I’m sitting in the comfort of my own home now and I am relieved to be in familiar surroundings. It’s always great to get away on a short vacation but by the time it ends you often find yourself missing your bed. For me, I was missing my kids like crazy. It was great to see them today and spend the evening with them sharing my journey. Now it’s your turn! Enjoy Tales From PAX West: Day Three.
Day three began with another headache. I’m telling you, the humidity and constant sweating made it so I was always losing my hydration battle. It didn’t last too long though because it was much cooler outside making it easier to stay hydrated. Also, the caffeine I had shortly after helped out a lot. We showed up a little later than we did the day before and somehow managed to get a better spot in line. It was the closest I’ve ever been to the entrance in my five trips to PAX. We had a place to sit down and rest our feet for a bit until we were able to pour into the expo hall with the sea of other humans. Once we were in we headed straight for the Oculus line as fast as we could to play Stormland but it was capped by the time we arrived.
From there Zac decided to share with us the VR experience he had the day before at the Until You Fall booth. I had never tried VR before so I was eager to see what it was all about. Since we were in the expo hall so early we didn’t wait any longer than ten minutes to play. The folks at the booth taught me how to equip the VR headset and once it was on everything else disappeared. I mean visually that was pretty obvious but, even though I didn’t have headphones, everything else literally faded away as the VR experience engulfed me. Walking through the world and just taking it all in was a breathtaking experience for me. It felt so real watching these enemies approach me and try to attack me with a sword and being able to block them by actually raising my arms to do so. I suppose they let me play for about fifteen minutes but it only felt like five. The whole event was eye opening and has me legitimately considering a VR device.
After we concluded our demo of Until You Fall we moved to the other side of the booth where Cook, Serve, Delicious 3 was set up. There still wasn’t too many people in this area and I decided I had time to try it out. Zac and Ericco were uninterested so they went off to try something else. I got to meet the man who made Cook, Serve, Delicious and he was delighted to see that I was a huge fan. He gave me the controls and explained to me what was new. The big thing is that it has a food truck setting that travels from location to location rather than a restaurant setting. Another item they changed was the ability to quickly serve food when it was ready. Instead of going through each order and pressing the command button to serve it, you could simply press one button to serve all of the ready orders at the same time. For those of you who have played this game before know how hindering this was in the previous titles, so it was nice to see that. They also removed the daily chores which is a huge relief and time saver that lets you focus on perfecting your orders.
I had lost track of my crew by the time I finished so I decided to grab a couple more bandit masks from Borderlands 3 and asked the PAX information booth if they would check our luggage on the last day so we didn’t have to carry it around. Unfortunately they do not do that here, which I thought was odd because when we were at PAX East they had a place to check bags. Once I met up with the fellas we went over and checked out the Monster Hunter World booth. They had a pretty huge statue right out front (picture later) and it was pretty impressive. We didn’t want to hop in line though because we were eager to get in line for Destiny 2.
The Destiny 2 line was still pretty long but they had over thirty stations so it seemed to move pretty quick. They were showing off how the game runs on PC with a 6v6 match of control. When it was our turn we dominated the other team, which was surprising to me because non of us have played Destiny 2 yet. It never fails to amaze me, however, how great Bungie is at making first person shooters. Destiny 2 is so damn smooth and it felt great to play it. At the end of the match they gave us these cool medallions that we could wager at a different line for a better prize. If we won that match we’d get a cool pin but if we lost it, we’d lose the medallion as well. We didn’t have time to try it this day but figured we’d get another medallion on the last day so we could at least secure one no matter what happened with the wager.
With our sweet new Destiny swag we headed over to the Nintendo booth to see if we could get in line for Luigi’s Mansion 3 or Zelda: Link’s Awakening. That line, we learned, was actually the hardest one to get into at the convention. We immediately wrote it off and moved on to other things. For example, we never made our way up to the top floor where the third expo hall was located and it was already the third day. So that’s were we went, straight on up. There wasn’t much to write home about up there though. Mostly shops that were selling all sorts of cool stuff. We did find a few gems here and there. Blair Witch was being demoed and I had fun watching that for a bit after I tested out a side scrolling indie game called, Liberation. The story of this game is being told through an interactive comic book. The graphics are dark and melancholic and, from what I could tell, the story is going to be the same way.
We went back downstairs to see if Oculus was finally open but it unfortunately wasn’t. So we hopped in line to check out Codevein. At this point my feet were staring to become too painful to deal with. I was ready to just sit down for the day but I toughed it out and checked out the demo. I’m sure Codevein is going to be a great hit with the right audience but it wasn’t for me. I couldn’t even get very far because I kept dying and starting from the beginning. I just didn’t understand the attack combos and it was actually pretty difficult in nature. I don’t think Ericco and Zac cared much for it either. When this was over Ericco went to grab a seat for a bit while Zac and I check out the Oculus booth again. When we discovered it was still capped we ran outside and grabbed a hotdog from the hotdog stand across the street. I remember doing this last year and really wanted to try them again. I wasn’t disappointed. They put cream cheese on their hotdogs, which is crazy to me but totally delicious, and I stacked that bad boy with grilled onions too. I was feeling pretty faint before we grabbed that and it hit the spot.
Back upstairs we went to see if Oculus was free yet. We had pretty bad timing. They had just recently filled back up and the lady who capped the line had told us it was open for like four minutes without anyone jumping in. Zac was pretty disappointed to say the least. With that we ran back to the Until You Fall booth to give it another demo. It was around this time that Ericco messaged us saying that he was headed back over to Destiny 2. Zac decided to meet him on the bridge to tell him where we were since our service had been pretty spotty. I was going to save his spot but he never returned. By the time it was my turn to play again I realized that they must’ve gotten into the Stormland demo at the Oculus booth. That unfortunately bummed me out because I really wanted to play it with them.
I went right over once my demo was completed to see those lucky bastards patiently waiting their turn. I didn’t realize that their wait would be roughly two hours and there was no way the people running the booth would let me hop in behind them. So I left to do other things. I didn’t think the guys would want to try Tiny Build’s new game, Secret Neighbor. It’s apparently part of the Hello Neighbor franchise but a multiplayer game much like Evolve’s 1v4 style. It was actually pretty fun to play considering I never did try Hello Neighbor. The twist on this game was that there were five children trying to find five keys in order to escape the house, but one of the kids was secretly the creepy neighbor disguised as a kid. It was tense because you couldn’t really trust anyone. Unsurprisingly the person playing the neighbor “kidnapped” the rest of us and won the game. We all got a sweet consolation prize for participating in the demo in the form of a large plushie like doll of The Neighbor himself.
I checked on the guys and they were still waiting in line, patient yet excited. I was jealous if I’m being honest, I really wanted to check out Stormland because it’s made by Insomniac Games. With some more time to kill I ran around to see what merch was still available. I wound up picking up a couple of Gears of War shirts, especially the one that says, “The Cole Train Runs on Whole Grain.” I was very excited to share that with my son. By the time I finished that I managed to get back in time to see Zac concluding his demo. I guess he and Ericco got to play it cooperatively but I couldn’t see where Ericco was. They were gushing after their experience and I’m still wanting to give it a shot.
By the time they finished the expo hall was closing, so we ran across the street for some Cheesecake Factory dinner, again, an then back to the pad to wind down and do some blogging. I really did miss this and hope to keep it up.
K bye!
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