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...

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...

Penny Arcade Expo 2010 Report: Part 2

PAX10 [Day 2]: Saturday - Shooting and Breaking Stuff
Joined the queue line around 9:30 which was already too late. My first stop was attempting at playing Portal 2, but by the time I got there, the line already wrapped around the booth one and a half times. Next door's line for Brink, however, was BEAUTIFUL AND SHORT.

• Brink - After a year and we only get a playable demo... not that I'm complaining. You got to play in a team of eight (but there was only 4 real people per team for the demo), each player picked one of the four jobs (the usual: infiltrator, engineer, medic, sniper.. whatever the actual names were) and you are given a mission (either offense or defense, in the multiplayer mode we were playing). I'm proud to say that I scored the most points out of the eight as a real human player, only to be beaten by the 4 NPCs of the opposing team. ETA Spring 2010.
• Infamous 2 - Played the game for my brother as he wanted the t-shirt. The guy was nice enough to give me a small too. ;>
• End of Nations - Tried it just because it was right beside Rift. I didn't really get it.
• Halo Reach - Never played a Halo before so I thought I'd check it out. Too late into the franchise to understand the hype. :|
• Dead Rising 2 - The shortest yet longest waiting line EVER. Funny thing was, all the three girls who were part of the same queue ended up choosing the three PS3s, me included. Kill over 200 zombies in ~15 minutes, get a bobble head = GET. (Killed around 280)
• Epic Mickey - Removing and/or putting back objects/structures to solve puzzles. Mickey's such a troublemaker. :|

Went to Weekend Confirmed (Hi! It's you again, Shane!), Totally Rad Show (disappointed.), and the Bonus Round where the live video recording was quite interesting and complicated. Insomniac's Behind the Scenes with their PS3 game was pretty neat though I didn't expect Ratchet and Clank at all.

First/Last meal of the day followed at Benihana for teppanyaki where we had a table of 13 people. Conversation was a bit difficult but even that size of a dinner's still pretty fun. We had a real(?) Japanese chef do the food dancing which was nicer than the not-so Japanese ones that did the other tables. Felt more authentic at least!


After satisfying the tummy, we visited the Console Freeplay for some SSBM but found out that they didn't have any GameCubes. :| We settled for the next best thing - Super Smash Brothers, the first. It was weird playing with a N64 controller again and trying to remember that all the yellow buttons did the same damn thing!

PAX10 [Day 3]: Sunday - The Last But Not Least Bit
Again, 9:30. Wasn't going to bother trying for Portal 2.

• Killzone 3 - I hovered around 3rd place... got shot down plenty by giant machines.
• Tera - Since the podcasters mentioned it, I thought I'd give it a try. Expected no less from the Koreans as the graphics were nothing but beautiful. The whole fighting direction and having to swing your camera around 360 with the mouse was rather frustrating though.
• Eve Online - Didn't really play it, but I got the lowdown on the game just so I have an idea of what it's all about.
• FireFall - Wasn't exactly playable but they did a live demo. While they were demoing, I couldn't help but listen in on the Dragon Age II talk that was happening next door. Side note: Hawke doesn't seem like a very fantasy last name.
• FFXIV - Yeaaaaaaaah, I wanted the FFXIV-branded USB stick. Fuck the girl who took 15 minutes to create her character. It's even more frustrating knowing they let her take her time and then gave her additional time on top of it just to play some of the story. Ended up not getting the USB stick as they ran out moments before. My time would've been better spent at the Gearbox panel or something.. which I should've gone to.

After that frustration, I settled down at the PC Freeplay to pass the time before ToFu decided to leave the BYOC room... and PAX for good.

The chalk artist was here again this year and drew this:


We had Dick's for an early dinner (well, first and last meal of the day) and chilled at Rift's place for the rest of the evening. Tried to force him to finish Ar Tonelico 2 - no good. We left his place around 10 for late night cheap bowling with PZAG at the Garage. So. Beer and bowling. It was 4v3, winner by team average and us 4 literally fell into the gutter the longer we played. By the end of three rounds and three pitchers, it was butt-ugly.

The drive back was me trying to sleep off the headache. Drunk shopping at Walmart was mightily strange too...

A look at some of my hard work:


I would've tried at the League of Legends tourny if it didn't take up 5 hours of the day. There was also the Tetris DS tourny but it was during Giant Bombcast. :( Somehow the schedule felt a lot more busier this year, not to mention the lines were longer, thus taking up more time. They also had us work for our swag by either playing the game (usually the case) or doing a survey. The untouchables were definitely Duke Nukem Forever, Portal 2, and Dragon Age II. Even Rock Band and Dance Central had to use a ticketing system.

So this year the venue "expanded" by extending the event to other buildings and the exhibitor's hall was able to take up a whole floor. Unfortunately, due to the amount of people at a sold out event though, things only got worse (crowd control! wait times! not enough swag to go around!). Not exactly sure how that would be remedied for the next year. Even so, I wasn't at all disappointed at PAX. It /does/ feel a lot more fancier with the new main theatre and extra large helping of big companies and games... I hope they're able to maintain this ratio of fans/community vs commercialism.

Anyway, final thoughts:

• Missed: King-Fu LIVE
• Forgot: Front Mission Evolved, Deathspank
• Favourite: Brink
• Would've been nice: Portal 2
• Wondered about: Medal of Honor, Sonic Colors
• Missing: EFFING DIABLO III. (BLIZZCON ANNOUNCEMENTS BETTER BE GOOD.)
• Still around?: Fallen Earth
• Tempted: MTGO
• Favourite Swag: Pens Garnier Shampoo Sample Torchlight 2 t-shirt
• Where art thou?: Bamco

Penny Arcade Expo 2010 Report: Part 1

I've returned... PAX flu free!

Pre-PAX: Thursday - The Journey Across the Border
Made my way across the border with PZAG right after work. Delays included taking our time, plenty of road construction, and a bit of border waiting... but besides those, it was pretty smooth sailing. I photoraped Paul, for the record.

Got to Jerry's place around 10pm, cooked and ate delicious Costco steak (yeah just steak) and drank Session. My real rock beat everyone's scissors and papers.


For the rest of the night, we watched Gamer (wut) and visited Jerry's workplace (yes, in the middle of the night) where all the floors were integers (Ground = -1, Basement = -2).

PAX10 [Day 1]: Friday - The Wanderer
Had Voula's Offshore Cafe for breakfast. Had us waiting for a good 45mins but it was DELICIOUS.


Due to the long breakfast wait, we ended up getting to the convention at 11pm. :|

Regardless, there was still a long day ahead of us!

• The Duke Nukem Forever line was loooooooong. Much like for Portal 2. Both were out of the question.
• Rift: Planes of Telara - Geez, played this game for well over an hour (and a half?)... not that it was that special either. It was an MMO that felt very WAR and made leveling up and logging out really dramatic. Did about the first dozen or so quests before realizing that too much time was spent on this one game. Managed to break the game a few times too.
• Torchlight 2 - Ended up breaking this game once too. I demoed the Railman and strayed off the main path to some cave. Found a boss and destroyed it with my spam of jump-smashes. The developer guy remembered me for it when I went back the next day to nab myself a t-shirt. :D
• Civ 5 - In 3D! Because it's a stupid idea. It was headachy so it didn't last very long.
• Bangai-O - It was cool so I thought I'd mention it. It's hard. :|
• Donkey Kong Wii - Oh, Wii. Co-op was neat but the waggling was not.
• Super Scribblenauts - Never actually played the first one so why now?... They had a game where you had to find other PAXers with the same matching badge as you to win stuff. Never actually managed to even find one. If you somehow found 10 people, then all 10 people would win a DSi. At least I got the cool ninja badge as a souviner.

• Plants vs Zombies - They had a special room on the panels floor for tattoos and face painting. Walk away with a pylon on your head and you had a chance to win an iPad. Yep, lots of pylon heads. The things people would do to get stuff. :3
• UT3 - Didn't exactly "demo" this game but I joined in on a spur of the moment tourny. For some reason most of the guys that were playing weren't that good. I ended up being in the top 3 but didn't win anything. A friend played TF2 and won something for being on the winning team. Playing FFA is obviously not beneficial.

• Square-Enix panel - First half was dedicated to FFXIV where they took us through Gridania. The NPC lady had RED LEG ARMOUR. Seriously, what? Didn't help that the Lalafell NPC's voice was painfully annoying. I must say though, the brigade of people at the end of the scene looked cool... especially the cute leader *wink*. The second half was Deux Ex which actually looked pretty impressive. It glitched out pretty badly at one point but the battle demo was cool enough to make up for it.

Played half a round of Settlers before heading to Giant Bombcast Live. The surprise guest panel was awesome. :3 Food followed after at Palomino where we had fries and 6 pizzas including the Giant Bombcast mentioned Incredible Pepperoni Pizza.

[insert incredible pepperoni pizza that wasn't as incredible as it says it is]

TBC... in Part 2

PAX 09 Report - Part 2

And the PAX Report continues...
Still getting owned by the PAX flu though...

Saturday September 5
Tried to get to the expo hall lineup earlier that morning but failed while waiting on the rest of the gang. The day's goal was L4D2.

The L4D2 lineup was already massive when we got there but we persevered. 2 hours later, it was finally our turn! It was us three plus a random guy and only Lester and I managed to survive till the end. The wait was long but it was well worth it for a game I don't plan on buying but it's plenty fun (though just like the first game!). Also controller L4D2 is a pain in the butt for me. We also get a t-shirt for our efforts but no small sizes, so that was a major disappointment!

The rest of the early afternoon was spent going around to some other game booths such as Torchwhat?! - I already forgot the name. I also bumped into Matt and his gang (well more like he found me) while hovering around what I thought was the most awesomest looking booth at the hall:


As for the rest of the afternoon, the gang decided they wanted to visit the Pike Place Market and so we did. We had, again, a late lunch and then did a whole lot of walking around the area. We headed by around 6 for some more panels. The most disappointing panel was the Aesthetics of Play Control panel which was, I thought, about the design of interfaces in video games but instead it was an hour listening to this guy's lecture about his weakly argued thesis on video games as art. WASTE. OF. TIME. I wish I went to the Giant Bomb Re-reunion Tour panel instead. Afterwards though we went to the Brodeo Reunion panel where this crazy Korean guy brought a garbage bag full of Korean snacks and shared it with the audience. Could be the start of H1N1 right there. I tried a few because I was curious but that was probably a deadly move right there.

Late night food time! Since we had no idea what to eat that night, we ended up going back to Taphouse. Matt and co joined us for dinner. This time, we had a bitchy waitress which didn't make the night all that great.

After the better panel and filling stomaches, we went to watch Jonathan Coulton perform. All of us only knew him for his Still Alive song so that's what we ended up waiting around for. His other songs were kind of funny I suppose.


The swag haul from the first two days.

Sleeping at 4am is great!

Sunday September 6
The day's goal: DIABLO 3. That was the only thing left on my mind.


I got to the lineup around 9am, my throat was feeling a bit scratchy and the line was already well formed. While they made us wait around, there was another Star Wars: The Old Republic promotion and they handed out more stuff. I nabbed myself a t-shirt because I was a small but in return I got elbowed in the head by another guy in the process.

So, Diablo 3. I decided to try Monk because of all the hype (and is a class I probably won't be playing when the game comes out anyway) and he was pretty damn cool if I must say so myself. I was sad when the words "Thanks for playing!" showed up on screen to show that my time was already up. :(

After my short but sweet moment with Diablo 3, I headed to the Game Localization panel. The panel was a bit FFXII spoilerific but besides that, it was a pretty neat insight into game localization. It was specially cool that the team (and random other staff) there worked with S-E and even on some older titles like Vagrant Story.

Checkout time at our hotel was 12, so I headed back to the hotel to do just that and meet up with the rest of my travel companions. We headed back the convention center once more for some final rounds around the expo hall. I tried out Strong Bad (d'aww strong bad~) to pass the time. Left with some extra stuff:


We were finally done by then so we did some quick shopping (or more like just Victoria's Secret :b) before taking my car back from valet to drive back to Uwajimaya. We ate at the food court and did some additional shopping. We wanted to head to the Pink Gorilla's official store so we blindly followed Neku's GPS which failed. We got fed up from the unnecessary walking and went back to my map print out to lead us there. The store was disappointing - they didn't sell any imported PSPs. The hobby shop next door was also disappointing - too many gundams, not enough figurines. Oh well, at least we tried.

Next stop was Neku's place which was in Bellevue to pick up his unwanted PC and monitor. After that, we hit the road again and made our way to the Seattle Premium outlet. There were a lot of people but it was still managable. Either there was something we liked but they didn't have our sizes or the stuff we liked did not have any sales - go figure. At the end, I was the only one who managed to get something. My throat, by then, was feeling more painful than before.

We made our way to the border to find 9 lines open which was wow but no wonder the traffic wasn't as bad as we thought. The heavy rain and strong winds were not very helpful though. On our way to Lester's place, we stopped at Wings for cheap Sunday wings which was awesome. I soothed my throat with tea but the groggy feeling that was building up couldn't be remedied. After driving everyone home though, I managed to get to my own home by 2am. I then noticed that the PC I brought home scratched up my car interior. My heart ached but what's done is done. I can only stare and cry. When I got inside, I also noticed a bit of a fever.

After all that, I figured I just must be tired from all the driving, irregular eating schedule, lack of sleep, etc which made me a little sickly. Who would've thunk there's actually a number of people getting sick from PAX. There's even a case of H1N1 as well. Talk about bad luck. One retard probably ruined it for us all.

I spent all Monday feeling dreadful. All the sleep I forced myself to do did not help but I am still drugging myself on a daily basis. Even if it was early H1N1, I think I fended it off pretty well but then again, I'm not getting any better. I'll probably head to the doctor on the weekend if it doesn't brighten up.

EDIT: Yay Happy Birthday Blogger! New features!

PAX 09 Report - Part 1

SOU TIRED. SOU SICK.

So I returned with the PAX nerd flu and I'm feeling pretty damn crappy because of it. Looks like some people has contracted more serious symptoms which lead to H1N1 apparently. It doesn't help that I have a proposal summary to write for Wednesday and the first day of classes was a full 9 hour lecture-intensive day.

I figured I'm going to be long winded like I usually am so I'm making this report a 2 parter.

Thursday Sept 3
The gang aimed for 10am. I got to the first stop to pick up Gar and Saboo at 10, though I waited in the car for 30 mins for them to get ready. Got out of Vancouver and headed to Burnaby to pick up bastard friend Lester (he's a bastard friend because he made me drive alll the way to his place in BURNABY which is not on the way at all to Seattle) and even got lost on the way, following HIS directions. We finally do get to his place at 11 and so we were finally on our way.

The Peace Arch lineup wasn't as bad as the radio reported and only took about a half n hour or so to get through. We stopped at Jack in the Box for a late lunch and ate a 1200 caloried sammich plus a medium drink (= our large; oops forgot their sizes are all BIGGER). I should've weighted myself before the trip.

Going down a freeway at 120km/h doesn't feel all that fast actually. At first I was frightened that I'd have to follow the speeds of a crazy American driver but now I think I've become used to the speeding. Hm, that's dangerous.

We finally arrive in downtown Seattle sometime around 3 and decided to visit Uwajimaya for some snacks and the such for the weekend. After we got our fill of asian goodness, we headed to our hotel (the Roosevelt) and dropped off our stuff. The old furniture smell took a while to get used to but the place wasn't bad. Also, the window in our room was openable from the 15th floor... a perfect suicide/spiderman location. The room didn't have a fridge (nor a safe) so we had to make do with the sink which became our wicked cooler for the weekend. After the break we picked up our badges at the Hyatt which is GAWD pretty inside, did a stroll around the convention and then headed to Cheesecake Factory for dinner.


I actually wasn't at all hungry after the 1200 calorie lunch.

With lots of time left to spare, we then hung out at Gameworks for all you can play from 10-12 for $10 which was a sweet deal. It felt like Playdium all over again. The best game was "Let's Go! Jungle" which was unexpected awesomeness.

South Park and sake kept us entertained at night.

Friday Sept 4
Come morning, we made our way to the expo hall first as it opened at 10, grabbing swag left and right. Met up with Neku sometime in the middle of it all. A few games I remember trying Friday: Aion (I made a loli), Quake Arena (felt like any other Quake), Doofus (what a boring, doofus game), Fallen Earth and our "Skittles", Champions Online and "Skittlette", Nostalgia, Dungeon Fighter Dragon Nest (kicking is great), Army of Two 2, Little Big Planet PSP, Divinity 2 (more like watching the guy play but really pretty!)...

PS: Tritton Technologies' headset apparently makes your brain work better!


I had no guts to ride this bullhorse ride.


Only found in the girls' washroom. Who would want to use this on their behind though?!

I did attempt to join on an MMO panel but the line was already massively long so yeah I gave up on it. Later that afternoon we regrouped and headed to the food court at Westlake for a super late lunch. After we took a break at the hotel before heading out again for the DS World Record Attempt.


Look at everyone feverishly playing their DS! I cheated and used my PSP at the same time.

After the strange little mad DS playing gathering, we headed to the 1UP Yours Panel to get lined up and met up with Gar who was already waiting in line. The panel started late and ended up finishing at midnight but it was well worth it. Very good discussions and humour. I ended up snagging myself the limited Muramasa tentacle rape print t-shirt because I just so happened to fit into a small and that was what they had.

We stopped by the concert hall on the way out and listened to a bit of Metroid Metal... meh. We went to the Taphouse for late night food and drinks. The place is pretty awesomely good. Headed to bed around 3ish. Who needs sleep at a convention!? :V

PAX Ready

So PAX is happening this weekend and since it's my first, I'm not sure how to prepare for it. Unlike an anime convention, I don't know my industry people as well as I think I should. However, there are a number of interesting panels I think I will attempt to visit though I hear they get packed quite quickly which may be troublesome. Of course, there's the expo hall to look forward to. You can't go wrong with shopping and game playing. DIABLO 3. K fine and other stuff too.

We'll be heading out tomorrow morning. Will be back Sunday night.

Then I gotta work on my major project proposal when I get back... ugh, will deal with that after the fun.

Also using this post to test out the "Link" feature.

K off to go play more DoW2.