This week Shawn, Elysium, Cory and Julian record the show live at PAX in front of an audience of amazing GWJ community members. Momgamer also sets us straight on the importance of PAX.

Late last week I posted about some of my concerns coming into PAX Prime. I assumed that upon returning from the land of Starbucks, drizzle and exactly one legendary musician, namely Jimi Hendrix, I would be backtracking on my uncertainties and actively singing the praises of the Expo. The reality is, it turns out, more complicated. As I go back and look at what I wrote last Thursday, I actually don't feel like my reticence was unfounded.

Last week PAX was an unknown quantity that seemed somewhat lost in the middle-ground between major media expo and community driven fan event. This week, my feeling on the matter has changed not one iota. In fact, I would dare say that PAX doesn't exactly know what it is right now. There is the PAX of the console freeplay rooms, the PAX of star-driven panels, the PAX of a giant LAN party, the PAX of endless board games, the PAX of meet and greets away from the show, and of course the PAX of the convention floor. Each one has a totally different vibe, and they all seem loosely connected by the veins and arteries of twisting hallways without ever quite resolving into a unified organism.

I loved the community driven events, and meeting new GWJers around what seemed like every corner is a joy I genuinely treasure. If you think we have a cool community here online, just wait until you put a bunch of us in a room together and start playing board games and Rock Band. I'll just say, if you ever have the chance, put it on your calendar.

That said, some of the other elements of the show -- the actual convention hall and the long lines for panels, for example -- didn't really resolve in the same way for me. I was constantly surprised to find myself going from feeling perfectly at home to suddenly quite out of place. Focus on the people of PAX, from Enforcers to the vast majority of very cool gamers, and it is one thing. Focus on the event itself, however, and it suddenly seems indistinct.

I realize I am being cryptic, and that's why this will be a short piece. I'm not sure I can come to a complete thought on PAX so close to it. I find myself wishing I had attended when it was much smaller, because I think the more something like this grows, the greater the risk that it loses its soul. Ultimately, I have no regrets for going and I walk away with treasured memories. Despite what other reservations I may still hold about the event, that's more than enough for me. For now.

After an amazing weekend in Seattle at PAX and more specifically hanging out with a few dozen of my new closest friends, it's nice to sit in a familiar chair and soak it all in. I still haven't totally synthesized how I feel about the primary event. There's a lot about it I liked, and a number of other things that still haven't quite jived with me. Soon I'll have more to say on that.

For now, I turn my attention to the direct week ahead, and to RUSE which is my choice for Game of the Week. This was one not so long ago that was completely off my radar for reasons that have been revisited enough that I don't even want to talk about it again. That said, there's a lot of good games to be paying attention to this first full week of September, games like NHL 11, HAWX 2, Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, Kingdom Hearts, Birth by Sleep and more.

That's a pretty cool release list. Back to gaming!

A while back on Act Casual, we featured a little title called Grow Cube, by developer “On” at EyeMaze. The game was simple to play: Click the ten boxes in an order of your choosing, and observe the results and how your selections interplay with your previous selections. Rather simple, but fun in its own way. It’s a pretty straightforwardly casual title.

Now we bring you a new game, also by On: Grow Valley. In many ways, it’s the same game: Click the seven buttons in the order of your choosing. Watch as the results unfold. Try again with a new order. The mechanics aren’t very complicated, but the interplay between each of the seven options is interesting and the feedback can be fun to observe. You could sit down with a notepad and some free time to figure out the optimal order if you’d like, I suppose.

And at this point, given that description, you might be wondering why I’d feature this at all. It’s not just that this is a nice refinement on the Grow series, mere quantum leap though it may be. So here it is: On has added a more intelligible theme to the possible actions in this and the most recent predecessor, Grow Island. Namely, the new idea isn’t just wacky actions interacting, but now themed actions based on a university curriculum in science and engineering. Previous ones were fun, but a bit too “wacky” for me, in a way that conjured feelings of cat-hair mustaches. And Grow Valley’s refinement of that theme actually makes you think about the possibilities in specialized departments working together, rather than making you think about whether the pot and the bricks will somehow work together to make your Grow Tower even taller.

If you do come up with the optimal solution or another interesting combination (There's at least one Easter egg.), let us know! We could discuss whether it seems a worthwhile model of a curriculum, and whether the dynamic between options makes sense to you.

Why you should play this: The Grow series is growing up, becoming more than a fun time waster and now encouraging players to think about how groups can work together. Sure, this isn’t a new theme—especially not in the context of Japanese media—but it’s a respectable theme and a nice step forward for the series.

IndieCade Side note: Be sure to check out the recently released list of the 32 IndieCade 2010 Finalists. You may notice a few familiar titles!

I don’t really, fully understand what I am supposed to do this weekend at PAX. I have a vague notion that there will be both cool stuff and people there, and that sitting in on a panel or two is a recommended idea, but for the most part I am going out there unprepared, and as a result more than a little skittish about the whole thing.

I’m usually pretty comfortable in a convention setting. I’ve walked into a handful of E3s, a clear agenda clutched in my tight, gamer grip; eyes ready to absorb the glamour and glitz with the kind of unrestrained, total abandon that is the hallmark of the objective games journalist. I have stoutly walked into Los Angeles time and again like I owned the place, a bearded force of nature in an E3 that had forgotten to equip its nature resist gear before the encounter.

PAX feels different. Squishier for lack of a better word. A convention built less on orchestrated media hype and more on the bonds of community. To be honest, this community thing is exactly where I’ve long had the most difficulty finding my comfort zone. Normally I am a level 80 shmoozer, at least in business settings where everyone pretty much agrees to put an entirely false personal on, so it feels really unusual to be nervous about PAX, but there it is. An unknown quantity.

This week Shawn, Elysium, Cory and Lara talk about expectations and how they impact our play experience.

Penny Arcade Expo is on its way. If you're joining us and the 60,000 or so of your odder fellows in downtown Seattle over Labor Day weekend, you've got a great time in store.

We've done our homework, and we've got info to help you make the most of your trip.

GWJ is going to be on hand in full force.

• Check the schedule for our luminaries showing up as panel guests. Julian Murdoch will be at Rookie Years: Stories from First Projects on Sunday from 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM at the Serpent Theatre. Several of the podcast crew will be running around, too, so keep an eye out.
• The Official GWJ Slap and Tickle will be held on Saturday, September 4th at the Rock Bottom Brewery. See this thread for details, and I hope to see you all there.
• There are unofficial gatherings, too—peruse the forums and come hang out!
• You fellow forum-goers are going to be all over, and to make it easier to find each other, we have chosen a symbol to identify ourselves—Stan! Here’s a link to Stan in all his radiant, 300dpi glory for your printing pleasure. If you forget or can’t print it or whatever, I will also be printing out 100 blank ones to bring with me and I have real badge clips this year so we don’t have to punt. Find Momgamer or Amoebic for one and sport your Stan in style!

Metroid: Other M for the Wii is an easy pick for game of the week, though the critical response to the latest Samus adventure may be a bit more diverse than the grand and unrelenting praise we are accustomed to seeing. Team Ninja has apparently taken some license that traditionalists may take some issue with, particularly in the characterization of the lead character. It may be worth a look through a few reviews before making a snap buying decision.

Also of note this week, Valkyria Chronicles 2 comes to the PSP from faraway shores. You know, I make fun of the PSP from time to time, but looking at the broad history of the platform, there are a lot of hardcore-gamer titles on this system that you really can't get easily almost anywhere else.

Find the full release list for the week below.

Pyro went and hopped on a plane at the last minute this morning, waving happily and saying something about "suckers." In a panic, I found e7.

Now, I'm not mad at Allen "PyromanFO" Cook for ditching us. In fact, it gave me a chance to play a game that is delightfully like jumping on a water bed full of Jell-O, or one of those cartoon naked women from Monty Python cartoons. (No, I'm not going to link them here.) See, as a child, I didn't really get to hang around much with the types of people who had water beds, and e7 gives me a chance to combine my lifelong fantasy of jumping on a water bed with my other fantasy of hurling myself through the air at robots to make them explode.

You push arrow keys to either side to slide along and hold down to stretch the squishy ground until you release and sail haphazardly through the air. There's with some sort of narrative to it about seeking out and destroying a bomb pointed at Earth. (Sure, that makes it sound more like a rocket than a bomb, and sure, you'd think that we earthlings could come up with something better than an unarmed hockey puck to save our planet) But I wasn't there to save anything. I was there to bounce.

And it was delightful.

Up until section 14G, that is. There's a massive difficulty spike there, and rather than keep battling the robot phallus you see in the screengrab, I figured I'd let you all try it out, at least to get a shot at the fun mechanics before the work day ends.

Why You Should Check This Out: I know there's a story and stuff, and the art's neat and there's some atmosphere, but it's also a fun little mechanic that could as easily be repackaged as Hockey Puck's Adventures In Spongy Trampoline Land. That would be a much less frustrating game, I bet, too.

Anyway, you Goodjers are probably all better at platform and jumping mechanics than I am, so maybe you can play it and tell me how great the story is when you easily beat it. Doesn't that sound fun?