PAX East: Day 3

Yesterday was the final day of PAX East. For me that meant checking out of the hotel and taking the long drive back home. But before we left Boston we hit up the show floor once more to check out a couple more games.

The first was Frobot, which is coming to WiiWare and the PC at sometime in the near future. Some of you may remember that I named Frobot my pre-show game of the show. Sadly it did not hold up to the awesome promise that its name held. Frobot is an overhead action game, styled very similarly to NES era games. It will come packed with 25 single player levels that are a mix of combat mechanics and classic puzzle gameplay. At this point the game looks a little rough and Frobot controls a bit slow but the game is still being worked on so hopefully it will turn the corner and realize some of the potential that it has.

The final game we saw on the show floor was Hydrophobia. Hydrophobia is going to be a downloadable action game for the XBOX Live arcade. Hydrophobia takes place on a city sized cruise liner and features the reluctant hero Kate Wilson, who funny enough is afraid of water. There seems to be an intricate plot and the developers I talked to were pointing at the game to have about an eight hour campaign. Graphically it looks pretty good, the water effects in particular are spectacular. Most scenarios will feature multiple ways to approach them and flooding a compartment of the ship at one point in the game may effect gameplay later in the game. The title seems to have the equivalent amount of content as a retail game and it is going to sell for between $15-$20 which could make it one of the steals of the year.

After that we headed out of Boston but my PAX work is not done. Expect my final thoughts on the show tomorrow and be sure to check out the previews that will be going up of the games I saw at the show.