PAX: Brutal President-On-President Action!
Friday, August 26, 2011
I didn’t go to PAX to play the same old games everybody else is playing. Mostly because I’m pretty terrible at video games and I’d make a fool of myself in front of a large group of people. But also because I crave the new, the novel, the exciting. As I scanned the exhibition hall at PAX, seeking out that fresh thrill, a pair of cartoon muttonchops beckoned to me from a video screen. Could it be…? Was it…? It was! 21st President Chester A. Arthur! What’s a third-tier caretaker president like you doing in a place like this?
Turns out virtual Chet was starring in a new iPad/iPhone app game called Uncle Slam: President vs. President. Woot writer Sean Adams and I sat down to an iPad and squared off. Since I couldn’t play my distant relation James Buchanan – whose consensus reputation as a very bad president I choose to interpret as “bad as in ‘bad-ass'” – I settled for the next-worst thing, Millard Fillmore, unlucky #13. Sean took his namesake John Adams. It was the battle history has been waiting for.
Unfortunately the game was fairly lame. I feel bad saying it. It’s a cute idea and everything. But the controls weren’t at all responsive, the combat options were limited even by iPad app standards, and neither Shawn, nor I, nor any of the other players playing the demo at the booth seemed to understand why their chosen presidents didn’t seem to be doing what the players wanted them to do.
Not that I let any of that deprive me of the satisfaction of victory. Eat canvas, Adams – you just got Millarded!
I really wanted to like this game, but the clumsy gameplay (and liberal use of Comic Sans) had me voting for impeachment. While the concept behind Uncle Slam may be worthy of a James Monroe or Dwight Eisenhower, but the execution is more at the level of a Warren G. Harding.
Stay tuned for more PAX coverage on the Woot blog this weekend, including an exclusive first look at Walter Mondale: Mechacommando.
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