Pax Prime 2014: Day One

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.