Friday, September 11, 2009

of cosplay and swine flu

Four days now since PAX and I'm happy to say that I'm swine flu free. I wasn't exactly thrilled to hear that nearly 100 people got the disease while I was there, seeing as how I caught a cold the day I got back. I think my associates managed one synchronized eye-roll when I became that "I think I might have swine flu" guy for a day. I at least like to think I was acting cool and collected about it.


So, I mentioned the games that I played this last weekend but a nerd-con isn't anything without the army of costumed minions playing out their various characters. I didn't get as many pictures as I had hoped since my camera decided that it was actually a piece of crap. These are the pictures I happened to take while I was at PAX this year:








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Tuesday, September 08, 2009

pax 09 aftermath

Wow. This was without a doubt the greatest gaming venture I have ever participated in.


There's too much for me to talk about in one post without rambling, so I thought I would write about the experience in a few short bursts. This is easier for me since I have to get to work in an hour anyway.


I wanted to write about the games I played through first. I'll start with the bigger ones first:

Starcraft 2... Beautiful looking game! If Blizzard is good at one thing I'd say it's their ability to design a varied and fun RTS experience. I'm actually not as excited for this game because from what I saw and played, it was not really different from Starcraft in any significant way. That doesn't change the fact that it is a fun game that I will be buying the second it comes out.


Diablo 3... Again, same as with Starcraft. The one real change was in graphics (which I might add do not look like WoW graphics at all, if anyone was concerned about that). The graphics were PRETTY, and the gameplay was smooth and solid. I will grab this one when it comes out just because I know what a solid experience I will get from it.

Scribblenauts... Buy this game! It's a puzzle platformer for the DS where you must generate objects to overcome certain obstacles throughout the level. There are more than 10,000 objects available for the player to create, and almost all of them act intuitively with their surroundings. Just to explain how awesome this game is, I had a bear fighting a minotaur in shark infested waters. Yea.

Brink... The best looking shooter there in my opinion. It wasn't playable but we had a chance to watch a live demo and it was looking sharp! It gave you the option of playing one of two sides through the game, giving you two distinct views of the story. The gunplay was spot-on, considering it was made by the Enimy Territory team. They had implimented a novel feature that allows you to mitigate obstacles in your path in real time based on where you are looking as you are running. Say you want to jump over an obstacle, you just run at it while looking above it. I have high hopes.

Splinter Cell 2... Seeing as it's the fifth game in the series, you'd expect maybe a little stagnation. Not so. This game looks more intense than any other in the series and it seems that all of my complaints with the previous games have been taken care of. Again, this was only a viewable demo.

Avatar... I didn't have high hopes for it just because it is a movie game, and I'm sad to say it lived up to those expectations.

Borderlands... I didn't get a smooth play-through mostly because I had to jump in to a co-op game without getting a chance to learn the controls or the play mechanics. Once that was taken care of I got a pretty decent play through. I thought it was fun, but I'm hoping that it sweeps me off of my feet when I get a chance to sit down and play it in my own house.

God there are so many more games to talk about, not to mention the event itself. Check back soon for my next update!

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Thursday, September 03, 2009

heading to seattle tonight... pax tomorrow!

As I type this I am gathering up every last thing I'll need for PAX tomorrow and the two days after. This is harder work than I realized, what with all the hyping of this event that the internet and my brain are doing to me right now. At first I thought, "Okay, I've got clothes and a toothbrush. I'm set!"

Oh yea and I need my Magic cards too.
And my DS...
And the Gameboy Color just for the hell of it.

And food! The most important part. After all, I've got money for merch or food and frankly the merch is more important to me right now. So I threw all the food I could find into a bag. I think I have more Redbull than any one item. Sacrifices must be made since the damned thing is going from 10am til 3am the first two days. No time to worry about sleep now!

To top things off I decided to see if I could find any badass articles of clothing, since I'm going to be around thousands of my gaming brothers and sisters. First thing I found:


WIN!

I'll try to update throughout the weekend with pictures made of pure joy!

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