Day 1 of PAX complete and I am beat. Here a few highlights:
Diablo III crushes skulls and was better than expected. Take Diablo II and put a shine on it, add more dynamics to the combat (think combo kills and better looking special attacks) I played through a desert level with the Barbarian. There was a very neat part of the game where I entered an underground section of the desert and had 2 minutes to snag all the treasure I could find. While running around the whole level was crumbling apart around me, it was a very neat effect and added a real sense of urgency to the escape and loot grabbing. Overall it was worth the wait to play.
Forza 3 looked and played fantastic. The online videos do this game no justice. It really is a giant leap in graphics. The environments looked super detailed and the rewind feature really makes the game more enjoyable. This coming from a build that was 5 months old and a car view that was (only?) running at 30 frames per second. The game looked, sounded and felt great.
Brutal Legend surprised me in that it was so funny, Jack Black did a great job with the voice work. Another cool game I saw was Torchlight, think simple Dungeon crawling loot based stuff. I was happy to hear that this game was headed for beta but scheduled for release in late October!
So far the only disappointment was Need for Speed: Shift. Probabably didnt help that I had played Forza 3 first but it just didnt feel right. Sloppy controls and just not real fun to play.
Overall great first day. Tomorrow its more time with Diablo III and the single player campaign of Starcraft II.
