Penny Arcade Expo 2010 Report: Part 1

I've returned... PAX flu free!

Pre-PAX: Thursday - The Journey Across the Border
Made my way across the border with PZAG right after work. Delays included taking our time, plenty of road construction, and a bit of border waiting... but besides those, it was pretty smooth sailing. I photoraped Paul, for the record.

Got to Jerry's place around 10pm, cooked and ate delicious Costco steak (yeah just steak) and drank Session. My real rock beat everyone's scissors and papers.


For the rest of the night, we watched Gamer (wut) and visited Jerry's workplace (yes, in the middle of the night) where all the floors were integers (Ground = -1, Basement = -2).

PAX10 [Day 1]: Friday - The Wanderer
Had Voula's Offshore Cafe for breakfast. Had us waiting for a good 45mins but it was DELICIOUS.


Due to the long breakfast wait, we ended up getting to the convention at 11pm. :|

Regardless, there was still a long day ahead of us!

• The Duke Nukem Forever line was loooooooong. Much like for Portal 2. Both were out of the question.
• Rift: Planes of Telara - Geez, played this game for well over an hour (and a half?)... not that it was that special either. It was an MMO that felt very WAR and made leveling up and logging out really dramatic. Did about the first dozen or so quests before realizing that too much time was spent on this one game. Managed to break the game a few times too.
• Torchlight 2 - Ended up breaking this game once too. I demoed the Railman and strayed off the main path to some cave. Found a boss and destroyed it with my spam of jump-smashes. The developer guy remembered me for it when I went back the next day to nab myself a t-shirt. :D
• Civ 5 - In 3D! Because it's a stupid idea. It was headachy so it didn't last very long.
• Bangai-O - It was cool so I thought I'd mention it. It's hard. :|
• Donkey Kong Wii - Oh, Wii. Co-op was neat but the waggling was not.
• Super Scribblenauts - Never actually played the first one so why now?... They had a game where you had to find other PAXers with the same matching badge as you to win stuff. Never actually managed to even find one. If you somehow found 10 people, then all 10 people would win a DSi. At least I got the cool ninja badge as a souviner.

• Plants vs Zombies - They had a special room on the panels floor for tattoos and face painting. Walk away with a pylon on your head and you had a chance to win an iPad. Yep, lots of pylon heads. The things people would do to get stuff. :3
• UT3 - Didn't exactly "demo" this game but I joined in on a spur of the moment tourny. For some reason most of the guys that were playing weren't that good. I ended up being in the top 3 but didn't win anything. A friend played TF2 and won something for being on the winning team. Playing FFA is obviously not beneficial.

• Square-Enix panel - First half was dedicated to FFXIV where they took us through Gridania. The NPC lady had RED LEG ARMOUR. Seriously, what? Didn't help that the Lalafell NPC's voice was painfully annoying. I must say though, the brigade of people at the end of the scene looked cool... especially the cute leader *wink*. The second half was Deux Ex which actually looked pretty impressive. It glitched out pretty badly at one point but the battle demo was cool enough to make up for it.

Played half a round of Settlers before heading to Giant Bombcast Live. The surprise guest panel was awesome. :3 Food followed after at Palomino where we had fries and 6 pizzas including the Giant Bombcast mentioned Incredible Pepperoni Pizza.

[insert incredible pepperoni pizza that wasn't as incredible as it says it is]

TBC... in Part 2