Penny Arcade Expo Prime 2012: Part 2

Day 2: Slow Redemption

We found amazingly cheap all day parking that morning at the convention centre ($10 flat rate!). Had absolutely no idea why that was cheap the way it was. Never again did we find it.

• Dishonored: Ran into electricity-barriered doorways constantly and died a lot; the people who were watching must've had a good chuckle... and I threw grenades at point blank just because I could.
• Injustice: A great take on fist-fighting with DC superheroes. I was intrigued.
• Sleeping Dogs: Running and fisting is all I remember doing.

Another strangely short list but it was mainly Kojima day. We lined up early to get ourselves some good seats at Kojima Hideo's panel where he talked about his MGS franchise. Very scripted but it was still a great interview to listen in on. We followed to line up for his autograph (and obligatory handshake) right after. It was unfortunate he didn't sign personal items as my friend lugged his MGS PS3, but we all got a standard poster instead.

Gee-off, Kojima-san, Translator-san

For evening foods, we ended up having a strangely huge group of people but still managed to get a table at a Thai place at Pacific Place. We then spent the rest of the night playing Key Largo with the few of us who stuck around.

Day 3: Progress
The last day ended up being the best of all days as we all knew which games we wanted to tag.

• Last of Us: We watched the employee in the back play through the demo live. Another amazing cinematic-feel movie game.
• God of War Ascension: The multiplayer looked interesting so we joined as a team and beat the crap out of the other party. :D
• Lost Planet 3: This demo was a whopping 20 minutes. The main character's design bugged me to no end; too clean and too good looking for a guy in his situation.
• Hell Yeah!: Super entertaining game with great humour and a variety of fun randomness.
• Adventure Time: Strangely fun for a 3DS game. I need a 3DS.
• Hawken: Amazingly fun game. I would've truly loved swag for this great game. Definitely looking forward to this one.

During the last bit of the day, we stumbled around to buy ourselves any last minute swag of whatever that was left.. and unfortunately there wasn't much. Yeah, probably should've done that earlier.

Taphouse nummehs.

Taphouse happened and then it was off to the event of the night -- bowling... with beer. We enjoyed ourselves fries and beer while we waited for enough lanes to accommodate 15 of us. I played like poo. Then we followed to play a few rounds of Dominion back at Rift's afterwards. Can't let the weekend end so... zzzz

The Post-PAX Thoughts

Yet another vastly different PAX experience. This year felt abnormally busy yet, when looking back, we didn't get much done at all. Not my most favourite but it was an extraordinary weekend to hang with friends. The expo has yet again expanded in size and clearly also in fandom considering the speed of how fast it sold out once tickets were available. They dedicated almost a whole floor to the League of Legends nationals tourny, moving the freeplay PC and BYOC to the hard to locate basement area. [Good] swag seemed particularly harder to get ahold of. One freebie I would've loved to get was a Borderlands 2 t-shirt but, for a game that's to release within the same month, the line for it was stupidly long.

The games featured there this year felt rather underwhelming, considering how close the release dates were/are for a good chunk of them. Some of which have already released since this post.

Serious LoL business.

Final notes:

• Missed: SimCity was playable at the Nvidia booth, and I WAS THERE! D:
• Tempted to try but didn't: Fable the Journey, Devil May Cry
• Favourite game of the show: Hawken
• Favourite swag: LoL water D&D Neverwinter glass mug
• That's a super NEAT idea: Cards Against Humanity t-shirt matching game!
• Bamco, why no treat us with delicious TALES?!
• Will continue to keep my eyes peeled for the very scarce Japanesey things.

Last but not least, the roots:

Penny Arcade Expo Prime 2012: Part 1

Day 0: The Pre-PAX
This year was yet another different crew of PAXers. A notable new recruit, Y2James, joined the fray to get a taste of the event and get another helping of Vancouver (and join me for the way down). We had ourselves some nummy dim sum and filled up on Starbucks before we began the journey, and was making some great time until we encountered a series of unfortunate events: traffic crossing the border was rather nasty for a Thursday morning; we didn't think too much of it until we got detained in the border crossing customs office for an additional few hours where they took a ridiculous amount of precious time and our pocket money from us to let us through (reality: needed a Visa for land travel). The longer the line got, the less people there were working at the desks as they seemed to love taking their sweet ass time.

When that mess was over and done with, we continued our journey down to Seattle, encountering disgusting long weekend traffic, and stopped at Rift's new place to find out that he wasn't quite home yet. Since our karaoke plans were ruined, we figured we'd check out the Gearbox & Joystiq Pre-PAX party at Pink's, near the convention area. Ion met up with us and then we chugged our way through that disgusting traffic again, which further added to all the delays that day. We parked near Ion's friend's place, who lived in walking distance to the downtown core where it was held, and met up with more of his friends before we walked our way there.

There was a stupid long line that wrapped around the mall's floor of the lounge when we got there but hey, we had nothing else to do, so why not join in on the lining. After a good hour we finally got in, figured out how this "open bar" thing worked and ordered away. We all knew it was a bad idea to drink on an empty stomach because we (or at least I?) regretted it very much afterwards. Oh the party itself was, well, just a drinking fest. Borderlands? What Borderlands? Oh, yeah, it was some video trailer that was played on repeat on the TVs. The rest of the night was extremely unpleasant but we did manage to get back to Rift's place to pass out on his couch.

The Joystiq & Gearbox (Borderlands 2) Party @ Pink's

Day 1: Hate you, Pre-PAX

Okay, learnt my lesson to not get greedy with an empty stomach because, ugh, not only did I not sleep well, but I felt like shit all morning. The hangover feel did end up delaying our wake and prevent us from getting our usual close parking at the convention. Day 1 notables:

• Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Event: This was quite the disappointment. For a few hour line, standing outside under the heat, we got a poster, a silly photobooth opportunity to pose with giant head-only plushies of their mascots (chocobo, gob, mog, mandy) and a meaningless fizzy drink which we didn't even bother finishing. The only thing to do there was a ring toss game and consoles of each  main numbered Final Fantasy games for you to play.
• Phantasy Star Online 2: There really wasn't a need to play this game, but me and Ion were off it for a few days so there was an itch. We wanted that free mousepad too anyway.
• D&D Neverwinter Nights: The freebies for demoing this game were definitely different from the norm so we tried our luck at getting one of the random prizes. Oh, the game itself was okay. Can't say there's much to be impressed about. Just another MMO?

The first day felt pretty unproductive, as we walked the floor for most of the day. We were extremely hungry come 4ish, so we decided to have food early at no other than the Cheesecake Factory! Regrettably, we checked out Triton's PAX party right after to find FREE food available (and more open bar). Finally we ended the night with the Giant Bombcast Live but ended up missing the VSO (they might have played Chrono Cross AGHRGHGRHGH).

Healthier.

Triton's party.

With the official first day behind us, we looked forward to some better times in the next two days...