PAX Prime 2011 Report: Part 2

 

Saturday - Aug 27: Disappointments.

• Star Wars: The Old Republic - We played the story option rather than the PvP/Capture the flagball. Eh, it's an MMORPG and I /dance'd.
• Torchlight II - Tried the Berserker this time around and had fun following the big crew of people going around, destroying mobs and things.
• Path of Exile - A point and click game that's free to play. Definitely disappointed, especially after Lester recommended it saying it was like Diablo. Very bland graphics and clunky gameplay...
• Wildstar - A bit underwhelming. A brightly coloured MMORPG that featured rather generic classes and character designs.
• Dead Island - The trailer gave off a different idea of how the protagonist and story would've been like. In the actual game, you're a drunkard who gets kicked out of the club for being a dick. Lovely.
• Rusty Hearts - Insanely confusing controls but the pretty up your character feature is definitely there.
• Dragon Quest Monster Joker 2 - K I originally played this for the swag but it was actually fun.

And the real disappointments:

• The 18-letter Word to your Moogle was missing a letter Sty left back at Garret's. Great. They ended up finding another person with the same letter and handed in the word.
• We were in a group of 4 at one point (with IonFONE and friend) and could've went to get our hands on a free T at the Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One booth but Sty forgot her head. They ran out of T's the next day.
• The Skyrim food truck ran out of food and drinks about half way through its one and only session. Extremely disappointed that they'd underestimate their fanbase.

The food we never got. :((

After another busy day on the show floor, we headed to the Square-Enix panel where Quantum Conundrum was introduced and demoed. The visual style features a cartoony style which would remind you of Team Fortress and the gameplay is very much Portal plus some new features like changing the state of the room on the fly.

I decided to skip the Weekend Confirmed panel since it was right smack between the previous and the Dragon Age panel. The DA panel itself gave us a general outlook of the series and a vague idea of what to expect. Felicia Day showed up and they played a new trailer of the Retribution web series.

By 10:30pm, we were finally ready for some food. We managed to get ourselves a nice, roomy table at the Taphouse where we devoured drinks and happy hour appys for the rest of the night.

Sunday - Aug 28: The last stretch cut short
We got all our stuff packed and ready in the car for our trip back before heading to the convention one last time. We established a plan to follow so we left at a reasonable time to make it back to whatever that was left of the wedding.  Unfortunately things didn't work out that way when some people decided not to follow through with it.

Anyway, the final game I wanted to get my hands on was Resistance 3 and that's exactly what I went straight for when the hall opened. Luckily there was still some space left when I got there. The game felt very reminiscent to R2 but its visuals were definitely tweaked. It was a short but sweet 5 mins of killing which I somehow still ended up 2nd place.

Things got complicated after this but long story short, we managed to regroup to check out Halo Fest and I was pleasantly surprised with the displays.

 

Chief-sama!

Before we left for good, we stopped by to get some cheesecake. <3

On our way up we also had some cheap McDix chicken nuggets.

The haul looked more or less like this:

 

• Favourite Game: ???
• Favourite Swag: Resistance 3 or DOM2 T-shirt
• Missed: Might & Magic Heroes, Borderlands 2, Orcs Might Die!, Wil Wheaton's panel ;<
• Forgot: Heroes of Ruin
• Underdog: El Shaddai
• What happened?: Firefall
• WHERE ARE YOU BAMCO?

I knew Sunday was going to amazing and yet we didn't get to stay for it. Gearbox panel which ended up with free Borderlands 2 codes (USA region or NOT it's still crazy), Tetris DS tourny (I missed out last year ;( ), and probably other random games you discover when you actually take your time walking on the floor.

It was definitely a very different PAX and it wasn't my most favourite. It didn't help that we were forced to leave early to head back for a wedding.  A number of the games on the floor were not entirely new (Torchlight 2, Rift, End of Nations, EVE Online, et al) and some were just not completely up my alley but I didn't mind trying them. It was also quite different walking around with my friend Sty since we don't normally talk about games together, other than the odd game she played here or there. In fact, I don't even know what she has played other than some western games. I personally skipped a number of games I probably would've stopped to try *points to Missed bullet point* but I didn't want her waiting on me. In exchange, her girl power somehow landed some really good luck in a lot of places... don't know how she does it.

I've been asked what the highlight of the trip was and, honestly, I can't seem to figure that out at all.
The trip felt incomplete but what can be done. :(
*goes off to play something*

PAX Prime 2011 Report: Part 1

 

"Mmm you look tasty little human girl, come over here."

Returned from PAX with a minor PAX/Seattle flu. Oh, why me?

Mere days before the event, Sty messages me saying she might have a ticket to the sold out event. Of course she was more than welcomed to join us but she soon found out that that ticket was no longer available. It felt that she was really looking forward to it so I decided to do some ticket hunting the night before we were to depart. I managed to secure two tickets for her and another friend from a cool local who had to give up his tickets for priorities at work. Knowing how scarce these tickets were, especially being sold and bought at cost, I definitely got lucky. So +1 to our passenger list.

Thursday - Aug 25: Yukkuri shiteitte yo!
The ride down consisted of ToFu, Sty, Lester and myself as we took two cars this time around since most of us had to return early for a wedding (ugh). We stopped in Bellingham where we had breakfast at The Daisy Cafe and followed to stop by Trader Joe's, then Walmart and gas in Tulalip, and finally arrived in Seattle for a break at Garret's. Rush hour traffic was bad going into downtown but when we got in, things were a lot smoother. We picked up badges and headed to Uwajimaya for some snacks and asian goodness.  There we met up with IonFONE for the first time, even though we always go down to Seattle for all sorts of things.

Food plans ended up being complicated since our original plans didn't work out due to the timing of things so we went to have some good old American restaurant food at The Ram. Speaking of timing, things couldn't of gotten any worse when a suicide ended up clogging up the highway we were on. A 15 or less minute ride ended up to be 1 hour, and unfortunately the other guys who were in the other car got a good look of the incident.

 
Steak sandwich pickle tower.

We returned to Garret's place after food and pulled out an extremely oversized sake bottle we got at Uwajimaya. Drinking and relaxation ensued into the late hours of the night.

Friday - Aug 26: Too little time.
A large chunk of the day consisted of being busy in the exhibition hall.

• Skyrim - Our first stop since Sty was definitely looking forward to this one. A 3 hour wait vs the content we got to play wasn't worth it, although I saw it coming. You kind of expect it from an Elder Scrolls open world game.
• Final Fantasy XIII-2 - I haven't even played the first one so why would I want to spoil myself? Unfortunately for me, the Word to your Moogle game was only accessible that way. As a complete newbie to the game, the battle system felt kinda dumbed down as you mainly got to choose the different fighting strategies. Perhaps I'll get a better idea of the game once I actually play it. But yeah, spoilers wheeeeeee~
• Bastion - I've already been recommended to play this game but I decided to try it out anyway and wow the demo really impressed me. Beautiful visuals, funny narrative and simple yet fun gameplay.
• Dragon's Dogma - Western influenced 4 player co-op, much like Monster Hunter but no fancy armor and weird monsters, but features the traditional RPG classes. Had to burn the crap out of the poor griffin. :( But it was totally owning my group so I guess it was fair.
• Lollipop Chainsaw - Oneechanbara but with chainsaws and a cheerleader.

When the floor finally closed up for the day, we met up with Markster and began seeking places to eat. Knowing most places were packed, we chose a Blarney's pub/resto which was a bit father away. We got there just missing the rush, but we still had to wait quite a bit to get the waitress' attention and get our food. Although the service was not what we would've liked, the food was really good so we were still satisfied.

We returned to the convention to catch the Giant Bomb panel (yay!). For some reason the enforcers cut their time short so it ended a half n hour earlier than expected. I met up with Neku briefly after the panel before calling it a night.

To be continued in part 2...

FF: Distant Worlds Returns to Vancouver

 
Uematsu was actually here this time.

Welcome back, Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds.

So the actual day (July 27) ended up being horribly planned, generating plenty of frustration and annoyance.

First it was me debating whether I should drive+skytrain my way in downtown earlier or just simply getting a ride from a friend. Figuring that driving should be easier for the way back, I opted for the ride but the driver was late. Another friend wanted a ride in the last minute so we made a detour before heading to our food destination, Guu Garden.  After having a bit of trouble finding the restaurant, we finally sat down but then waited around for two other latecomers.  When they arrived we quickly ordered but the food took ridiculously longer than it should've and so we ended up cutting it short to speed-walk our way there.  When we got to the Opheum, we waited some more for the driver friend to park and get his cosplay gear *headdesk*... many moments later, some of us decided to make our way in first to find that it had already started.

The first track, although watched from the TV screen outside, was FFVIII's Opening (Bombing Mission) which I think was the same opener from the first concert (the footage was the same as well).  Other tracks they brought back from the last Distant Worlds were VI's opera (same three opera singers too!), Vamo' alla Flamenco, and the Theme of Love to name a few.  Some nice additions this time were To Zanarkand, JENOVA, Man with the Machine Gun and You're Not Alone.  They also featured a track from XIV which, in fact, is my starting city area's field music! Speaking of which, bikini update! P:

I wanted to strangle someone when they, once again, chose One Winged Angel as the encore but they did spruce it up this time with karaoke (although it doesn't change the fact that it's still OWA).  This makes it the FOURTH video game concert with the same encore, and I've only been to four in total ever.  I was also deeply disappointed there wasn't anything from XI... although I suppose it would've just been Ronfaure or the CoP theme again :(  See, if they were able to feature Hamauzu's FFXIII Blinded By Light, they should feature something Mizuta Naoshi has done in XI like the delicious Ragnarok or any of his stuff from WotG.  But sigh.  Wishful thinking.

After the concert we headed to Earl's for some food and drinks (deja vu).  Mmmm sangria and wings.

Oh yeah, we had horse sashimi at Guu Garden and, well, you just can't explain what it tastes like so just eat it for yourself to find out.

Involuntary Holiday

Although I didn't request nor expect any sort of holiday this year, I have come to accept this unwanted break. I've gotten to the point where I'm leaning on keeping this NEET status until the end of the month when PAX comes and goes, and I would've run out of any other major events to look forward to.

The timing of things have been keeping me rather busy in and out of the house so I'm not quite living up to the NEET title yet. I've have very few days of just pure home time which I ended up spending on playing Tropico 3. Buenas tardes!

A bit before my sudden lay off, I took a quick two day trip down to Seattle for a weekend early July for both Shi2's b-day and to meet up with online FFXI friend, Jiinn, visiting from Phoenix, AZ. Saturday consisted of some brief Downtown loitering, the Pike Place Market, the Space Needle slash French Festival thing, not awesome Chinese ayce hotpot and finally ended with a failed attempt at karaoke because the place was crazy packed. The rest of the night involved chilling out with liquor, chips and wasabi peas. Sunday encountered technical issues with online friend's mobile, so we ended up doing things ourselves with our gentleman guide, Garret, who followed us shopping ladies around when we shopped. Dinner was at none other than the Cheesecake Factory because no Seattle trip is complete without Cheesecake Factory!  Then finally we raided Walmart as usual before getting home at a ridiculous time in the morning for work the same day (me, anyway).

The Saturday following my termination, a group of us visited an anime-themed Summer Festival at SFU to do some "research" for a possible business opportunity in the near future. More on it if/when it develops. I also surprisingly bumped into LightingSabre near the end of our visit. After pestering people to do the surveys for us, we fled the scene and stopped by the night market for some eats before finally going to Industry for some many drinks, compiling the survey results and unexpected appearances by childhood friends.

Oh, MiniComi. Spent the day hanging out with Jenny who wanted to check it out and take some photos of her campus before she left for Japan later that month. A bit disappointing seeing that it was a gathering of artists which unfortunately didn't quite capture the artist quality we actually have here in Vancouver. That one room they fit the event into didn't seem to do the event enough justice. Assuming it was successful to them, I'd like to see them do a lot better next year.

The International Autonomous Robot Racing Competition was happening at the same time right outside the SUB building. Not so sure about the "international" part since the competitors were all from Canadian universities.  Watching the little guys move and recognize (or not recognizing) the road ahead of them was more amusing than what was happening inside the school.

It's the "Kinect" (top) VS the "PSEye" (bottom).

Tired and hungry, we left the campus when we were done with the photo taking.  Found Shi2 and gang free for dinner so we settled for some good old bar food at the Flying Beaver. Brought with her was fellow bRO player, Kaz, visiting from England for the two weeks.  Being the youngest group in the bar, we failed miserably at the songs-older-than-we-are guessing game.

And finally, went for a weekend trip to Portland during the last long weekend (last weekend of July). I sadly didn't end up getting anything but my parents (and aunt) got quite a haul. I spent most of the travel time watching Glee although I'm nowhere close to catching up. We followed a tour bus for this trip which also took us to some sightseeing places like the Point Defiance Zoo, but it was mainly all shopping. We sat in on a skit at the zoo which conveniently used the bad gamer stereotype vs the nature lover *rolls eyes* but yeah, compared to a video game, a real life lynx is a lot cooler.

 

 

To compensate for the lack of photos, here's some from Eat! Vancouver a few months back. Observe: beer tasting (with chocolates) and wine tasting (with cheeses).