What We Saw at PAX South 2017

PAX South is one of our favorite gaming conventions and we make an effort to attend each year.  This year felt considerably more exciting than last year, which may have been due to the presence of the Nintendo Switch or Resident Evil 7 or all the cosplay that appeared this year.  While we did enjoy seeing the Switch (it’s surprisingly large), we didn’t wait through the long line to get a chance to play it.  We tend to concentrate on indie, under-the-radar titles.  Here are the games that caught our eyes at PAX South 2017.

Russian Subway Dogs would also make a great 80’s animated Disney movie.

Russian Subway Dogs

We love the throwbacks to the arcade styles games we played in the 80’s.  One of the cutest ones we’ve ever seen was Russian Subway Dogs.  The gameplay is pretty simple; you play a cute little dog living in Moscow’s famed subway system and gathering food from unsuspecting subway riders.  Your chief attack is to sneak up behind them and bark causing them to drop their food.  You have to avoid exploding vodka bottles and competing dogs, but the most fun comes from bouncing the exploding vodka bottles towards those competing dogs.  The game is very fun and a great throwback to early arcade-style gameplay.  And while the protagonist is cute, some of the other characters are fun, too.  Check out the video in which some random gamer makes the insane choice to play as a Russian cat instead.

Dauntless

Dauntless may be the modern, cooperative  Gauntlet sequel we’ve been waiting for (Diablo aside).  In Dauntless, four fantasy-era characters chase down enormous monsters to slay.  Think of a fantasy, RPG version of Evolve.  The game is very pretty and the battles seem intense (though the guys I watched mostly just button-mashed their way through it).  Dauntless immediately calls to mind Evolve, but the prettier worlds and simplified gameplay seem like an improvement.  In many ways, Dauntless may have a chance to learn from the mistakes that made Evolve such a chore depending on how the RPG elements get incorporated.  For now, at least, Dauntless is going to be a free-to-play coop adventure that we’ll watch for on the PC.

AND PART TWO OF THIS ILL-FATED HUNT….

Hello Neighbor

If home invasion is your thing, Hello Neighbor may be the game for you.  The premise of the game, as near as I can tell, is that your trying to get access to your angry neighbor’s standard, suburban house using whatever tools you can find.  The neighbor roams the house and, if he finds you, he rudely ejects you into the yard.  There are a wide-variety of tools and items for you to use to try to break in, but the gamers I watched weren’t able to successfully outsmart the neighbor during their brief plays.  I was struck by how much fun the game could be in VR, and I’m sure that’s occurred to the super cool folks at Tiny Build.  Read more about the game here and watch some guys try to outsmart the neighbor below.

And here things go from bad to worse

Road Redemption

Road Redemption is a simple, easy to pick up racer in which you race and battle other cyclists through a variety of different courses.  Gameplay is really easy to pick up as you have the ability to swing a weapon or just thrown a sideways kick into your rivals.  The game’s real selling point may be its variety; there were a lot of levels and players available.  I just played the desert, but I was tempted by the rooftops level that was available (I was told it was brutally difficult).  The variety of characters is fun, too, with shout-outs to Ghost Rider and Shovel Knight.  You can actually watch Shovel Knight race in the video below.

Rime

We didn’t get footage of playing Rime because we were busy playing Rime, but we were very impressed with the game.  Fans of Ico and Journey are going to find a lot to love here.  The graphics are beautiful and the music is fittingly majestic, but we were most impressed with the intuitive gameplay.  Exploration is very similar to Ico without the awkwardness I remember from that game.  We didn’t have an attack, but our hero could use his voice to activate statues that opened new passages.  We sent our young protagonist through some expansive and detailed ruins, solving creative but simple puzzles to open up additional paths without any frustration.  That’s not to say the game is easy, but it has a definite flow that’s very fun.  We haven’t done our homework and we don’t much more about Rime, but we’ll be looking for it when it arrives this May.  Since we didn’t get any footage, check out some gameplay here.

Some lucky guy plays Rime. You should totally play Rime.