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.

Continue Reading…

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.

Continue Reading…