3DS

I typically go to a lot of panels at Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) East, but this year relatively few of the offerings interested me (and some of the interesting ones were on simultaneously). So, I spent a lot of time on the show floor. The only major publisher I really visited was Ubisoft, where I learned that Might & Magic X will be coming this year and has a huge, wasteful UI. I spent most of the rest of my time in the Indie Megabooth and environs, both because this is a more efficient use of time and you're more likely to actually see the games and talk to somebody interesting there.

Where one story ends—sorry Aliens: Colonial Marines Wii U—another begins anew. Welcome to the new, but pretty damn familiar GameCritics.com podcast with brand new co-host Sinan Kubba of Joystiq—yes, co-host—more details inside... Join Sinan and regular ruffians Mike Bracken, Richard Naik, Chi Kong Lui, and Brad "The Guy You Know" Gallaway as they summarize GDC and PAX East in two seconds, explore the depth of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, sink to the depths of Aliens: Colonial Marines, and fathom how the growing prevalence of broken-at-launch games is hurting the industry. All this and more in a GameCritics.com podcast episode that will rewrite history, woo-oo.

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Bigger, Better, Badder

HIGH A new Monster Hunter is finally available! It's not a dream!

LOW The game’s first few hours are painfully slow.

WTF How many damned carpenterbugs am I going to need here?

In other games news, I've been tooling around with a few things randomly. With the wife currently in command of my Nintendo 3DS (she's working on her own Monster Hunter character, of course) I've hopped back onto the PlayStation Vita and have been trying to catch up with what I've missed during my recent 3DS binge.

I've been touched by some of the response to the Shooting Straight post that I wrote a few weeks ago. I wrote it in reaction to the spate of layoffs that we'd seen from IGN at the time, and the layoffs really shook me because that could have been me out there had I found the courage to trust in my talents and go for a paying job in the gaming press. I don't know how I would've handled being suddenly let go, having to scramble to salvage my future, and wondering where to go from there.

Who's Your Daddy?

HIGH The battle with the Daemon Lord in Chapter 3.

LOW The godawful laser puzzle in Chapter 2.

WTF Who or what was the Lost Soul supposed to represent?

Extra Credits is trying a new feature where it introduces viewers to burgeoning video game markets. The first one tackled is Brazil and while I see the country's potential, this particular presentation doesn't do the best job of selling Brazil as a great new game market. Sure you can still buy a Sega Genesis/Mega Drive—brand new—and who doesn't want that? But video game piracy seems to still be pretty rampant there. It also looks like one of those territories that isn't the least bit interested in fixing things from a consumer, governmental and industry standpoint.

In this response piece, Extra Credits expands on the subject of horror in games. This time the crew talks about the three types of "monsters" available to developers shedding a little insight into why some fall flat.

The gist of this particular Extra Credits presentation is that developers should focus on the gameplay first and then wrap their story around that. It sounds like a no-brainer until you realize that a practice of de-emphasizing story at the onset is standard operating procedure in the video game development community. The result have been unoriginal and unsophisticated stories. Maybe we need more developers taking a stand and pushing through those barriers to focusing on story and come up with something that can really move the medium forward.

I'm currently working on my review of Monster Hunter 3: Ultimate. I wasn't able to put as much time into it as I expected because the bridging software which allows players to transfer data between the Wii U and 3DS has not been available, and apparently will not be until the day of release. Since I'm usually able to catch a few quests here and there on a portable when I'm not in front of my TV, that was an unexpected setback.