Gaming at a convention. A Pause Button’s inside look into competition at Phoenix Comicon.

This year’s Phoenix Comicon established itself in its new home of the Phoenix Convention Center. Whereas the convention used to be held in the much smaller Mesa Convention Center, the new building provided areas much larger and roomier for programming at the event.

 

 

This translated to large dual gaming rooms set up for more tournaments and casual play hosted by the Arizona Hobbyists Paradise and Howie’s Game Shack, than ever had before.

Alan Wake Review: The return of the eerie and psychological gameplay.

 

While Red Dead Redemption was on practically everyone’s consoles this past release week, The Pause Button instead invested in the other heavy-hitter release on Tuesday for the Xbox 360: Alan Wake.

The game's protagonist and namesake, Alan Wake, is a struggling author who is thrown into a nightmare experience in Bright Falls.

Alan Wake is a game created by Remedy Entertainment (Max Payne, Max Payne 2) and revolves around a writer who vacations in the rural town of Bright Falls in order to escape the stress of being unable to write anything for the past two years. The first night in though, Wake’s wife goes missing, the townspeople become “the Taken” (beings that are overcome by darkness and exhibit murderous tendencies), and Wake is thrust right into the middle of a story he doesn’t remember creating.

ModNation Racers Demo Impressions

I finally got the chance to try the demo of ModNation Racers for the PS3 on Saturday to see if it would fulfill any expectations I had about the game.

I was quite surprised when I found myself feeling both reminiscent and refreshed by the gameplay and features of the go-kart title.

The upcoming ModNation title brings mass user-created content and customizations to the kart-racing game genre.

EA’s Online Move Receives Blacklash

Renowned publisher Electronic Arts announced Monday that with the release of their new videogame, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11, a new feature (or lack of one) would become more present on future EA SPORTS genre titles they release.

The upcoming Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 will be the first EA Sports game to feature the online pass.

 The release stated that the games would now feature an “Online Pass” which would allow gamers who bought the game new, to open up access to the online features of the game, primarily the ability to play online against other opponents.

The pass would only be for single-use, which would make any gamer who wished to buy the title used (in order to save money) shell out an additional $10 for an online pass key, or be barred from online features (past a seven-day trial period), according to the press release.

Grab your spyglasses, the Code Hunt is on!

Interactive marketing campaigns are nothing new to the video game industry when an upcoming game needs some pre-launch advertisement. (Heavy Rain had the Four Days Challenge and MLB 2K10 had the had the recently concluded 2K Sports Challenge.) Not to be outdone in this endeavor of course, is Konami’s take on interactive marketing with their latest Metal Gear Solid title: Peace Walker.

Intel Game On Event Wrap-Up

 

The Intel Game On event at Fry’s Electronics kicked off Saturday afternoon to a good reception of customers who lined up to grab potential prizes.

 

 

 

 

The Game On crew had a booth ripe with tons of giveaway prizes and video game demonstrations on their new signature Intel Core i7 processing computers.