PAX Prime and Stuff

I'm not much of a traveler. I'm used to staying in my Southern California bubble. I never really moved around much except for some early childhood trips to India and Pakistan (where my family is from). I even went to school in Southern California and if I did travel, it was mostly to San Francisco to visit my over-worked sister. So naturally, after graduating and getting a real job, I decided to allocate some funding to travel and see the United States. Hopefully after visiting most of the major cities (and getting a pay raise at some point), I can tour Europe, Asia, and all the other continents below the Equator. But for now, I'll tell you a little about what I did in Seattle. Don't worry, some of it was video game related.

View from the top of the Space Needle facing Puget Sound

Seattle is surprisingly a very busy town despite its size. Maybe it was because of the labor day weekend, but there was a surprisingly good amount of people touring the city. But from Pike's Market to Puget Sound, there seemed to be this serene calm despite the crowded streets. Travelling by bus made traverse the small but beautiful city easy and I got to take in a lot of the sights without the hassle of worrying about traffic or transportation. And the serenity that was felt achieved it's ultimate effect when I was on top of the Space Needle the morning before I left. Sure it was only three short days I spent in Seattle, but it significance was much more than vacation. It was a breath of fresh air from the California culture.

But then there was PAX...

It was even weirder in person...

Oh, the bittersweet experience of PAX prime. It's one of those video game/geek conventions that have been part of the growing movement of conventions over the past couple of decades. It seems like everything has a convention, an expo, or some conference. Heck, even Gamestop has an expo!

There isn't much that separates PAX from other conventions. The only other convention I've experience was Comic-con pre and post it's mainstream success. PAX doesn't have the same numbers of con-goers as Comic-Con, but it sure looks like it's getting there. More often than not, I'd see PAX badges everywhere while touring the downtown attractions. People dressed as unrecognizable characters or as people from various indie games I've never played. Waiting lines for restaurants were unnecessarily long because of the influx of PAX goers. The focus on games was a nice change of pace from something like Comic-con. I got to see a lot of awesome games and played demos I wouldn't normally be able to play. The lines for some of the more popular games, however, were like waiting for an amusement park ride. A two hour wait to see someone play The Last of Us? Ridiculous. Lines wrapping around the convention center booths to play Borderlands 2? My God. The only people who would find these situations understandable are people who go to each day of PAX (it's three days long). As a Sunday-only goer, none of it was worth it. I instead toured the rest of the littler known projects.

I don't know, this picture sums up PAX in a metaphorical sense

Co-founder of Penny-Arcade, Jerry Holkins at the
booth for Storyteller

One game that stood out a bit was Storyteller. It was a cute little 8-bit looking puzzle game that had you completing Sunday comic strip panels. All that is given is a terse statement of what happens during the panel and the items you can place in the panels. The placement of these items (which range from characters to tombstones) is up to the user to make sure it fits with in the statement given to you. It was a very interesting game to say the least. Interesting enough to get one of the co-authors of Penny-Arcade, Jerry Holkins, attention. Yes, I had the pleasure to meet Jerry Holkins which was pretty damn cool. Though he's not a celebrity to me at all, it was nice to see that he didn't act like one at all. These guys, the founders of this convention, would tour the floor and just look and act like normal people. In fact, the convention taught me how normal people with status can be. It's cool to not feel super nervous when trying to talk to someone who has potentially hundreds of thousands of fans.


Apart from that, I was able to play some of more major games at the Sony booth (besides The Last of Us). I got to play the demo of God of War: Ascension, which was pretty much consistent with the rest of the series. Same attacks, same type of enemies, and same over the top violence. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was somewhat of a disappointment. Though slashing through enemies and cutting them up in tiny pieces felt chaotically satisfying, I grew tired of the cinematics after the 15 minute demo. Sony's Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale (SPASBR for short) was eerily like Super Smash Brothers that I kept feeling like I played something like this before. It seemed like Sony just took Brawl and changed the way Knock-Outs were structured. Instead of building up your opponents damage meter and knocking them out of the stage, you instead build up your own characters special meter and use your acquired specials to knock out your opponents. It makes the game a bit more dodgy then aggressive. It also makes the game better as a four play free for all than anything else (even 1 v 1s). This makes the game more of a party game in my eyes than anything else. It's sad because this creates a less competitive fighting game than it's Super Smash Brothers cousin. But it does look very good despite some character model issues (I'm looking at you Japanese Nathan Drake).

Jeez, Red Yoshi...lay off on the sodas...

Lastly, the Wii U. It showed it's pretty little face that weekend and I tried my best to get my hands on that table controller. Every since the 2011 Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3 for short), I just wanted to see how viable that monstrosity of a controller would be in my own skinny little hands. I can vouch for all the press reports that say the controller is light weight--it is. But holding the controller with one hand and a  stylus in another got a bit tiresome. It also didn't make me feel any better about the functionality of the tablet when all I did during the demo of New Super Mario Brothers U was place platforms for my four other comrades. I wasn't able to see how the tablet handled as a controller since the lines for games like ZombiU were also locked behind amusement ride wait times. But I have high hopes for the system and though the Wii has had more downs than ups in it's life cycle, the Wii U might be able to make up for the Wii's mistakes.

The last thing that I got to witness that Sunday night was the final round of the Omegathon. It's one of the events that separates PAX from a lot of the other video game/D&D/comic/PC conventions. Normal, regular gamers are met with challenges of random games that are announced to them at most an hour in advance. And the best part is that not all the games in the tournaments are video games. But sadly, since I was not a three-day PAX attendee, I was only able to see the final round of the tournament. The two challengers had to play a custom (and extremely difficult) course in Trials Evolution, a motocross game. The rules were simple: each challenger were give a certain number of tries to get through the course (checkpoints were given) and if they could not make it to the end within their allotted attempts, the handed off the controller to their opponent. As the rounds went on, the amount of tries per challenger increased which strengthened their chances of getting through the course. I never saw a crowd go so wild at people overcoming their failures; because believe me, there were A LOT of failures. One of the competitors (Person A) just couldn't get past the first jump of the course. It took her so long to get any rhythm within the game. Yet the other challenger (Person B) had a linear progression of skill as he battled through the level to the point where he crashed right before the finished line. This sparked some sort of fire in the Person A where she actually finished the course and appeared to have won. It was astonishing to see something like that happen especially see Person B almost finish the level the round before. Yet Person B had another chance and succeeded in beating Person A's time. It was extremely thrilling and never had I been so deafened by crowd's cheering than that night. And I've been to rock concerts.

Borderlands 2 display

All in all, PAX is a convention I liked but probably wouldn't go to again. It's just not worth it to fly to Seattle and spend money to wait in line for demos and wait in line for panels. I like video games as much as the next nerd, but I don't think being a crowded hall with a bunch of Mass Effect and League of Legend cosplayers is my thing. It certainly doesn't help that I am in the upper age range of the attendees either.

Well, hopefully my next post will be The Last Story review. But who knows? Maybe it won't. We'll see. See ya next time. Peace.