PAX East: Shipping Up to Boston

So we are here in Boston. After a six hour or so ride, lots of traffic and some of the worst traffic patterns I have ever experienced we are here in Boston.

While PAX East does not officially start until tomorrow. We did slip into the Sony Move event that was happening off site. We all got a chance to use the Move and well the best thing I can personally say about it is that the controller feels nice, nicer than the Wii remote but in the end I kind of felt it was just Wii HD.

But anyway, onto specifics. I spent all of my time with the system playing Move Party, which is a mini game collection. The games in Move Party are simple tech demo type pieces that show off the different aspects of the device, think a simpler version of Wii play. The games ranged from using a fan to blow baby birds up and into a nest, to swatting flies, to painting on the screen. Some games worked better than others. The bird game for instance worked very well with subtle movements but a balloon popping game was imprecise at best. Graphically the game looked nice. The game features your mirror image on the screen through use of the camera and using the ball on the controller the device is able to map a cartoon "tool" for you to use, say a fan or a fly swatter. The image mapping looks fantastic and believable and the items do move as you do on the screen. Sadly the game doesn't quite work quite as well as the image mapping.

A couple other games that they had on display were Sports Champions, which was showcasing a gladiator battle, and Slider which is a weird little title that involves you controlling a secretary on an office chair. Slider was something that certainly looked like it could be fun, in a Crazy Taxi kind of way but it certainly needs to be fleshed out somewhat.

And with that I am going to go back to my vodka. Be sure to check back all weekend as I'll have updated impressions of all the goings on.