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).

 

Terminated

Why, hello there! Here's your last paycheque and your way out.

I expected the day to act out like any other day but had a lemon thrown at my face half way through. Having being informed that I was replaced by two others, I was relieved of my work then and there. Without given the time to process what had just happened, I was already being guided out the door.  Even now I still don't know what's going on.

Despite job searching the last two and a half months while still employed (and have had no luck). I can't help but feel pessimistic at this point.  And now without income, the pressure feels even greater than before.

I would have appreciated some kind of forewarning, seriously.

Torchlight: Click Click Click

Sick days are great for finishing up posts.


STORY 2/5
There was a story? Oh, yeah I guess there was.

You arrive in a town called Torchlight and was asked to help find her mentor who seems to have gone mad and disappeared. You were told he's in the mines so off you go. You, of course, do eventually find him after traversing 30 some-odd levels of this "mine". The lady who recruits you does not help you at all, although you don't need help anyway.

CHARACTERS 2/5
I have no background story so the character class really only determines your play style. The only person with some sort of background is the mentor, Master Alric who's, well, crazy I suppose. What drove him to his obsession with Ember, the main cause of all of this town's chaos, is played out through transcripts of his findings/thoughts when you descend the main story dungeon.

SOUND 3.5/5
The music and sounds in this game bleeds Diablo. I swear the original composer of the Diablo series who joined the team purposely made it Diablo-like. The town theme, especially, sounds just like Diablo's town theme. The sound effects are practically identical (e.g. the scrolls and gold sfx). I don't know if that's a bad thing but it definitely makes the game want you to feel right at home. Diablo's home sweet home feel.

Where's my Diablo... :(

GRAPHICS 3/5
Nothing impressive. If anything, it's outdated and cartoony but I've seen community mods available to possibly remedy this or at least update it a bit if you wished to do so. The simplicity of its visuals reflects the rest of the game quite well though.

GAMEPLAY 3/5
The deliciously simplified version of Diablo, keeping the formula that made Diablo so addictive. Unique to the game is a pet animal that's another additional inventory pack and can sell stuff for you while you're still dungeon crawling. You can also feed it different types of fish for it to transform into other monsters with different attacks and resistances. It's not particularly useful since it likes to die a lot. Speaking of fish you can fish at fishing spots scattered across the dungeon.

OVERALL 3/5
A great game reminiscent to Diablo in almost every way, which doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing but it definitely does make you yearn for more out of the game. Torchlight doesn't feel particularly polished nor incomplete, although its simplicity does do the job for what it is. The devs did mention that they had more plans for the game but due to time constraints, they had to take it out (e.g. multiplayer) which is where Torchlight 2 comes in to fill in the gaps.

The game was fun and plenty addictive but as a whole there was a lot of missing potential. We'll just have to see how Torchlight 2 does to make up for the first.