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: