the bblog

Liveblog: PAX 09, Day 2

PAX 2009, day two! As usual, updates throughout the day, until I go home sometime around 0030 hours. This would be a great time to read my day 1 post, which is now complete.

1021 hours: After Not Enough Sleep I am back on site. Some jerk left a Razor t-shirt on my keyboard.

1240 hours: Should probably stop playing TF2 and hit the expo floor during the lunch sag.

1253 hours: I guess nerds don't eat?

1257 hours: I claim my prize from the Intel booth, after being tagged by a prize patrol while playing TF2. It's... a crappy messenger bag! Wow!

1401 hours: Apparently I missed the Avatar booth (generic movie tie in, for a movie I don't have a whole lot of hope in) and the Brutal Legends booth, which still looks metal, even after surviving a cancellation.

1420 hours: The Darksiders mechanical horse has broken down. No! My favorite gimmick!

They've got a sign up declaring an "intermission". Nice try, guys.

1441 hours: A flack at the Peregrine booth (they of the interesting but stupidly expensive 3D controller and the stupidly expensive and also regularly stupid glove controller.) just said "Ladies and gentlemen, does anybody want some swag?" Instant crowd.

1444 hours: He's got them screaming their devotion to Peregrine, in return for t-shirts. Dance, puppets, dance!

1538 hours: Played Split Second at the Disney booth. Generic, but very pretty racing game where you can trigger sundry cataclysms to alter the course and/or immolate opponents. (Disney games make me verbose) I then had a wonderful conversation with the booth flack.

Me: Very cinematic. (This is an insult)

Flack: Yeah, it's great, isn't it?

Me: I'm concerned about replayablity. It's a racing game, so in order to not suck, you're going to have to run the course a dozen times, but each event will be the same, every time.

Flack: Well, it's a racing game.

Me: Yes, but it will never be as cool or as awesome as the first time. People are going to buy it after reading a review or playing it for three minutes at Gamestop, but every time to run a course, the same tower will explode and fall down, the same plane will crash, the novelty will wear away, and you'll have a mediocre racing game from Disney. There's no depth, no replayablity.

Flack: What? You didn't say half of that.

Me: It's my blog, and I'll fabricate conversations from whole cloth if I want to.

Flack: Heil Hitler!

1625 hours: Returned Roy's call in the Star Wars fan cantina. Hi Roy.

1640 hours: Playing Monty Python Fluxx with two guys whose names I wasn't professional enough to write down.

Python Fluxx has rule cards that allow you to play more cards if you talk in an outrageous accent, or draw more cards if you sing a few lines from a Python song. Naturally, there is an action card called "This is getting far too silly" that resets the rules.

1815 hours: Eating outrageously expensive WSCC chili dog and somewhat expensive coffee. I missed the TF2 tournament, which sucks, though my experience with competetive TF2 has been nothing but bad.

2120 hours: Waiting in line for the Saturday Night Concerts. Brought earmuffs this time.

2129 hours: This place is absolutely fucking full of people.

This photo completely fails to convey the scene. There's at least two thousand people in here.

2136 hours: Someone actually recognized my Dwarf Fortress shirt. We have an awkward conversation, because we're at a nerd convention.

2159 hours: Burn that noise, man. If you don't wear hearing protection, it's far too loud and the acoustics are terrible. If you do, its tolerable, but the acoustics are even worse.

0110 hours: After playing TF2 for three hours, I caught the last bus out of Seattle. Exciting!

Additional pictures:

Unlike my PAX 08 experience, which was pretty much dominated by waiting in lines, I didn't wait in a single major line this year. As a result, I didn't play any of the big unreleased games, but as I have whined previously, there are no worthwhile unreleased games. Speaking of which,

Shame how little respect Bungie has for their major fanbase, ah haw haw haw haw haw.

Disappointing epilogue:

Even though PAX has three days, I'm not going to blog about the third day, since I didn't do anything of interest. Five hours of me absolutely kicking ass at CS:S and L4D2, and getting crushed at FE:L.

Verdict for PAX 09: A+, would do again, with a much lighter computer, and teathering on my Pre enabled, as to not be at the mercy of PAX's internet connection. Also, bringing my own food might be a good idea.