Formerly known as True Crime: Hong Kong, Sleeping Dogs was showcased at the SquareEnix booth on the show floor this weekend at PAX East. I got a chance to sit down with some of the people who worked on the game, and learn more about this open world crime drama.

Based loosely on Infernal Affairs, Sleeping Dogs takes place in modern-day Hong Kong, and revolves around police officer Wei Shen who goes undercover to take down a Triad organization. The developers I spoke with emphasized that the game will be very serious, with emphasis on a dramatic storyline.

On the outside, Sleeping Dogs may look like Grand Theft Auto set in Hong Kong. But they’ve really taken their time to make sure that while this game is very much a sandbox, it’s not a reskinned GTA clone. I got to check out a demo of a racing mission in the game, and the driving system is very precise. I didn’t feel like I was flying all over the road, and since several developers of Need for Speed had a hand in creating Sleeping Dogs, it makes sense that the driving be top notch.

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PAX East rapidly approaches, which means you’re probably starting your packing list right about now. And whether you’re a PAX East veteran or attending for the first time, it may be tricky, downright overwhelming even, figuring out exactly what to bring with you.

Well, allow me to pack for you. Here are some things you must absolutely bring with you this weekend. This stuff, and underwear. You may need underwear.

Portable gaming device

Believe me, whether you’re waiting in line to play a game on the floor, sitting and waiting for a panel to start, or killing time in the bathroom line, you’re going to want a portable gaming system with you.

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Lawnmower Challenge, another selection for this year’s Boston Indie Showcase at PAX East, has done something interesting: it’s taken a chore that most consider a sweaty nuisance, and turned it into a mind-bending puzzle game.

In Lawnmower Challenge, your quest is simple: mow all the grass. However, these aren’t your average suburban lawns. There are locked gates that can only be unlocked with a key, unmowable sections that need planting, and gates that can only be opened from a certain direction. These all would be simple obstacles to overcome if you weren’t going for a perfect score, as your steps are counted and the fewer you take, the more stars you’ll earn.

Don’t let the simple controls and cute graphics fool you; it’ll take considerable planning to complete each level at three stars.

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Imagine being turned into a jumping bean by an evil wizard, and on top of all that having your girlfriend kidnapped. Worst day ever, right? That’s what our hero, Emilio, is faced with in Bean’s Quest, a bouncing 16-bit platformer included in the Boston Indie Showcase, which will be shown off this weekend at PAX East.

Using the touchscreen controls of your favorite iOS device, you control Emilio as he bounds, bounces, and boings his way through each level, collecting diamonds as well as his missing pet axolotls along the way. Emilio never stops jumping, so all you have to do is move him left or right, but simple controls don’t make this game a breeze.

The difficulty in Bean’s Quest lies not in completing each level, but completing each level under the required number of bounces to obtain a perfect rating. If you’re going for all the diamonds and axolotls as well, it gets even more difficult. I found myself repeating levels over and over to try to get a better score and collect all the goodies, and with 150 levels to traverse, replay level for Bean’s Quest is pretty high.

Bean’s Quest also features an original soundtrack, as well as Game Center integration.

The game is available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. It’s on sale right now, so jump on over to the iTunes Store and pick it up for $1.99, or check it out on the show floor this weekend at PAX.

The full version of little logic puzzler Girls Like Robots is not released quite yet, but I got a chance to check it out before it hits the show floor at PAX East this weekend.

The gameplay of Girls Like Robots is simple: make all the square people happy. Each level is a grid, with different amounts of spaces to place your square shaped friends in the right arrangement so that everyone plays nice. There’s the girls, who love being surrounded by robots. The nerds love being surrounded by girls, not other nerds. Girls won’t mind being around nerds if there’s some pie present, but the robots HATE pies.

It all sounds really cute and whimsical, but quickly you’ll realize that this little puzzle game is, well, a puzzler. It’s hard! Just like in real life, you can’t make everyone happy, and you won’t be able to in Girls Like Robots either. Depending on which squares you’re working with, you’ll have to decide which arrangement will maximize points and keep anyone from getting too angry with one another.

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PAX East is a week and a half away and if you’re going to the convention now’s really the time to start planning what panels you’ll be attending, which booths you absolutely have to check out, and which musical guests you’ll be rocking out to at the nightly concerts. Luckily, there’s a nifty app called Guidebook, and the guys at Penny Arcade have released an entire digital guide for PAX East, so you’ll be able to plan your entire weekend right on your mobile devices.

Download the app via the appropriate app store and once you’re in, search for the PAX East 2012 guide. It has everything you’ll need to successfully survive PAX East: the entire schedule of panels, concerts, and tournaments, map of the area including restaurants and bars to check out, a full list of all the musical guests, exhibitors, and shuttle schedules to the various hotels and venues. Within the app, you’ll be able to design your own schedule for the convention, add to your “to-do” list, and track the #PAX hashtag on Twitter.

There’s even a section detailing the Boston Indie showcase, a fantastic bunch of games that everyone, attending the convention or not, should check out, since they’re all mobile based.

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The second game I picked up from PAX East’s collection of indie games, known as the Boston Indie Showcase, was the survival shooter platformer known as Super Crate Box.

Super Crate Box brings classic arcade gameplay back to your iPhone and PC with its retro art style, chiptune soundtrack, and basic mechanics. Your mission is simple: navigate your way across, up, down, and around some platforms (and a fire pit!) to collect crates filled with goodies that are essential to your survival. Collecting crates not only unlocks new weaponry, including a grenade launcher, land mines, and dual pistols, but new level maps as well. But getting these crates isn’t easy. There’s swarms of enemies to navigate around, and sometimes your weapons just won’t be enough.

This game infuriates me. And not because it’s bad, it’s actually really fun. It’s just hard. I did some quick research, and other players have had similar problems. What’s different about Super Crate Box is that you can’t kill enemies by just jumping on their heads. This familiar mechanic extends back, for most of us, to our earliest childhoods, smashing goombas and other critter enemies in games like Sonic or Mario.

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This year’s Boston Indie Showcase, the impressive list of independent games featured at PAX East in April, is a bit different than in years past- because the games are all mobile based, we’ll all be able to play most of them before the show even happens. Pretty cool, right? Here’s the first of the Boston Indie Showcase that I’ve tried out for myself, a word game that goes beyond Scrabble and Boggle.

SpellTower is like Words with Friends meets word searches, and will appeal to anyone who loves any kind of word puzzles. It’s a pretty simple concept: create words using the letters you’re given. In Tower Mode, you’ll only get 100 letters, but as much time as possible to rack up as many points as you can. In Puzzle Mode, a row is added for each word you make. Rush Mode is timed, meaning the quicker you create words, the longer you’ll survive. Words can be created diagonally, backwards, and even overlap, so you can really get creative in how you form words and clear the board.

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One minute I was just arriving in Boston, and the next I was packing up my bags and saying goodbye to PAX East 2011. And what a weekend it was.

From sampling the finest in upcoming videogames, watching some amazing concerts, meeting and making new friends, and bonding with old ones, this convention has got to be the best weekend of my year. Penny Arcade really puts together an amazing show, and it’s amazing that they do it twice a year, once on this coast and then over on their home turf of Seattle.

Not only was this the best PAX East ever (In my opinion), it was also the biggest. Head hancho Robert Khoo of Penny Arcade said that this year’s PAX had 69,500 attendees, up from last year’s 52,290 at the much tinier Hynes Convention Center.

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You’ll hear a lot about all the cool games, tech, and gadgets you’ll get to try out at the PAX East show floor, but you won’t hear much about is everything beyond the show floor. PAX prides itself on offering the all-encompassing gamer experience, which includes a wide variety of things to do when you’re a little tired of trekking through the mobbed expo hall or have some time to kill between panels.

Here’s all the “other stuff” I found worth checking out around the convention center this weekend.

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On my second day of the Penny Arcade Expo up in Boston, I took to the show floor to check out the booths of what I considered the three biggest and most anticipated games at the convention. One of these games is a follow-up two amazing titles for the Xbox 360. One is the sequel to the best first-person puzzle-platform of our time.

And the third is a game that most, if not all of us, never expected to see released. Gears of War 3, Portal 2, and Duke Nukem Forever were all booths that never ceased to cause lines and buzz all throughout the weekend.

Check out my favorites after the jump.

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The third and final game I checked out at this past weekend’s PAX East independent game showcase was an amazing little game called Snapshot, on its way to PC, Mac, and some consoles, sometime very soon. PAX East is the first time in awhile that Snapshot has been available for demo, so I felt really lucky to get a chance to sit down and spend some time with this title.

Snapshot reminded me of Braid right off the bat, and this observation wasn’t far off. Playing as this cute little robot dude navigating some brilliantly designed, beautifully animated levels, players use a camera to solve puzzles. Boxes can be moved, platforms can be relocated, and obstacles can be removed, as the player takes a picture of an object and places that photo over the environment to continue through the level.

It’s not always as easy as it sounds, though, as the objects aren’t always friendly, or aren’t always easily captured with the camera.

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