So I’m standing in line for the
Halo panel here on Day 2. My tablet didn’t charge the way it was supposed to
last night, so getting this bad boy posted is going to be pretty iffy! Damn
this tablet. If you haven’t already, feel free to check out the pre PAX blog I
posted last night. My goal was to blog on the spot, but the way this tablet has
been, it looks like I’ll be giving daily reports like I did last year.
###
Just as I thought! My tablet didn’t
last long, but I need to be grateful this bad boy is even working at all.
Yesterday we got up bright and early and treated ourselves to a nice continental
breakfast. It’s a pretty nice hotel and they serve some not too terrible food.
I went for the biscuits and gravy and nothing else. Usually I would have
grabbed something else, but the plates they gave us were scorching hot, I
burned my fingers trying to get the delicious gravy to cover my warm biscuits.
I mean the freaking plate was hotter than my food, what the hell people? But I digress.
It tasted super yummy and my fingers eventually healed, ha! I don’t post
pictures of my food, but I blog about it instead, so there.
After breakfast we walked to PAX,
whoo! We wanted to get in line to grab some goodie bags that, as we know, are
filled with awesome swag. We waited in line for 90 minutes before the doors
opened and walked into the theater to retrieve our goodies. I was disappointed because
it was full of advertisements, eye drops, and…well that’s pretty much it. They didn’t
even come with guidebooks or lanyards. Oh well. I personally would have rather
waited in line for the expo hall. The thing we’re quickly learning about PAX
Prime is that not all events take place in the same building. The theater we
were just in is a couple blocks from the convention center, and there are two
other locations that are further away, the main theater being around eight
blocks. None of them are too bad when considering walking distance, but this is
making me miss the convenience of PAX East and its, “one size fits all,”
building. Oh and there seems to be way more people here as well. The city
streets are packed with people and the safe drivers are surprisingly patient.
Thank goodness!
We went directly to the convention
center after this. Well, actually, I forgot to apply deodorant this morning and
that is a big no no. I usually don’t forget, but I was so excited to get to the
expo that I rushed out the door. So we walked down to the nearest Walgreens so
I could re-up. I bought a great smelling B.O. stick, water, and a soda, and we
were set. We finally made it into the expo and it was a mad house. People swarming practically every inch of the
floor made it feel a tad overwhelming. I think it’s because this place doesn’t
have as much space as Boston’s massive convention center, but regardless, I
felt a little overwhelmed at first. We made our way up to the second level and
watched as some people played new Nintendo games, namely Captain Toad’s Treasure Tracker and Pokémon. We sat down for a quick moment while I tried fixing my
tablet. After that we made our way to the north side of the building where
there were more escalators. We saw a table top gaming area and we went in to
check it out. My Uncle was impressed with the games they had made out of
popular video games. Xcom and The Witcher each had board games that
people were playing. I found a plug in and reset my tablet. Boom, the bad boy
was fixed, with almost no battery, but hey, at least it’s working!
We went up to the third floor and
were greeted by a cool little Halo
area. We weren’t allowed to go in, though. We found out later it was because
they were holding a professional Halo
tournament in there which was able to be viewed live on Twitch. So we went and
bought some Halo merch instead. I got
two stuffed grunts for my kids and a Halo
T-shirt for myself. From there we walked down to the live arcade that they had.
It was awesome to see all these old school machines. They had pinball, Centipede, The Simpsons, and many more. I got on and played some old school Ms. Pacman. I really enjoy the controls
on an arcade machine, they feel better than modern controller, in my opinion
anyway.
It’s around midday at this point
and we finally decided to head up to the fourth floor where two of the three
expo halls are located. The first area we stepped into actually happened to be
a live League of Legends Championship.
I never really considered the popularity of E-Sports until that moment. There
were thousands of people huddled together to watch these teams face off against
each other. On the large televisions they aired interview with players and had
live commentary, which I found crazy. I suppose I used to watch Major League
gaming back when they had Halo, but
this phenomena is still kind of new to me, especially since they’re referring
to it as a sport. We began making our rounds through the next hall, which is
still part of the area we were just in. This is where the game are!
We walked around a bit, soaking in
the views. Square Enix has its own area where they showed off a bunch of new
games. I couldn’t tell if they were promoting a new Hitman or not, but they had a banner for it that was hanging right
above an arcade style Dead Island game
and a new Saint’s Row game called, Saint’s Row: Cat out of Hell. Xfinity
has a booth here as well and they were showing off The Crew. I thought this was weird because The Crew has its own booth, but there wasn’t a line to play it over
here and so we did. We hopped right into the action and just drove around the
streets of Miami. I think this game looks beautiful. It may not be a graphical
marvel considering the presence it will have on both next gen and previous gen,
but it had vibrant colors that pleased me. The controls feel surprisingly well
and it wasn’t complicating to drive around. After a short free roam we got
placed into some missions. The first mission had us, the crew I was paired
with, chasing down a truck. The goal was to smash into him enough until his
health meter hit zero. I accomplished the final blow on this bad guy, you know,
because I’m awesome. From there we went to switch to a performance car in the
garage. The lady told us we needed it because we were about to face off against
each other in a race. The race itself wasn’t too bad, but I did have a harder
time controlling the vehicle in this situation. I faired decently well, but still
lost. I do plan on buying The Crew.
It’s a fun game with a hopeful concept that I’m certain will bring me hours of
relaxable entertainment.
We walked around the floor some more
after this so we could get a good idea of what we wanted to spend our time
doing in the coming days. Tales from the
Borderlands has a booth in this same area and I put that on my list,
however, I think they’re only showing a video, so it’s not a priority. The
Behemoth is here as well and they’re letting people play all of their games,
including their new one called, Game 4.
This first expo hall had a lot to take in, but we didn’t realize we hadn’t
really scratched the surface. The next expo hall is across the sky bridge, but
we did get to look at some cool comic booths that were promoting their products
in between the show floors. We walked into the second show floor and realized
right away where we’d be spending a good deal of our time.
The first thing we see as we walked
in was the giant Far Cry 4 booth. I’m
not sure if they’re actually letting people play their game there, but they do
have cage fighting. People get dressed up in these creepy furry animal costumes
and wrestle each other. I’m certain Ubisoft has gone full retard here, but we’ll
be checking this booth out more thoroughly later this weekend, so I’ll keep you
updated on what’s happening here.
Microsoft has a big booth as well,
showcasing three major titles, Sunset
Overdrive, Halo Master Chief Collection, and Forza Horizon 2. Right next to
the Microsoft booth we see Sony’s booth where they’re showing off The Order: 1866, Bloodborne, Driveclub,
and some other smaller titles I’ll be getting a better look at later. We do plan
on standing in line for The Order,
but my Uncle and I both agree that we’re not very interested in Bloodborne. I know that may sound crazy
to some people, but not every popular game suit everyone’s wants, so yeah. We
did, however, get a chance to play Drive
Club. This game is amazing. The graphics are simply breathtaking, the controls
are sleek and smooth, and the entire experience was very gratifying. I’m happy
to say that I’ll stop by to play this again if we have time and it will most
likely be the first Playstation game I purchase when I can get my hands on the
console.
Right next to Sony’s area is a
booth for Alien Isolation. I think
they’re just showing a video to people, but I’m very intrigued to see what they
have. I normally avoid survival horror titles, but since this one takes place
within one of my favorite movie franchises, I simply must check it out. The
last game I played today was Fenix Rage.
It’s a small Indie platformer that is very reminiscent to Super Meat Boy, which I should mention has announced a new game
called Super Meat Boy Forever and is
available to be played! Fenix Rage has
us playing as a hedgehog who navigates his way through an obstacle to reach the
end. The difficult part is that he wants to snag a cookie before he get to the
end. The levels progressively get more difficult and I found nothing but joy in
overcoming them. I WILL be getting Fenix
Rage the day it becomes available.
The rest of our time was spent
walking around this second show floor where we got a glimpse of everything we
wanted to do. Evolve has a massive
booth with an equally massive line of eager people waiting to play it. Next to
that was the Borderlands Pre Sequel
booth where I got to have my photo taken with Handsome Jack, who was pretending
to hold a gun to my head. Next to that booth was the Shadow of Mordor and the Evil
Within booth. We want to check out all of these except Evil Within and probably Borderlands.
It’s not that we’re not interested in these games, well I’m not into Evil Within, but there are plenty of
other things we’d like to spend our time doing. Assassin’s Creed has a booth for both of their games, Unity and Rogue, Nintendo has a big section where they’re showing off their
new game, Sonic Boom, and the Indie
area has so many games we want to check out that I couldn’t try to name them
all here if I wanted to. So our weekend looks packed and I haven’t even
mentioned the panels we want to attend.
To cap off our day, we ventured to
the six floor where the third and final show floor is. There is a ton of stuff
going on up here too, but less stuff we’re really interested in. Booths like
Rooster Teeth can be found up here as well as some more Indie titles, Payday 2, the Valve store, and a booth
for Unreal Engine 4. We did stop by Unreal and were given a tour of the
program. I haven’t really had the chance to use Unreal 4, but the stuff they
were showing us is really cool and it has me excited to make games of my own!
While we were at this booth we got to play a short demo of Infinity Blade 3 on the Ipad. It was pretty fun considering the
entire thing was a quick time event. It was very engaging for a touch screen
game and it was satisfying to complete the encounter with a massive dragon
before being able to collect some sweet loot.
Well, that was our first day of Pax
Prime. I do apologize that it has taken me until the end of Day 2 to get this
out to you, but fret not. I’m slowly catching up and I have an entire second
day of excitement to share with you. I cannot wait! Let’s hope my damn tablet
charges tonight! See you tomorrow, gang.
