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*