After scathing industry criticism forced the E3 Expo to return to its over-the-top roots, the popular Penny Arcade Expo could face some competition after enjoying two years of none--but the boys behind Penny Arcade aren't concerned.

"I ... can't imagine it stealing any of our thunder," said Penny Arcade co-founder Mike "Gabe" Krahulik to Edge, starting a very long joke about thunder. "We have a ridiculous amount of thunder and honestly if they were to steal some of it we probably wouldn't even notice."

To emphasize his point, Gabe offered an anecdote: "Just yesterday we accidentally left some of our thunder in our pants and then they went into the washing machine and the thunder got ruined. It wasn't a big deal to us, though, because we have plenty more thunder."

Leaving meteorological speak behind, the webcomic-philanthropy-expo duo found room for both PAX and E3 world of games. "E3 has always been and looks like it will continue to be about the industry. PAX is about the community around games as much as it's about the games themselves," commented Krahulik.

Mike Gallagher, president of the E3-organizing ESA, agreed. "E3 has never been a consumer show. We're not competing with PAX or Comic-Con," he said.

A new campaign for Bungie's Xbox 360 shooter Halo 3 may be on the way this month, according to various pictures taken at PAX last weekend.

A member on the Ascendant Justice forums posted copies of pictures taken of a screen showing new Halo 3 Xbox 360 achievements. The originals, which resided in a web folder entitled "pax08," are now offline.

Cold Storage, a downloadable add-on map for Bungie's Halo 3

Of note are 6 new "Skull" achievements, referring to the hard-to-find Skull items scattered across the Halo series' single-player campaigns. Another achievement, entitled "Vidmaster Challenge: Annual," has the description "After 9/25/08, completed Halo on 4-player Legendary LIVE co-op, with Iron, and everyone in Ghosts," signaling a possible September 25 release date for the new content.... Read more

To describe Gas Powered Games' Demigod as a DotA clone is doing a disservice to its target audience. Demigod is DotA for people who think DotA sounds like a division of Homeland Security.

So what is Demigod? Picture a PC RTS where the player controls a single, gigantic hero unit--an RTS/action-RPG hybrid. Each side has an automatically-spawning horde of minor units, with the Demigod's task being to either direct them to a specific location, or impact the battle to the point that your side eventually overtakes the opposing enemy.

As such, Demigods come in two categories: Assassins and Generals. The former are pure warriors, while the latter primarily take command of the minions, ordering them to capture specific control points.

At the beginning of a match, your chosen Demigod begins its life at level one. As you cause havoc, smashing enemy forces and fortresses, your hero unit progresses in level, each milestone granting one point to be spent in a branching talent tree. Talents range from passive bonuses to direct abilities, the skillsets being particular to each Demigod. For instance, the Rook, the game's poster-god, has a talent... Read more

You play a game long enough, especially one as focused and polished as Left 4 Dead, and you naturally start to form an opinion.

So even months away from its release, I may as well declare what some already know: Left 4 Dead is going to be a major fucking hit.

The developers have nailed this thing in every way possible. The pacing. The polish. The guns. The zombies. Even the console port is great.

The Xbox 360 version of Left 4 Dead

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One thing Valve found out early on is that the media--and by that I mean screenshots, video, and the written word--does not do this game justice. It's a bit like watching a space shuttle launch on television, or listening to someone read... Read more

Former Nintendo marketing vice president Perrin Kaplan isn't staying out of the gaming industry, and she's not keeping her mouth shut about lazy parents either.

"Parents who use video games as a babysitter shouldn't have sex to begin with," she proclaimed during a PAX panel on sex and violence in gaming.

The subject of video games remains a controversial subject for parents. While some apparently use video games to babysit their kids, others are more afraid of their children playing mature titles like Grand Theft Auto than watching porn or drinking beer.

Though outspoken on some fronts, Kaplan remained tight-lipped about her future in the field. All she would reveal, as relayed by Wired, is that her company Zebra Partners and its self-described obsession with "connecting brands and consumers" will expand into gaming once her non-compete clause with Nintendo expires in December.

"I have not left the gaming industry for good," she noted. "I love it."

BioWare showed off the Dragon Age: Origins toolset at the Penny Arcade Expo yesterday, and for those of us not at the show, the Canadian developer sent along these screenshots. More details about the toolset shipping with the game can be found here.

Observing a Blizzard fan is a painful experience these days. It's like watching a dog being tortured with a bone that's held just out of reach--for years.

They see screenshots. They watch movies. They even get to play the game. "It looks great," they say, ears perked. "It feels like it could be released tomorrow," they write, tails wagging happily.

And then another year passes. Another set of screenshots. A few more little changes. A couple tweaks here and there. After a while it begins to seem like, if they're lucky, their children might be able to enjoy the game.

The problem is, Blizzard does such a great job of polishing their demonstrations--Diablo III being the most recent example--that we naturally overestimate the state of their projects.

At BlizzCon last year, StarCraft II seemed like it could have shipped by Christmas 2007. Of course, the reality is that we'll be lucky to see it before... Read more

Maybe it's because I preferred astronomy class over biology. Maybe it's because the creature creator has been done to death already. Maybe it's because I just want to screw around with lasers more than larvae.

Whatever the reason, I'm finding that I enjoy the later levels of Spore far more than the early organic stages.

I imagine some people are going to load up Spore and be immediately underwhelmed by the basic nature of the gameplay. Outside of the fun of evolving your race, the initial stages are incredibly straightforward.

In the cell phase, you simply steer your microscopic monster around until it collides with food. You avoid being eaten by other cells. You pick up upgrades, and attach them to your little cell creature. And that's mostly it.

It's beautiful to look at, and entertaining to a point. But in a game about science, the gameplay strangely does not start with a big bang.... Read more

With last year's PAX Omegathon tournament ending in the first reveal of Halo 3's multiplayer, this year's final round was highly anticipated.

"So last year we picked a blockbuster, really," said Tycho to the crowd following a montage of tournament highlights. "This year.. another big blockbuster--from 1987."

The screen went dark, then lit up to a Famicon screen. The game?

Versus Excite Bike, a head-to-head version of the racing classic never released in North America.

As the 8-bit bikers raced on screen, Gabe and Tycho provided color commentary, the crowd oohing and ahhing with each crash.

In the end, the red biker triumphed--Joey Gecko, who won a trip to the Tokyo Game Show and $5,000. The runner-up, going by the handle "Fallout," received a set of custom consoles and a "lifetime supply of shame," according to the Penny Arcade creators.

After greedily hogging a Left 4 Dead (PC, 360) demo station for what seemed like hours today at PAX, I had the chance to pull Valve's Chet Faliszek aside and get his comment on a number of topics related to the upcoming co-op zombie shooter. How different is the Xbox 360 version? Will the game have an all-talk chat option? What's that about a flamethrower? Read on for Faliszek's answers.

On the differences between the Xbox 360 and PC versions:

"I know someone on Shack or Left4Dead411, someone was like, 'Oh you can see they slowed it down on the 360.' Did it seem slower to you? Yeah. We didn't slow it down at all for the 360. Our tech guys, our really smart guys, did a ton of work so that the 360 users see the same things the PC users do.

Everything's the same. When we do split-screen, we do a couple little things just graphically there to smooth things out, but it's still the same speed, same match, same number of zombies. So as we were working on it, guys were like... Read more

Fallout 3 is making a big showing here at PAX. Vault Dweller Survival guides, a giant nuclear test site display with a fully-functional aluminum trailer (left)--and then there's the actual game.

I pulled Bethesda VP Pete Hines and Fallout 3 lead artist Istvan Pely aside to talk about the game, its design, and their reaction to Oblivion comparisons.

Shack: As far as the DLC goes, what type of content should we expect?

Pete Hines: The type is really--we want stuff that's going to be several hours. Not just like a one-off thing, but something like where you can download it and play it for X number of hours. It'll be similar to what we did with... Read more

To the uninitiated, MBS might sound more like a degenerative syndrome than a gameplay mechanic. To StarCraft diehards, however, it's almost as serious.

Multiple Building Selection is a feature that has been debated on every StarCraft forum since StarCraft 2's unveiling at BlizzCon last year. Essentially, MBS allows players to select as many buildings as they like, and then form them into a control group--allowing remote training of units en masse.

The argument against MBS is relatively straightforward: by allowing players to select multiple buildings at once, Blizzard risks simplifying the strategic balance of the game, to the point that the many pro StarCraft gamers will find it uninteresting.

On the show floor at PAX, I learned that Blizzard will be fielding a new StarCraft II build at its upcoming BlizzCon convention, and that MBS will be changed... Read more

Remember those old Fallout manuals? The ones with the taped-over hints and 50s-style dark humor? The original Vault Dweller's Survival Guide?

Bethesda has channeled all of that in the PAX 08 swag hand-out for Fallout 3: a thick, pulpy booklet full of illustrations and informative blurbs. It's basically Bethesda's take on Black Isle's original concept, and boy, is it awesome.

This thing even has an old school map that you can fill in as you explore the world, as well as a few pages of blank note space. It's very cool--and you can check the whole shebang out below.

Remember, the post-apocalyptic RPG hits PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on October 28. While you wait, be sure to check out our new hands-on preview and video walkthrough.

In commemoration of this week's Penny Arcade Expo, developer Hothead Games has released the first batch of screenshots and a piece of artwork from Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode 2.

The downloadable RPG is slated to hit PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 this winter.

BioShock creator Ken Levine began his 2008 PAX keynote address with his story of purchasing a Rome: Total War expansion.

As he related it, Levine was sitting in his car with the Barbarian Invasion expansion in his hands, reading the back of the box, checking out new features. As he was admiring the game, a "pair of dudes" rolled up next to his car and indicated to roll down the window. Levine obliged, at which point one of the dudes said, "Hey loser, what are you looking at, gay porn?"

"And I realize they got this Fabio-looking guy on the cover," said Levine, flashing the box art to crowd laughter.

Rather than issue a cool retort, the 2K Boston designer adopted a nerdy voice, explaining: "No, it's not gay porn, actually it's the expansion pack of the latest Total War."

"All of a sudden I go from being this 40 year old guy coming off this big thing to exactly the same feeling I had when I was 12 years old."

From Atari and D&D to Logan's Run and X-Com, the theme of Levine's address was one of finding peace with your inner-nerd. The former playwright's keynote appropriately consisted of three acts, each chronicling a period of his life and the... Read more

The moonlight was giving the skeletal buildings a ghostly quality when the Super Mutants charged.

I was way off the beaten path this time, on my own out in the cold, dark wasteland. Screw the main quests. Forget the map. The real way to experience the world of a Fallout game is to get lost in it. And the moment I did, I became irreversibly excited for October 28.

The hulking armor-clad humanoids were accompanied by a blubbering beast called a Centaur, which slowly slimed its way toward me. After using the slow-motion VATS system to blow off its slimey head, I was momentarily victorious--until I noticed a Super Mutant holding a minigun in the background, lumbering out of a ruined church.

The thing about the VATS system--the slow motion approximation of Fallout's tactical limb targeting system--is that, while it at first seems to function more like a bullet time system, it fundamentally works on the same level of Fallout's original... Read more

The duo behind webcomic Penny Arcade announced an expansion of the Penny Arcade Expo empire, adding an east coast event which will start in 2010.

Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik told 1UP that the event, set for Boston, will complement instead of replace the current PAX series in Seattle, of which this year's incarnation started today. The Boston event is still in the early planning stages. The two artists / game producers / philanthropists have been "determined to return to the city since delivering a presentation at MIT a few years ago," claims the report.

The announcement is timely, as the video games industry is in a state of transition regarding its expos. The E3 Expo, once king of the hill, has been ... Read more