So it’s been a couple of weeks since we got back from PAX and even after a couple of weeks, I have great memories of how fan it was! I think Wil Wheaton said it best in his keynote speech that PAX really is like home for the gamer community.
You could walk the halls at any point of the day or night and there would masses of people, some playing Magic, some playing DS, some would be standing in circles syncing their Pokewalkers (this happened more times than I can count.)
Overall the panels were great. I have heard a number of people complaining about not being able to get into the bigger/more popular panels but for a few of them I got in even shortly after they had started with no problems. As I mentioned I got the see the keynote, which was fantastic, then the Penny Arcade Q&A which the guys from Penny Arcade which was funny and interesting. The draw a sketch panel was REALLY fantastic (Amy even came to this one with me) and the final Q&A panel of the weekend on Sunday was fun and very emotional. If you don’t know what I mean check this out:
That’s right at the end of the video that Mike “Gabe” going down to give her a hug…it was really sweet a just a great moment, one of many throughout PAX.
Most of my time was spent at BYOC (bring your own computer.) I have to say this was AWESOME! There is a small fee beyond that of the normal PAX pass, but I have to say it’s totally worth it. NVIDIA and Intel with the help of lots of Enforcers did a great job running BYOC and all of the “low tech” competitions were also lots of fun.
I also spent a fair amount of time on Saturday in the Expo Hall with Amy. That was pretty cool. Alienware had their new M17X laptops with them and they all a custom portal map that had been created just for Alienware. Of course I had to play it, and it was lots of fun. The map actually used some of the new things that will be in Portal 2 (like reverse gravity) and then you did get cake at the end and as we all know, you just keep on trying until you run out of cake :) Another thing that I found interesting in the Expo Hall was a new game called Monday Night Combat. This game hasn’t been released yet (bummer) but I’m sure it will be a huge success based on what I saw. Basically the game has many of the aspects that make Team Fortress 2 such a playable game (different but balance classes being the most important.) I talked to the guys there for a bit and they are really excited about the game and they were even more excited about all the attention they were getting from the PAX crowd. I don’t currently have Xbox Live, but once this game is released I’m going to find it pretty hard to resist. Of course the standards were there, Bioware had a huge booth, 2K games also had a huge booth, but really it was the smaller developers that I found the most interesting and the most fun to talk to. All great people, and they are super passionate about their games too.
Ok, that’s gonna be about it from me, lots more to say about PAX and the games I got and how awesome they are, but I’ll save that for another post. More later on!
~C
Posts
