Sorry for the delayed post, once I got back from GenCon regular life started to pile up and I have been really busy. But I will finish up my GenCon series of articles in due time! The picture above was taken in the Dealer Room and you have a pretty good view of the massive t-shirt wall that towers over people near the entrance. That picture does not even begin to do justice to the epicness of the dealer room as a whole! This will be my last recap post, as day four was the day we left and in the morning I had one interview that will be getting its own post. So, lets get right into it! This post will probably be shorter than the other two, but enjoy!
First Highlight: More Dealer Room and General Convention Exploration
The best part about this convention, as I stated before, is just seeing all that there is to see. You could easily spend all your time wandering around, talking to people and checking stuff out. On this day I found out about some pretty cool new board games coming out specifically. There is actually a new versions of the popular strategy game: Risk! In order to combat the Halo Wars Risk, there is going to be a Metal Gear Solid version for the PlayStation faithful of the world.
This seems pretty sweet in my book, I wasn’t able to talk with anyone about how the game will function and what the changes will be, but having played the Lord of the Rings Risk, I can assume the map will fit the universe and then there will be little additions to make it feel more like a game in that series.
After wandering around the Dealer Room a bit more, I found the Cryptozoic booth. For those unaware, this is the company that makes the World of Warcraft trading card game and they were launching another new game called Food Fight. The game is also going to see an app launching soon as well! Also, they will soon be launching a card game based on Penny Arcade that features all of the popular characters and is sure to be a hit with those fans!
After leaving the dealer room, I ventured off to explore the halls and general exhibit floor. There was a great program that allowed you to be put into a video that was digitally spruced up with special effects so you could shoot beams and have other special powers, and they had a demo going of the new Magic: The Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 game. The demo is also available on PSN and XBL, but it was nice for them to have it set up for people to check out right at the convention. Another cool part is that just for completing the demo you received a nice little shiny card and a booster pack, not bad!
Second Highlight: Mortal Kombat Tournament!
Well, many of you may have seen my post about my experiences at my local MK tournament at Gamestop during the launch, if not, check it out! It is a pretty epic tale, although with a rather disappointing ending. Part two of my foray into tournament Mortal Kombat play unfolded at GenCon, and it was a bit more humbling than my last experience. The set up for the tournament was double elimination, ie: you lost twice and you’re out. Each inidividual round was created from three total best of three matches. Think of it this way: usually when playing a fighting game, the default is best of three. That was true, then if won one of those sets, that counted as one overall point in the round. To advance, you needed two points. Make sense? Hope so.
Seeing as how I really do not have a whole lot of experience with the game at all and only play with friends at times, I was overall at a disadvantage. For the first round I got really lucky and had a bye. This was great and allowed me to basically get a free win. The next round I faced off against a kid that picked Cyrax. The first set he won, then I won, then the final set we each had one kill. It came down to our final fight and he ended up besting Mileena to get his second win. The next two rounds were extremely easy as I was dropped down into the one-loss bracket and I even got a flawless against one person. Both of them picked Scorpion.
My final round in the tournament was up next, in quarterfinals, and this is where the humbling experience took place. After wiping the floor with two Scorpions I was feeling really good about myself, but this guy I was about to play was very good. Our first set he beat me twice without even getting below half health. The next set I stomped out a kill, taking minimal damage. Then he got tired of toying with me and finished me quickly two times in a row. He was very good at stringing combos together, something I am not very good at yet.
This concludes the highlights of day three at GenCon that are not receiving their own posts. As a sneak peek of what to look forward to: I have an extended visit at the Wizards of the Coast Neverwinter booth talking about Dungeons and Dragons, the new setting for games and books, and two new video games coming out. I demo a brand new card game/board game hybrid called Mage Wars that is a lot more fun than I expected. I stop by the Cryptozoic booth and receive an extended preview of the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game as well as Raid Pack I will be reviewing soon enough. I also talked with R.A. Salvatore and scored an exclusive interview about the upcoming Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, as well as the MMO in the same universe. And finally, I had an extended interview with George Strayton about his new tabletop RPG, The Secret Fire.
All of that great Koalition exclusive information will be coming your way in the following days, as well as being featured on the Turn Based podcast. Leave comments below!
