But that's a problem easily solved, and the PA folks are all over it.

The bigger problem, as I see it, is in the expo's name and its association with Penny Arcade.

Penny Arcade Expo has the potential, the very likely potential, to become the one preeminent video game show in the country. It has the exuberant backing of developers and publishers, it has more than enough willing participants to go around and it has the blessing of the many folks who cover the gaming industry for a living.

But what it doesn't have is a neutral jumping off point. PAX has the words Penny Arcade in the title and while for me, and tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people like me, that's a bonus, there are still lots of people out there who hate the strip, the people associated with it and anything whatsoever that has to do with Penny Arcade, Gabe, Tycho and, yes, even Fruit Fucker.

What this means is that they have a fractured potential audience. While most PAX attendees are unified by their love of gaming, they're more unified by their love of Penny Arcade. Sadly I think that means the show's potential audience will remain fractured as long as Penny Arcade is the central theme, preventing PAX from becoming the Games Convention or Tokyo Game Show of the United States.

There are some solutions. I think that it would be easy enough, especially with a second, east coast, PAX looming a few years away, to just change the name of the show and let it grow into its own entity. Another option, presented to me by one of many industry types I talked to about this during the show, is to just officially rename the show PAX. In other words remove the meaning behind the acronym and have it take on a meaning of its own. In a few decades, maybe just a few years, people would wonder what PAX stood for and why the show is called that.

While most of the people I spoke to at the show eventually came around to my way of thinking, acknowledging, no matter how grudgingly, that yes there are PA haters out there and nothing will ever get them to the show, I do wonder how true that really is.

How many among you didn't attend PAX strictly because it's the PENNY ARCADE expo as opposed to a video game expo? How many of you would have gone if it was called something else?

What I think everyone can agree on is that the U.S. needs a single video game show for the public, and not the many that now litter the gaming landscape. We need a TGS, a Leipzig. The real question is will E3 get it's act together and fill that shrinking void or will a show like PAX become the show to rule them all.

Before I got my turn playing the game, the TopWare Interactive rep manning the booth explained to me that X-Blades had added story and RPG elements to the original game, but the hands on time I spent was all about the action. After waiting what seemed like an eternity the guy before me finished playing, cleaned up his area, and left me to my own devices.

My device of choice was the Xbox 360 controller, hooked up to the PC version of the game. I started off in a rather nondescript rocky corridor without any sort of explanation, so I went with instinct and began killing everything in sight.

The game essentially plays like a poor man's Devil May Cry. You've got your blades for close combat, your gun for taking out those annoying bastards who materialize in the air 10 feet above you, and a few spells at your disposal to keep things interesting.

I was a bit disappointed, really. Though Ayumi is animated quite well the action fell a bit flat, with no real sense of impact. Rather than feeling like I was taking down hordes of enemies, I felt as if I was swinging my weapons and there just happened to be relatively insubstantial monsters nearby. What's worse, the game follows the old formula of running into a room, room seals, kill monsters, room unseals. Seems a bit primitive in this day and age. Block the path with debris that the last dying monster smashes free, or go the Gauntlet route and make the enemies the wall...just don't fall back on the old mystical forces path-blocking mechanic.

Ayumi still looks lovely, as do the environments she is running through and the foes she disperses (to a lesser degree), but I just didn't quite get the feeling she was actually there, carving her way through the armies of darkness. The style is definitely there, but the substance is a bit lacking. Damn anime women, always messing with my emotions.

Most interesting was the new Berserk features that Insomniac will be integrating into multiplayer. If you've played Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the new system is similar to that game's "Perks" feature.

Insomniac is ensuring that your progression through Resistance 2, whether it be in competitive multiplayer or coop, will provide constant reward. You'll be racking up experience points for just about everything you do in game. Fire a bullet, get some XP. Kill an opponent get some XP. Get enough in a round of multiplayer and you'll be able to initiate one of your Berserks.

These special attributes include things like invisibility, the ability to see through walls or a defensive aura that looks somewhat like the bubble shield from Halo 3 on a team-based scale. Schneider showed all these Berserks in action, giving us over the top examples of each being used.

In one, we watched a pre-taped attack on a group of human soldiers, each of whom had a Chimeran enemy sneak up behind them, then eliminate them while cloaked in a Predator-like invisibility shield. In another, we saw team member take advantage of the X-ray vision, firing sticky bomb rounds via the Magnum's secondary fire and blowing up his opponent without ever having actually seen him in person. Pretty snazzy.

The XP feed will also bring with in non-playable perks, as Insomniac is planning to bring over 160 medals, Trophies and ribbons to players of Resistance 2, maximizing bragging rights.

Finally, Schneider showed us R2's newest weapon reveal, the Splicer. Similar in style to a gun we saw in Dead Space, it uses a guided buzzsaw to rip enemies apart. Its primary firing mode delivers ricocheting saw blades, but its alt-fire gives one maximum goring potential, as the hovering blade can be moved around a body for extreme gibbage.

We're definitely looking forward to trying all this stuff out for ourselves, hopefully when that private Resistance 2 beta goes public and an entry key magically shows up in our inbox. It's to the left of every page on Kotaku, my good Insomniac friends, in case you lost the e-mail.

The game starts out with the protagonist Charles Deckard at a museum, about to insert a mystical key into a mystical box...well, the magical box. The one you don't want to open? Yeah, he opens it, and in return it brands his hand with a mystic rune and unleashes doom upon the human race as we know it. It's a damn good thing that box came with that branding featuring, allowing the bearer to absorb mystical energy in order to heal himself, hurt mythical beasts, and solve puzzles, because otherwise we'd be completely screwed. Let's hear it for escape clauses!

Anyway, as soon as you are branded the museum begins to shake and break, fires breaking out, the earth heaving, tossing passersby to their deaths, fire and brimstone, dogs and cats, living together, etc. Your character gains some basic knowledge about his powers as he escapes while everything goes to hell around him. It's a common FPS mechanic...essentially placing you in the middle of a disaster movie where you can't get hurt, but it's done really well.

Things get even more exciting when you exit the museum, as we see some magnificent cinematics that effectively amount to the entirety of New York City doing the wave, streets, cars, people, and all as a wave of otherworldly energy floods the surroundings. Streets crack, people run screaming, and then the griffons show up and start tossing cars about.

You navigate a maze of cars, new paths opening as the griffons toss vehicles about as if they were really big birds tossing about cars, until you get to a place where you are completely stuck. Then some seriously awesome shit goes down.

Suddenly cars and wreckage get sucking into this swirling vortex, slowly coalescing into a massive giant built from spare parts, easily the size of the skyscraper he then walks through, opening up your new path.

From there things move into more familiar puzzle-solving FPS ground, opening valves to put out fires as you make your way towards the subway system, hoping to find a way to escape the city. My last moments with the game were spent shooting at fire-spitting lava dogs in the ruined subway tunnels of New York. Th guy waiting in line for the game behind me had moved from intently staring to uncomfortably rubbing against me, so I fled.

So the first 15 minutes of the game hooked me. I am dying to see what else happens over the course of the game now. Gameplay was fast and smooth, though I didn't get a chance to play enough to determine if I like the combat yet or not. So far it's just been standard pistol fare, so I've know idea what happens when the big guns come out.

Still, I can assure you that Legendary did manage to live up to the name several times during my brief encounter. I'm looking forward to playing more when I am not surrounded by touchy Germans.

We've already written about the driving game inspired character control — the R2 button moves her forward, with the left analog steering her head and shoulders — so let's focus on how everything else is done.

After discussing how the character walks, Cage showed us how to interact with objects. Outside of the residence that the protagonist was investigating were a pair of metal trashcans and a mailbox. Both could be opened with the right analog stick, using forward and back motions that translated to on-screen movement. Pulling back on the stick fully opened the mailbox door fully, pushing it forward closed it. You may have seen this interactivity showcased in the game's Games Convention trailer, with the character opening a refrigerator with a sweeping arc of the right analog stick.

Heading up to the house's front door, a context sensitive control scheme appeared in the bottom right corner, giving us two options — knock or ring the doorbell. Both could done repeatedly, with a side to side motion of the right stick.

Following that, another context sensitive control option became available, letting the player call out to whomever might be inside. This was done with SIXAXIS control, giving us three dialogue options. This could be done in concert with the knocking/doorbell-ringing for maximum annoyance to whomever might be at home.

As the character walked around the house's right side, we encountered a barrel. It wasn't of the exploding type, just a regular, non-combustible barrel that Cage wanted to use as a step. Pushing the object over with the square button, his controlling assistant pushed it forward with a thrust forward of the SIXAXIS. To right it again, he hit the square button.

Heavy Rain also gives players access to internal dialogue. Using the L1 button, we can listen to the main character's thoughts, giving players helpful clues about how to progress or simply to learn her opinion about the pros and cons of the current situation. There were two options when deciding whether to break and enter the house, one "daring", one "cautious."

Much of what we saw in the house was controlled via these methods, with brief Quick Time Events requiring randomized button presses. One, triggered by bumping into an overturned bottle, simply required a quick push of the triangle button.

Perhaps the most interesting implementation of the PlayStation 3 controller was during one of the stealth-action sequences. Forced to hide from the killer during the demo, the protagonist sneaked behind an open door, something that required the player hold X, then the R1 button, then the triangle button.

Another version of this sort of finger Twister game occurred when she sought shelter in a large wardrobe, requiring four consecutive button presses. We didn't actually see anyone from Quantic Dream fail at this, but it added a nice bit of tension to the scene.

Some of these control methods have been featured in Quantic Dream's previous games, but Heavy Rain looks to bring them all together into a cohesive package that feels thoroughly well implemented. We definitely look forward to going hands-on with the PlayStation 3 controller whenever Sony decides that's something it wants us to do.

After suffering through the rather mundane Wii-mote waggling "party" game pictured — it involved four Rabbids in a whack-duel to the death armed with toilet plungers — we plopped down on the balance board, controllers in hand.

The butt steering mechanics worked pretty well, as we slalomed down a slight grade, leaning left and right to steer our livestock, occasionally jumping off ramps to pull off cattle tricks. These were simply two-handed jerks of the remote and nunchuk. It was good for a laugh.

And if that's all you need from your Wii software, the next Rayman Raving Rabbids entry will probably fit the bill. The balance board isn't required, but will probably help make the fifty-ish mini-games feel that much more varied.

The concept of yet another mini-game collection being hastily brought to the Wii may not light a fire under you, but at least Ubisoft is putting some effort into Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party's presentation. The television theme is well implemented via micro-games within mini-games based on commercial breaks. Wii waggling in short bursts with friends and family, should that be up your alley, looks to be well represented here.

And we'll leave it at that.

When the demo kicks off, you get to choose between five different characters, the Seraphim, Shadow Warrior, High Elf, Dryad, and Temple Guardian. While three of them are relatively attractive women, I instead went with the Temple Guardian, since he looked a bit like an undead robot Anubis, Egyptian god of the living impaired.

Upon selecting my avatar, I was dropped in the middle of a small village, surrounded by folks with various icons over their heads. Vendors, crafters, and...AHA! Someone with a question mark over their head. I had managed to find a quest giver. This was going to be easy!

Turns out the quest giver wanted me to spriegel the schmitzel wertzen or something to that effect, which seemed to indicate to me that he wanted me to wander off into the woods and kill many, many wolves. Wolves are the rats of the isometric action RPG. My undead dogman came with a scepter for melee attacks, as device that seemed to shoot lasers when enemies were out of melee range, and a right mouse button attack that called forth a swirling mass of ether that would then shoot forth a glowing tendril, damaging the enemy. From the moment I discovered it, every enemy got the swirly gate treatment. You can't go back to regular melee attacks after delivering an ethereal energy enema to a mutated wolf.

After the wolves came a gaggle of human bandits, who went down relatively easily. Having no real direction, I wandered randomly throughout the countryside after that, killing more wolves, more bandits, and getting frustrated that I couldn't kill the rabbits or cows. You cannot put a cow into an action RPG and then not let me kill it. If Sacred 2 bombs completely, mark my words – it was because of the cow issue.

Towards the end of my 10 minutes of pretending to read German proficiently I ran into another quest giver, who wound up following me around everywhere I went. I guess he wanted me to do something, and apparently that something didn't involve killing wolves, bandits, or standing in a field bitching about cows. At least I found it fulfilling.

Abortive cow tipping attempts aside, the game is very pretty to look at no matter how close you zoom into your character, combat is exactly what you've come to expect from this particular RPG sub-genre, and was quite capable. The voice acting needed some work, but it's nothing that switching to a language I can actually comprehend wouldn't fix.

Once my 10 minutes was up the PC restarted the demo automatically, and a nice woman directed me towards the exit, leaving me with these words of wisdom: “If you seek buy game, click on tombstones. So funny!”

Well at least she tried.

According to a new release from the Games Convention hosts, the vast majority of those surveyed at the show think the show should stay in Leipzig. A competing show, known as Games Con, is planned to hit Cologne (Köln) around the same time, making for a very confusing split.

Regardless of who's doing what and where, we'll be there... somewhere next Summer covering the sausage beat (and maybe playing a game or two).

Final report: Games Industry Staying in Leipzig for 2009 [Leipziger Messe]

Chris Corey, executive producer for Red Alert 3, says that McCarthy is a "badass" Tanya, that's she's more than capable to tackle the role of the special ops commando. After co-piloting a two-player coop demo of the PC version of the real-time strategy game, Corey tried to allay fan fears that the former Playboy Playmate wasn't ready to fill the tank top. Corey sounded pretty enthused to have her on board.

Hey, if they're happy, I'm happy.

We got one of those non-answers that was very telling. "We haven't announced anything about what will be playable at Blizzcon," a Blizzard rep told us. Inconclusive, yes, but delivered with one of those smiles that one frustratingly can't print.

It sure sounds like Blizzard is working to bring a playable copy of Diablo III to BlizzCon this year, but we realize that things can change at the last minute. However, if you're going to the 'Con in Anaheim this year, don't be surprised if you're knee deep in hellspawn and rainbows all weekend.

Character Creation: My first stop was character creation. The team had already generated pre-made characters for the combat walkthrough, but you can't truly know an MMO until you've crafted the shoes you plan on walking a mile in. While Spellborn only has two races – the humans and the demonic daevi, the variations you can generate are nearly limitless. The body sliders in this game are not screwing around. Hitting the random button a few dozen times led to countless varieties of humans and daevi – long and lithe, grossly overweight, short and stumpy – anything is possible here.

Next you can select your clothing, which means a great deal more in Spellborn than most other MMO games. Clothing in the game has no stats, with attributes added by way of mystical sigils, so you never need to change your clothes if you don't want to, maintaining your own unique look throughout the length of the game. You can choose to be a mage in full armor, or a warrior wearing nothing but a codpiece, and people will be able to identify you by your particular style.

Finally you choose your archetype – warrior, spellcaster, or rogue, each having three disciplines they can focus in. I would have further explored character creation, but this demonstration wasn't about navigating menus. It was all about ...

Combat: This is where Spellborn really sets itself apart. Instead of clicking on an enemy and hitting the attack button, players actively target their enemies using the mouse cursor. If the enemies move, you need to follow. If you want to dodge, move out of the way of their attacks. If you are firing a bow at the caster in the back of an enemy group, make damn sure there aren't any mobs behind him, cause a miss with a ranged attack could very well strike another mob, pulling a whole other group down upon your head.

Spellborn also features a unique way to organize your combat skills as well. Dubbed the skilldeck, it consists of five rotating slots, in which you can place six skills each. It's up to the player to place six skills in any single slot that compliment each other, creating combos and effects that stack or amplify damage. As you fight, you can hit the 1 through 5 keys to make a slot active, and left clicking activates them in order. Think of it as five different revolvers with highly specialized bullets.

The warrior that the team provided me came complete with a melee slot that stacked attacks with bleed effects, a debuff slot that basically leeched life from our enemies, and a ranged slot, useful for taking out casters, especially with enemies as smart as these.

They're Thinking: In the combat demo I played through, my spellcaster companion and I faced groups of three mobs, generally consisting of a rogue, a warrior, and a spellcaster each. When we engaged in combat, the warrior and rogue immediately closed, blocking our path to the mage, forcing us to dodge around them to take him out with ranged attacks. If we tried to charge the caster, he backpedaled while the group's rogue slipped behind us to deal more damage and the warrior attempted to stay in our way. The enemy groups basically react like an adventuring party themselves. They'll attempt to dodge, slow you down, or even position themselves so a miscast spell will aggro other groups, forcing you to keep moving in order to avoid adds.

While we only fought human enemies in the demo, the team did mention that packs of wild animals had their own advanced pack behavior as well.

It took a little bit of getting used to, but soon I mastered the combat system, longing to get into my skills to see what combos I could create on the skilldeck, but we were on a timetable here and had to keep moving.

Quests: Spellborn has plenty of quests, each one mired in the story of the area you are in or the NPC you are helping at the time. You will find fetch quests, FedEx quests, and kill X number of mobs quests, but each one will have an underlying reason behind it. If you're interested in game lore, Spellborn is completely drenched in it.

The NPC I was currently assisting sent us off on a quest to set fire to an enemy commander's tent, forcing him out in the open in order to separate his life from his meaty bits. My mage co-pilot and I managed to take out several patrolling groups in no time flat, and I took out the commander on my own while she waited to recharge. Obviously I had gotten the hang of things, so it was time to move on to something more challenging.

Don't Touch The Egg: One last task lay ahead of me. The team teleported me onto a shard ship - a special sort of craft used to navigate the magical energies that suspend the shattered remains of a planet – where an ominous looking purple egg was sitting on deck, ignored by the crew. I noticed the slight grins on the faces around me as I clicked on the egg, only to be swarmed by various creatures that might not have defied description had I been paying less attention to staying alive. As this was a developer trap for unwary journalistic types, I died rather quickly.

What Lies Hidden: The tag line for The Chronicles of Spellborn is “What lies hidden must be found...”, and it applies just as readily to the game itself as it does the storyline. Hidden beneath the unique art direction, intriguing characters and flashy spell effects is an MMORPG that doesn't play quite like anything I've seen before.

The rules haven't changed for the hi-def remake of Lode Runner. Collect gold nuggets, using your platforming wits and your rock-crushing gun to negotiate each maze. Avoid getting killed. That's it. It's still a 2D puzzle platformer with a digging mechanic that will probably seem archaic to those ignorant to Lode Runner's classic gameplay, just in higher resolution.

And that's really the only problem. Lode Runner looks and plays just fine, a serviceable 3D coat of paint applied to the exact same game play you might just go mental for. It doesn't do anything fancy with the formula, a la Galaga Legions.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to take the multiplayer modes for a test drive, as the Games Conventioneers were far too interested in easy access to Guitar Hero World Tour.

It really comes down to this — if you adore Lode Runner, here's some more. If you don't know what a Lode Runner is — or you're wisely concerned about how well the Xbox 360's D-pad will suffice — just wait for the demo.

Having spent considerable time with the Terran and Protoss at BlizzCon last year — and no access to the Zerg at Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational — I thought it might be fun to take out my old favorite class for a spin.

As you might expect, there was a wait, one that gave me ample opportunity to watch the Zerg in action. Most noticeable was the lovely look of the Creep, the purplish goo that the hivemind race builds upon. It has a constant visual pulse to it, not something that distracts when one actually gets one's hands on the keyboard and mouse.

That said, the Zerg were probably the hardest race to easily distinguish from their surroundings. Hopefully that's just due to inexperience and unfamiliarity with the new models, but the move to 3D and a higher resolution does make it a bit more difficult to pick out units.

We were limited to 15 minute gameplay sessions, so there wasn't exactly time for deep experimentation with the Zerg tech tree. We kept it pretty simple, building Zerglings and Roaches, fellow ground attacker, while tweaking them at the Evolution Chamber. Zerglings felt more like cannon fodder than ever before, as Protoss and Terrans laid waste to clusters of two dozen without too much effort.

Since we haven't been keeping up with the new Zerg units as much as we should, we were pleasantly surprised to get our hands on the Spine Crawlers. These replacements for the Sunken Colonies can be uprooted and relocated anywhere on the Creep, should you need to restructure your base defense. Very cool.

The Corruptor and Queen are two other early available units, requiring basic structures to build. Unfortunately, we didn't really get to take advantage of them that much, as the Corruptors are anti-aircraft units, and the AI hit us with mostly ground-based attacks.

What was kind of surprising was how far one had to progress to whip up a couple Hydralisks and make them useful. The unit had always felt a little overpowered in the original StarCraft, but Blizzard looks to be limiting their effectiveness by way of high cost, long tech progression and a more widely spread tech tree.

In fact, the entire tech tree feels that way, as upgrades for units are peppered throughout a wider range of structures and building upgrades. It's all going to take some time getting used to, as the Zerg felt much more straightforward in their previous incarnation.

After finally getting our mitts on the Zerg, we're more excited than ever about StarCraft II. We simply can't wait to annoy you via Battle.net with our crushing waves of Zerglings.

So, happy anniversary Wipeout HD! We got you the traditional gift — hands-on impressions!

The presentation has received a noticeable amount of polish over the past year, with a more informative heads up display, slick new menus, a feature rich photo mode and additional graphical effects. Lighting and shadows look softer and more realistic, with ships more layered in sci-fi eye-candy than before.

When we played Wipeout HD at the previous Games Convention, we were limited to just a few racing teams and tracks. This year, we had access to the first portion of the campaign mode, with a broader selection of vehicles and paint jobs.

The campaign is stuffed with opportunities to win medals, with challenges based on lonely time trials — full race or a single lap — and competitive races against a line-up of CPU opponents.

Splitscreen is also in, with both horizontal and vertical layouts that should make every Wipeout fan happy.

Gameplay was largely the same, given that the Wipeout HD is a remake. That said, the game feels like more of a full-fledged release, now that it's been given additional time in the incubator. It's looking like it's going to be worth the wait.

Clone Wars is of course the new lightsaber fighting game for the Nintendo Wii, heading our way this holiday season. It follows the story and adapts the art style of the major motion picture and television series, with a plethora of animated Jedi ready to smack eachother with glowy sticks. It's what they do.

Maybe it was just the display on the show floor, but the game's graphics seemed a great deal more muddy than I remembered from the demo I watched at E3 last month. Perhaps I was just too far away then, because Anakin and friends are looking very rough.

The duel was fought between me, playing dashing young cardboard cutout Anakin Skywalker, versus German brat-boy as (inset name here), one of the new characters introduced in the movie. I studied my moves, figured out how to block and perform jumping attacks, and then proceeded to get barely a hit in as Kid Deutschland went to town on me.

I suppose you can't call it button mashing. Stick wiggling? Perhaps too suggestive, but it certainly fits. The characters certainly animated well as he did the dance of death on Anakin's head, but even a well-choereagraphed dance of death still results in death.

Many simultaneous hits led to many saber locks...moments when the two combatants lock lightsticks and have to perform various feats to overwhelm their opponent. Some required each player to move their Wii remote in certain directions, with the player with the most matches at the end of the sequence winning, while others seemed to simply award whoever slashed first once a timer counted down from 3. These moments are supposed to add to the drama but only serve to remind me of that time Vader and Ben Kenobi were fighting and then paused to count to three for, which never actually happened.

The first round ended with my opponent smashing me through a metal grating into a rancor pit below, and the second round consisted of the two of us fighting near an angry rancor, engaging in at least three drama-inducing saber locks before he put me out of my misery for good.

From what I experienced, Star Wars: Clone Wars gets relatively close to the look of the new animation, relatively close to portraying the drama of a lightsaber duel between Jedi masters, but I cannot help but imagine how much better the game would have been had it been able to receive the benefit of Nintendo's new 1::1 motion control doohickey. I think I'll keep waiting a bit longer for the lightsaber game we've all been waiting for.

Oh, and incidentally the German kid was actually extremely courteous and polite about the whole thing, which somehow made it worse.

Best PC Game: Spore

Best 360 Game: Mirror's Edge

Best PSP Game: Resistance: Retribution

Best PS3 Game: LittleBigPlanet

Best Wii Game: Skate It

Best DS Game: Sonic Chronicles (or, its more awesome German name, SONIC CHRONICLES: Die Dunkle Bruderschaft)

Best Mobile Game: Pro Evo 2009

Best Online Game: Warhammer Online

Best Hardware: PlayTV

Best PS2 Game: "As there were too few entrants, no award was made in this category".