So I’m going to be honest with you guys, I’d never been to a gaming convention before.  What an awesome way to attend my first one!  My own beautiful city of Seattle is hosting one of the nerdiest events of the year, and I get to cover it for GamersRoute.com.  A dream come true.

Walking into the exhibition hall at a little before 9 AM, ClassicMoments and I felt ourselves dwarfed by massive displays all around (or maybe it was just me, he’s got tons of experience with this kinda stuff).  I was in awe of both the beautiful Seattle convention center building, the displays themselves, and at how loud everything was.  Sensory overload here I come, but not before I got some information.



• BORDERLANDS:

First thing we did was rush over to the Borderlands booth to check out a game one of my friends has been blabbering about for ages.  I didn’t know much about it, but was quickly impressed at the scale of their ambitious design.  Apparently there are over 17 million possible weapon combos, with the opposite ends of that weapon combo spectrum being very, very different from one another.  The game plays like a first person shooter with RPG elements splashed over it.  The art style is intriguing and impressive; a bit of cel-shading gives it a very unique look.

I played through the scripted introduction to the game, with my little robot helper shouting tinny instructions at me as I ran into walls and the wrong way (as power of hangover upon me).  I blasted away at enemies and damage points satisfyingly flew off of them like blood. Being the noob I am, I didn’t figure out that you had to actively pick up the ammunition that falls on the ground by hitting a button, so I quickly ran out of ammo and ended up meleeing enemies until I met my untimely demise.  While playing I chatted about the game with a representative from 2k Games who helped me with my noobishness.  The game supports 4 player local co-op, and seems like it could be quite fun to sit around with some buddies and quest together, trading loot amongst yourselves.  Speaking of loot, Borderlands has adopted the now traditional system of green/blue/purple/orange drops, with orange of course being the “phattest l3wt” and green being “noob trash.”  The game has a total of 50 levels, and DLC is intended.

Keep an eye on this one, it will be fun.



• LEAGUE OF LEGENDS:
  

Next, we headed over to chat with the folks at RIOT about their new game, League of Legends.  Unfortunately, their servers were experiencing technical difficulty so I didn’t get a chance to play the game, but we did secure some beta keys for our readers!  For those of you who don’t know LoL (lol, I love the abbreviation), it’s a Defense of the Ancients style hero battle.  You pick your hero and control him or her alongside waves of computer controlled enemies.  The intent of LoL is to level the playing field from the days of DOTA and allow a new set of players the chance to experience this awesome style of gameplay.

League of Legends will feature an overhead “Summoner Account” which is sort of like your account in Call of Duty 4.  The Summoner Account will earn experience points for each game you play, allowing you to unlock different heroes you can play inside the game itself, but the gameplay itself will not be affected by the rank of your Summoner Account.  The game is free-to-play, and will be monetized through a series of convenience  unlocks and cosmetic outfits.  Stuff like buying a sweet new outfit to make your hero look like the badass owner he really is.  I’ll give you guys more info as I play the beta!



• TORCHLIGHT:

I headed over to Runic Games’ booth next, where Torchlight really blew me away.  With a team of only 25 employees and about 11 months,  they have perfected the action RPG genre with this game.  Set to release as a single-player experience on October 27th, Torchlight will be download only and will set you back $20.  The team at Runic is taking an interesting approach by giving players a taste of the action with a single player game, while they go on to develop their MMO based on the same universe.  After releasing this single player version, they are going to be devoting all of their resources to developing the MMO and hope to have it out within about 18 months.

I got to play as an Alchemist, one of the three classes that will be featured in the single player game.  He is the sort of low-tech, steampunky magic user who summons creatures to fight for him, as well as sending awesome green bolts of energy to obliterate his foes. I was having so much fun smiting enemy after enemy I had to tear myself away from the screen so that I didn’t stand there all day and make the nice Runic people un-nice.  The combat feels great, similar to Diablo and yet still so very addicting. I will be doing a full-scale preview within the next couple of days, so please stay tuned!

Notes from ClassicMoments: Man, did we have so much fun or what. I’ve been to many conventions, but I was a PAX virgin just like Spencer here. Though I’ve been to many larger conventions, this easily makes it to the top of my favorite conventions list. For me, Torchlight really did impress me a lot. We’ll try to cover, or rather strip off deeper with inside info as we go.