Jay found us an amazing deli literally right around the corner from our hotel today. It’s spacious, empty, and actually serves freshly cooked bagel sandwiches. Nothing hits like a hot sausage, egg, and cheese on a bagel right in the morning. We should have been coming here since day one.
We just checked out so we’re hauling our bags to the con today. Mine feels like its filled with rocks since I emptied my handbag into it, so I grab a Lyft for the admittedly short hike to the con to avoiding sweating through my clothes before I’m even there. Jay and Andrew stick to walking.
Time is short today. Our train departs at 3pm, and we’ve got lunch at noon with Chris and Grace. My Lyft shortcut means that I’m ahead of Andrew and Jay. I head directly to Dead Island 2. Shockingly, there is already a line by the time I get there, but fortunately its only a 10 minute wait before I make it into the second group of players.
Maybe I’ve got too big of a bias here, but I had a lot of fun playing this game. It looks great, it sounds great, and from what I experienced, it plays great too. The demo gave me a nice variety of weapons to try out, and I’m a big fan of “slow zombies” over “fast zombies”.
My initial objective in the demo was to get to the pier a ways ahead of me. Instead, I found the entrance to some sort of ransacked FEMA camp tucked away in a back corner and spent my time exploring that instead.
I hadn’t even reached the end of it when my time ran out. I love this type of exploration and it felt very rewarding finding something most demo-ers probably did not get a chance to see.
Randall might be in a tight spot now; he counter-picked my Dead Island 2 choice in our Fantasy Critic league, meaning he gets points if it scores below a 70 but loses points if its above.
There’s still plenty of ways they can fumble the full release (tedious, repetitive, short length, bugs they did not want to show off). And as Jay noticed as he went back through all of my previous years coverage last night, all of us have been amusingly wrong on some of our con predictions. But the demo has made me more confident it will bypass the 70 mark. Hell, I think I’m gonna give this one a try when it comes out next month.
30 minutes until we leave for lunch. Just enough time to fit in another demo. Andrew briefly recons with me and then goes to check out some corgi game whose name escapes me at the moment (Google suggests Stunt Corgi VR?). I got a hot tip on Eastward on Friday, so might as well check that out.
Unfortunately, it only has two stations open at the Chucklefish booth, and the folks occupying them don’t seem to be wrapping up quickly. In fact, Andrew even finishes his demo and meets me there. At the T-minus 10 minute mark we decide to just hop on two open stations of Loco Motive right next to us.
That’s probably for the best. I did enough over-the-shoulder gameplay watching to get the gist of Eastward. It’s an action-adventure-RPG akin to Zelda with some (admittedly pretty) Stardew-like graphics.
Loco Motive, on the other hand, was quite a pleasant surprise. It is a straight-up LucasArts SCUMM-era point-and-click mystery game. You play a slick lawyer named Arthur Ackerman who’s become the prime suspect in the murder of his client, the elderly matron of a rail empire.
The art and animation were fantastic and the dialogue and story were hilarious. I’m still overcoming some trauma from suffering through Monkey Island 2 a few months ago, but Andrew appreciated how well it actually worked on a controller and its inclusion of the utterly essential “highlight objects” button.
Time for lunch! I don’t think you need my “con summary” of our time together, but needless to say, we had a great time catching up with Chris and Grace over BBQ at ‘The Smoke Shop BBQ’ near the convention center.
Lots have happened in everyone’s lives since they departed Philly back in 2020. We swapped updates on jobs, relationships, and living situations. Talking to them made me nostalgic for those pre-pandemic days, when Chris and Grace were always just a car ride away and PAX East was a 17-person extravaganza. The year they rented that airBnB in Southie was one of the best times I ever had in Boston.
Time to hoof it back to the convention… with 30 minutes to spare. By the time I stop by coat check and head across the skybridge to get the floor, I spot Jay heading the opposite direction on his way to retrieve his belongings.
I’m tempted to call it and follow, but 20 minutes is just enough time to window shop (and hopefully find a thank you gift for Chris, who is generously offering me a ride home from the station).
No luck though. I’m an indecisive shopper and nothing catches my eye. A quick bag check to make sure I remembered everything important and its a brisk walk South Station for our train.
I try the grilled cheese from the cafe car this time. It was pretty good.
Time to close out with my con highlights from this year. This was an off year for me because I never found time to do my “con wander”, so I don’t think I actually touched more than a dozen games. Nevertheless, I actually enjoyed most of what I played, so it was quite a fulfilling trip.
Top 5 2023 con picks, in no particular ranking:
- Dead Island 2: I hate to make Randall sweat, but this is looking like a solid release. I really enjoyed what I got to play.
- Angerfoot: This was pure fun. Engaging and addicting from the moment you pick it up. Solid expectations on this one.
- Backpack Hero: An engaging blend of dungeon crawling and RE4-style inventory management. This one’s already out and gathering critical acclaim.
- Xenotilt: A highly polished and chaotic pinball game due for release any day now. Can’t pinpoint what my expectations of it are, but it’s been well over a decade since I last touched a digital pinball game, so this was a refreshing find.
- Big Boy Boxing: Fluid pixel animation, slapstick action, and a stacked roster of boss fights makes this a con hidden gem (due credit to Andrew for the find). Hopefully this one gets the attention it deserves on launch because the quality is absolutely there.
Lastly, quick shout out and honorable mention to Gigabash. It got inched out of the con highlights above, but I already picture us giving this a shot one Saturday (maybe after a price drop). A fun 4-player local multiplayer game is a precious find these days!