I downloaded the demo of ‘Splosion Man for the Xbox 360 last night and gave it a spin.  The game itself seems quite solid, with frenetic platforming and an overall sense of high-energy.  For those who have not played it yet, let me explain that one of the primary activities you undertake as the titular hero is detonating scientists that you come across and reducing them to meat.  Literally.  Showers of steaks, hams, and various other cuts of meat spring forth every time you kill one.

As I ran about, murdering these men of science, my wife asked the perfectly reasonable question “Why are you killing all these innocent people?”  This, I assured her, was because “they are evil scientists.” Now, ‘Splosion Man is not particularly heavy on backstory – you are a man who explodes, and you are in some sort of lab. From this, there is very little to support my assertion about these scientists and their moral alignment, but it was just something I knew in my gut.  Clearly, they had made ‘Splosion Man into what he was, and he was simply seeking vengeance.  Of course, it’s equally as likely that ‘Splosion Man is simply insane and thirsts for the meat of all he comes across. So why would I immediately leap to the evil scientist answer?

When posing this question to Jeff, he simply replied, “Besides Dr. Light, have you ever met a non-evil scientist in a video game?”

Good question!

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Joel took the reins on covering a lot of the panels at Otakon, but there was one that I demanded to cover:  “Rhythm games you Haven’t Played“.  Being an avid (read: obsessive) rhythm game fan, I was interested in seeing if the panelists could come up with any games I hadn’t already managed to play through, or at the very least, avoid talking about Dance Dance Revolution for an hour.

Braving the back side of the Baltimore Convention Center (or as I started calling it as the weekend went on, the Ass-End of Otakon) was often an arduous task, but I, your intrepid rhythm game addict, wouldn’t miss this panel for the world.  The panel was packed to the gills with over-excited, and often unbathed participants, but all was forgotten once our panelists took the floor.  I don’t know if it was the type of game we were covering, or the enthusiasm of the hosts, but this was one of the highest-energy panels I’d ever been to.

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But I have this “thing” about finishing games and reading everything a deceased author wrote, which is just – if you finish everything… then it’s over. There’s no new stuff. So long as I didn’t do the last couple of missions in Circuit’s Edge, the game would never really be over for me.

Robb Sherwin talks about his love of Circuit’s Edge and George Alec Effinger, and how that eventually affected his thoughts on universal health care(!), over at Jolt Country.

While Otakon certainly has plenty of “industry” panels for companies like Bandai and Funimation to get the word out about their latest acquisitions, or for voice actors to take Q&A from the fans, the vast majority of panels at the convention are run by the fans themselves.  Running the gamut from “Crafting Your Own Manga” to “Live Catgirl Whack-A-Mole,” odds are that you’ll find at least something that strikes your fancy to attend.

For me, as you might guess, I gravitated towards the game-based panels, of which there were plenty to choose from.  I started off with the Shin Megami Tensei panel, which promised to be a look at the history of this long-running series.

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The great thing about the game room at Otakon is that there is pretty much something for everyone.  Fighting Games, Rhythm Games, FPSes, Shmups, Puzzle Games… if you can’t find at least one thing you are more than happy to sit down and play, then you aren’t trying very hard.

Before the Crowds Arrive…

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I will be honest right up front and say that the Otakon Artist’s Alley is one section of the convention that I tend to gloss over in most years.  It’s nothing personal against the artists themselves, it’s just that it usually tends to be tucked away in one of the underhalls, and with other more pressing videos and panels to go to, it tends to fall to the wayside.

This year, though, I heard a lot of people saying that the Artist Alley was actually quite good, so I decided to make some time for it.  Coming into Hall G, it seemed, compared to my memories anyway, the the number of artists was larger this year.  I took my time wandering from booth to booth, seeing exactly what it was that all these different people were producing.  There were lots of hand-drawn art, obviously, along with plenty of computer produced work, sculpture, and various other arts and crafts.  Some of the work was very forgettable, but overall, the quality of work on display was very high, and I found plenty to stop and take closer looks at as I made my way down the stalls.

In the end, two particular items caught my eye, and they now reside on the flap of the bag I carry with me on a daily basis:

The thing about multiplayer games is, no matter how good about yourself you may feel when you are able to annihilate your friends on a nightly basis, as soon as you step out that door and into the wider world of competition, you’ll (usually)  find out that you’re about as tough as wet socks.

Take Team Fortress 2, for example; some nights I feel like I’m king of the server, with rockets that can’t miss and piles of dead trailed behind me.  On most nights (ok, the vast majority of nights), I feel completely mediocre… or worse.  It’s all about who the competition is.

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The Spectacle Rock team arrived bright and early in downtown Baltimore this morning and got right down to business.  It’s been a busy half-day so far, but we’ll have plenty of pictures of the day’s goings-on later tonight, as well as some in-depth coverage of my adventures in the Smash Bros. Melee tourament, Jeff’s adventures at the VAMPS press conference, and detailed reviews of all food consumed.  More updates coming!  Remember to follow us at SpectacleRock on Twitter for live updates.

Spectacle Rock is pleased to announce that we will be in attendance at Otakon 2009 in Baltimore, MD, starting tonight and running through Sunday.  For those not familiar with it, Otakon is one of the largest anime/manga/Japanese culture conventions in the US, with a whopping 26,000 people expected to attend this year.  Somewhere among that sea of people, your intrepid Spectacle Rock reporters will be bringing you up-to-the-minute information from the field.

Some things you can expect to look forward to…

• Interviews with professional voice actors for both games and traditional animation.
• Coverage of Otakon’s sprawling video game room
• Tweets from the convention floor (follow http://twitter.com/SpectacleRock and http://twitter.com/jfeeser).
• Shenanigans as Joel enters a video game tournament and is probably eliminated in the first round.
• In-depth reviews of all food consumed during the weekend.

And who knows what other surprises may pop up?  Hope to see some of you there!

Every day, when I wake up, one of the first things I do is peek out the bedroom window into the outside world.  I do this for two reasons: First, to make sure the damn squirrels aren’t on my bird feeder (I am a crotchety old man), and second, more importantly, to see how the weather looks.  I do this because the weather plays a large part in most of the decisions I make first thing in the morning.  If it’s bright and warm and sunny, I can perhaps get by with a t-shirt.  If it’s cold and windy, I’d should probably think about a sweater.  If it’s pouring, I might have to consider canceling my hike in the woods later that day.  If it’s 90 degrees and humid at nine in the morning, I might also want to think about canceling it for completely different reasons.

The point here is: the weather is an important, constant factor in pretty much everyone’s life.  So why is it, then, that games tend to ignore it completely?

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