PAX 09 Report - Part 2

And the PAX Report continues...
Still getting owned by the PAX flu though...

Saturday September 5
Tried to get to the expo hall lineup earlier that morning but failed while waiting on the rest of the gang. The day's goal was L4D2.

The L4D2 lineup was already massive when we got there but we persevered. 2 hours later, it was finally our turn! It was us three plus a random guy and only Lester and I managed to survive till the end. The wait was long but it was well worth it for a game I don't plan on buying but it's plenty fun (though just like the first game!). Also controller L4D2 is a pain in the butt for me. We also get a t-shirt for our efforts but no small sizes, so that was a major disappointment!

The rest of the early afternoon was spent going around to some other game booths such as Torchwhat?! - I already forgot the name. I also bumped into Matt and his gang (well more like he found me) while hovering around what I thought was the most awesomest looking booth at the hall:


As for the rest of the afternoon, the gang decided they wanted to visit the Pike Place Market and so we did. We had, again, a late lunch and then did a whole lot of walking around the area. We headed by around 6 for some more panels. The most disappointing panel was the Aesthetics of Play Control panel which was, I thought, about the design of interfaces in video games but instead it was an hour listening to this guy's lecture about his weakly argued thesis on video games as art. WASTE. OF. TIME. I wish I went to the Giant Bomb Re-reunion Tour panel instead. Afterwards though we went to the Brodeo Reunion panel where this crazy Korean guy brought a garbage bag full of Korean snacks and shared it with the audience. Could be the start of H1N1 right there. I tried a few because I was curious but that was probably a deadly move right there.

Late night food time! Since we had no idea what to eat that night, we ended up going back to Taphouse. Matt and co joined us for dinner. This time, we had a bitchy waitress which didn't make the night all that great.

After the better panel and filling stomaches, we went to watch Jonathan Coulton perform. All of us only knew him for his Still Alive song so that's what we ended up waiting around for. His other songs were kind of funny I suppose.


The swag haul from the first two days.

Sleeping at 4am is great!

Sunday September 6
The day's goal: DIABLO 3. That was the only thing left on my mind.


I got to the lineup around 9am, my throat was feeling a bit scratchy and the line was already well formed. While they made us wait around, there was another Star Wars: The Old Republic promotion and they handed out more stuff. I nabbed myself a t-shirt because I was a small but in return I got elbowed in the head by another guy in the process.

So, Diablo 3. I decided to try Monk because of all the hype (and is a class I probably won't be playing when the game comes out anyway) and he was pretty damn cool if I must say so myself. I was sad when the words "Thanks for playing!" showed up on screen to show that my time was already up. :(

After my short but sweet moment with Diablo 3, I headed to the Game Localization panel. The panel was a bit FFXII spoilerific but besides that, it was a pretty neat insight into game localization. It was specially cool that the team (and random other staff) there worked with S-E and even on some older titles like Vagrant Story.

Checkout time at our hotel was 12, so I headed back to the hotel to do just that and meet up with the rest of my travel companions. We headed back the convention center once more for some final rounds around the expo hall. I tried out Strong Bad (d'aww strong bad~) to pass the time. Left with some extra stuff:


We were finally done by then so we did some quick shopping (or more like just Victoria's Secret :b) before taking my car back from valet to drive back to Uwajimaya. We ate at the food court and did some additional shopping. We wanted to head to the Pink Gorilla's official store so we blindly followed Neku's GPS which failed. We got fed up from the unnecessary walking and went back to my map print out to lead us there. The store was disappointing - they didn't sell any imported PSPs. The hobby shop next door was also disappointing - too many gundams, not enough figurines. Oh well, at least we tried.

Next stop was Neku's place which was in Bellevue to pick up his unwanted PC and monitor. After that, we hit the road again and made our way to the Seattle Premium outlet. There were a lot of people but it was still managable. Either there was something we liked but they didn't have our sizes or the stuff we liked did not have any sales - go figure. At the end, I was the only one who managed to get something. My throat, by then, was feeling more painful than before.

We made our way to the border to find 9 lines open which was wow but no wonder the traffic wasn't as bad as we thought. The heavy rain and strong winds were not very helpful though. On our way to Lester's place, we stopped at Wings for cheap Sunday wings which was awesome. I soothed my throat with tea but the groggy feeling that was building up couldn't be remedied. After driving everyone home though, I managed to get to my own home by 2am. I then noticed that the PC I brought home scratched up my car interior. My heart ached but what's done is done. I can only stare and cry. When I got inside, I also noticed a bit of a fever.

After all that, I figured I just must be tired from all the driving, irregular eating schedule, lack of sleep, etc which made me a little sickly. Who would've thunk there's actually a number of people getting sick from PAX. There's even a case of H1N1 as well. Talk about bad luck. One retard probably ruined it for us all.

I spent all Monday feeling dreadful. All the sleep I forced myself to do did not help but I am still drugging myself on a daily basis. Even if it was early H1N1, I think I fended it off pretty well but then again, I'm not getting any better. I'll probably head to the doctor on the weekend if it doesn't brighten up.

EDIT: Yay Happy Birthday Blogger! New features!