PAX Prime Game Round-up!

So, I went to PAX, y'all.  I was feeling really anxious about it, because that's what you do if you're me and you're going into some new and scary experience, but it was actually really freaking awesome!  I played video games for four days solid, pretty much, and it was just as amazing as it sounds.  Some of my personal highlights:

• Competing in a Just Dance 4 tournament (although I was so, so ROBBED!  The guy next to me kept blocking my controller :( )
• Playing a ton of amazing indie games
• Playing a ton of non-indie games that I probably never would have played had I not gone to PAX
• Getting free Disney Fantasia stuff!
• Being around nerds and geeks for 4 days
• Seeing some amazing panels focused on diversity in games

I wanted to highlight some of my favorite games from the weekend.

My #1 favorite game I played was Monster Loves You.

This game is so freaking adorable, I can't even stand it!  I thought my heart would explode right in the middle of the convention, it was so cute!  You play a monster, starting from hatching out of your egg and joining the little protozoa monsters, all the way through monster adulthood.  I had to put the iPad down during adolescence because I couldn't take it another second.  My heart!  

As you go through your monster life, situations come up that require you to make a decision.  How you act forms your monster's personality through a handful of different metrics.  My monster was brave and kind and not very ferocious (except when he chose to fight off a snake to save his friends!)  

You can purchase this game on Steam at http://store.steampowered.com/app/226740/ for $9.99.  It's totally worth every penny!  

Neverending Nightmares had too long of a line for me to play the demo, but I downloaded it once I got home and it was just as amazing as I had hoped it would be!  

This is the complete opposite of Monster Loves You - it's an extremely creepy psychological horror game that is actually based off of the nightmares of the creator.  Although the demo is rough and not too long, it still had me jumping in my seat a couple of times, and I had trouble shaking the creepiness for quite awhile afterwards.  It's currently doing a Kickstarter to get the funds to finish creating it - please contribute!

One game that didn't even have a demo, but looks so zany it can't be anything but awesome is Hello Hero.  It's a Facebook and mobile game that's already quite popular in Korea, but is slated to be released soon in the US.  This caught my eye because they had a giant dancing cactus that you could get your picture taken with at their booth, as well as many other cute characters that you can play.  It's just a turn-based RPG, but it looks so adorable, that I honestly don't care that much that the gameplay might be boring.  Check out this trailer video:

Those are just a few of the amazing games that I played last weekend.  Be prepared for more game reviews to come!  Woot!