OK, pretty much, PAX was FANTASTIC. It couldn't have been a more perfect adventure for me and my boy. You can bet your ass that this is going to be an annual event.
I've ALWAYS wanted to go to PAX when I found out about it a few years ago. I think I even posted here a while back that we should do a meet up at one of them. I didn't know what to expect so I did my research and started living on the PAX West forums to make sure I had a good plan. And I can guarantee, you MUST have a plan at PAX, there's SO much to see/do and you can't do everything. It can be so overwhelming that you need to have plan coming in so you can do what you want and have backups when those things are full. I researched booths, created an account on Hootsuite to track all the #PAX hashtags to catch parties/giveaways/game releases etc. I researched food and got a hotel near the convention so we could have timeouts during the day as needed. We reseached all the booths, merch, pins, games, devs, panels, shows, tourneys, etc that we wanted to see and made a plan for each day. I got my tix on ebay and it wasn't too bad. But because this was our guy trip, I wasn't concerned about costs as much as I was about making this a great experience for me and Diego.
Diego is a typical nerdy, 11 YO boy. Because his interested tend towards gaming, Pokemon, Mad magazine, Oatmeal books, etc, he's a bit of an odd duck w/ the kids at school. He sometimes has his crew but he's not part of the popular crowd. He does have his moments at baseball and hip hop class (he dances in competitions) but those are few and far between. He does miss some social cues like direct eye contact when he talks to people and to other kids, it can be tough. We bond on games and tech so even though it was my 15th wedding anniversary, my wife and I both agreed that this was more important. I was a bit like him growing up so I can relate. I wanted to go to a place where he could meet 'his people' and he could do whatever he wanted and no one would correct him, get mad at him, etc. PAX was that place in spades.
Friday Day 1
We couldn't make it up to Seattle on Friday because of school so we took a later flight and arrived at our hotel around 9:30 or so. After grabbing some food, we walked around the convention center, taking in some Pokemon Go since there were Pokestops EVERYWHERE and almost all of them had lures. Cool to see that different areas have ones that are more popular than your regular haunts. At home, it rains Ratatas and Ekans. Not up here, it rains Drowzees and Horseas. Pretty cool.
We also passed by the Twitch party which was PACKED.
Then we came back to our hotel which happened to be the hosting hotel for the Tabletop Tourneys.
I hadn't realized how big tabletop was at PAX. We do have/play games like Exploding Kittens, Cards Against Humanity, Carcasonne, Super Fight, Munchkin, etc. I told Diego I wanted to try board/card games during the weekend so he had to put w/ me and that aspect. We show up and browsed the different rooms and there were people playing games of ALL kinds. It's cool too because you can join in if you want play or even just learn. That openness aspect was just amazing to me.
Saturday Day 2
World of Tanks outside convention
We got up early and got in line around 9 AM or so. Yup, that line was long. We brought our 3DS and I told Diego about the PAX Pokemon League (http://paxpokemonleague.net/about-2/). I told him to let out his nerd and if he saw someone w/ a DS and Pokemon, go ahead and ask to battle. Sure enough, there was a guy next to us (20's maybe) and he was willing to battle Diego. Diego lost both times but he put up a good fight (per his opponent) and he was beaming. It was a great way to kill the hour in line.
Walking into PAX, we couldn't contain ourselves.
Our 1st stop was to RUN to the Adult Swim booth so we could check out the Rick & Morty VR. If you did it, you got a Meeses pin. We are HUGE fans so this was the one thing we wanted all weekend. By the time we made it to the booth (10 minutes?), the line was capped. Only 3 stations and it was a 2 hour wait. They were strict about fire codes so we couldn't make a longer line. Oh well, plan B. While we waited, we both played the Teen Titans iOS game and of course, I bought it since it was on sale for $0.99. Then Diego played Duck Game and he was HOOKED. TBH, I didn't get the appeal of a crappy graphics game but I didn't want to interrupt his fun.
After that miss, we went to our plan and started looking at nearby stuff. First stop, Bill Amend of Foxtrot, where we could get a Quincy pin. We got some signed prints and I chatted him up, asking how his comics could have techy themes and be pretty accurate. He said he used to be a physics teacher.
Then we made our way to a game demo that was similar to Rocket League called De Former. My sone played a bit and we got a t-shirt.
We went to the Nintendo booth to check out the Sun & Moon pre-order bonus but it was only a poster. N was disappointing, only Sun & Moon, Yo Kai and another 3DS title. Not much else, not even Zelda. Oh well, at least I got to see the size of the new NES.
We tried some Logitech surround sound headphones. It was 'OK', but it definitely does not replace real surround sound.
We tried to do the Sony VR demos but you had to pre-register and the lines were too long. So we ended up playing a new title called Drawn to Death. The art was styled after high school pen notebook art, just like the ones that the artist kids drew when they were bored. The art was SO COOL and it was multiplayer shooter. We liked this title, I liked the art even more. While we waited, I tweeted Sony and got a free t-shirt.
We then spent some time rolling through some booths to hit some my plan to visit.
- Star Trek VR. Never got to try, that booth was booked within 5 minutes every day.
- Campo Santo. Got a cool pic from their picture booth. LOVED Firewatch but they didn’t have anything new, just gear inspired by the game.
- Yacht Club had a booth but they weren’t around. That was weird.
PAX 10 – I made a point to visit this booth that highlighted PAX’s top 10.
- 1979 Revolution Black Friday for iOS (http://inkstories.com/1979revolutiongame/#quotesandtrailer). I’m a HUGE fan of the animated graphic novel Operation Ajax about the history of Iran. I spoke to the dev and he described this as Operation Ajax on steroids. I played it and was hooked. Diego and I are now playing this and really liking it. Graphics could be better but I like the history part a lot.
- Fossil Echo (http://www.fossilecho.com/) - Yup, a lot like Limbo and the dev agrees. Sadly, only PC but he’s working on the Mac port. Cool platformer, very little instruction so you have to figure out what to do on your own. I personally dig those kind of games.
- Old Man’s Journey (http://www.oldmansjourney.com/). I’m a sucker for puzzle games and this looked great. Still in dev though, saw it on iPad Pro.
I went to the iam8bit booth because I’m a SUCKER for anything vinyl, especially custom/limited versions. I picked up the Psychonauts (comes w/ free game) and Broken Age LPs with special PAX colors. Went to Oni Press and got every Rick & Morty graphic title they had. We went to Gut Shot Games (http://www.gutshotgames.com/) because they have a new card game that I wanted to try. We don’t normally play those types of fight card games but I think my kid gets it (especially w/ Pokemon, he plays the video game but not really the cards, though he collects some). Figured maybe we get a lesson and we did from one of their team. It was kinda complicated for me, and all of a sudden, my son tells me what to do and the PR guys says, yeah, do that. Diego picked up the game SO quick, he’s got the head for these, I don’t. Much of the reason why he’s here, these are his people. Diego got to roll some dice for a chance to win a plush and sure enough he wins a giant plushie head.
We also went to the Indie booths and tried our 1st Sony VR with a tower defense game. Pretty cool concept, though the graphics were simple.
We have an early dinner break at Serious Pie (GREAT pizza) and enjoy a blackberry juniper saison that was pink, almost brown. SO GOOD. Then D has a root beer float (on tap) so good. Me? I also have a float but with a nitro stout. I don’t like stout but vanilla ice cream makes it oh so tasty.
We ate early so we could get in line for the JackboxTV crowd play @ 7 PM. We love those games and knew it would be crowded. We also planned on Batman Telltale at 8:30, so we had leave early and get back in line for the same venue. We were going to be able to crowd play of Batman, but I thought it was Ep 1 and we’d get a preview of Ep 2. Nope, we were going to do a full playthrough of EPISODE TWO. Everyone cheered. It was glitchy because it’s still 3 weeks from release and this was the biggest crowd play they’ve done (almost 1000). Partway they gave up and just had the leader play while we shouted suggestions, still fun. At the end, we all got Steam codes for the full season. Sorry, they wouldn’t let us take pix or do social media so there were no spoilers. If you haven’t played this, trust me, it’s a Batman origin story I had not expected, in a good way. Interesting story line w/ the Waynes and Falcone, even different from Gotham on Fox.
Jackbox Line
Batman line
So now it’s 10:30 and D wants to head back. BUT, we’re in the same floor as the VR demos. So guess what we do? First we head to the Samsung Oculus demos where they use Galaxy 7’s. That was cool as a demo but man, I get vertigo from it, especially with some flying ‘Agent’ game they had. Cool for a small hw platform demo, but I wanted to see some real games. I did play a horror title that made me scream out loud when the ghost/zombie appeared out of now where, that was amusing. I’ll also add that this was where we had to fudge D’s age as much of this stuff had to be 13 or older. Next we walked across the hall to try the HTC Vive demo. We had the choice of multiplayer on the full Oculus headsets running on gaming PCs but we wanted to try the Vive. It had Fruit Ninja, a racquetball game in a geodesic dome, and a dual pistol alien shooter. This was cool. You could turn 360 and see full gameplay, I could see my sword/gun/racquet in front and it was pretty intuitive. Response was great as well as the immersion. After doing this, we were sold on VR. I’m ready to get find a PS4 VR since I missed out on the 1st wave.
At this point, it’s midnight and we’re pooped. We start our way back to our hotel to rest up for our 2nd day. GREAT 1st day at PAX.
