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...