hands worse than the punishing note charts of any Guitar Hero game I've played. (I know, right?) This may be a great game for real musicians looking for a challenge that better approximates real guitar playing, but it's not for me. They also have an unusual drum kit: It sits on the floor and you drum the air above the pads. There's no stick-on-pad noise or drum kit wear and tear, but I prefer the tactile feeling of drumming and don't believe I could keep the rhythm without striking something with my sticks. GrrlGotGame did try the game's vocals on the Seven45 Studios mainstage and may have her own groupie now. Needless to say, we'll be skipping this.
• Epic Mickey. We arrived for our scheduled interview with a Disney designer expecting a walkthrough, but we were only slotted for a quick chat in a noisy booth. After ducking behind a demo station to record away from the noise, we couldn't even see the game! Epic Mickey does look extremely promising, and we suspect our 7-year-old will adore it - but we never did get any hands on time. The best we could do was watch a kid not much older than our own tossing blasts of color at enemies to defeat them. He seemed to be having a great time!
• Halo: Reach. We missed the Bungie panel but dropped in on their tweet-up, where a very funny Red vs. Blue episode was shown and seemingly every Bungie employee dropped by to visit with fans in a giant, packed room. GrrlGotGame ran off to chase a copy of Yahtzee "Zero Punctuation" Croshow's MogWorld but I stuck around and landed a signed Reach poster and some avatar item codes - both of which will be the subject of future giveaways. (We're also going to offer up a second copy of MogWorld that we landed!) After the session, I ran into composer Martin O'Donnell on the escalator and shared with him the details of our Audiophile segment on the music of Halo 3. He retweeted the link, so we can only guess that he liked it!
• Puzzle Agent. There wasn't a large iPhone/iPad presence at PAX, but we did get pulled into an interview with Telltale Games (makers of the recent Sam & Max series and the forthcoming Back to the Future Game) about their answer to Professor Layton. The game, which is also on Steam and coming soon to WiiWare, is the brainchild of artist/animator Graham Annable. We didn't actually play the game, but we were shown the interface and a few of its puzzles. It actually seems more humorous than Professor Layton and has a sort of Psychonauts-style twist where you solve puzzles to unlock the secrets of the disturbed denizens of Scoggins, Minn. While we were at the Telltale booth, we got sucked into buying pre-orders for Poker Night at the Inventory, a card game that features Penny Arcade's Tycho (but not Gabe!), Max, Strong Bad and the Heavy from Team Fortress 2. We bought for us and one for a lucky winner of a future Free Stuff Friday!
• Lego Universe. We're not really the MMO type - few busy gamers are - but we do see at least one online multiplayer game in our future. Or at least Pikachu Fan's future. Lego Universe is an online world of bricks launching later this year, and we have a bunch of beta codes to get you in now! You have your own private space to build and invite close friends to visit, and then there's an open world for shared adventures. What really impressed us was the range of options. There are simple block construction mechanics like you see in the Traveller's Tales games (Lego Star Wars, Lego Harry Potter, etc.). Older kids can move up to mix-and-match constructions where you take, say, three sections of a vehicle to make your own custom ride. Finally, there is an advanced brick-by-brick mode where you can build things just as you would in the real world. You do have to unlock the various bricks and parts, but they're all included in the subsciption fee - the only "paying" you might do beyond the $40 cost of the retail game and $90-120/year subscription is done with virtual in-game currency that you earn by playing the game. Best of all, there's a scripting language similar to those Lego MindStorm gizmos, which Pikachu Fan learned to program this summer at a robot camp and really loved! He'll be able to jump right into the advanced options and make objects move, pop up messages or explode in a shower of bricks. Awesome!
• Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One. Despite being a huge fan of the series, this session was a big bust. We were seated near the back of the same room that hosted the Bungie tweetup earlier in the day and couldn't hear a thing! (According to a tweet from Insomniac responding to my complaint about the worst miking ever, the bombastic Bungie event actually blew out a rear speaker!) As a result, the live demo was less than impactful. The game seems more 4-player party game than co-op adventure. I did manage to move up as space cleared out midway through and caught the amusing tidbit that Insomniac had considered more risque titles such as "4Play" and "Multiple Organisms" but were concerned that parents wouldn't buy the game for their kids.

Stay tuned for Day 3 highlights.