<\/td><\/tr><\/table>\nWell hello, internet. Day two of PAX has been wrestled, put into submission and then shook down for lunch money. Josh is currently nursing a terrible foot injury from all the bunny hopping, so I’m here to give you lovely people the run down of Saturday. For those who don’t know who I am, my name is Mumbles and I’m the newest addition to the Spoiler Warning team. I also punched a guy in the face today, but we’ll get to that in a second.<\/p>\n
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After enjoying a twenty dollar Belgium waffle breakfast and teaching Josh a real-life mini game called “Make Sure Mumbles Doesn’t Wander Off”, we arrived at the convention center as it opened and immediately booked it to the Civilization 5 booth to sign up for a presentation. The next plan of attack was to wait in the Duke Nukem line, but it had already snaked around the booth and down the side of the convention hall. While part of me really wanted to wait in a soul crushing line like that, I didn’t want to after working myself into a delirious state the day before (which ended with me yelling at an elevator door as I curled up in a ball) . I had heard stories about the long lines at PAX, like a fisherman would hear stories of alluring mermaids that sent ships into jagged rocks, but I refused to be bested by it. There’s so many different ways to attack the monster of a video game convention and my playstyle did not include waiting five hours for one big joy ride.<\/p>\n
We wandered around until deciding to meet up with a 20sided reader who worked on the Tera game. It is an action-packed MMO that was originally made in Korea, but is being developed by a very enthusiastic American team for Western distribution. I loved the different ideas for professions and totally dug the combat system that involved a good deal of dodging and combos. I was very glad to see the game moved away from the usual MMO targeting system that has always bored me to tears. I really enjoyed rolling around enemies as a little dog-raccoon warrior, which totally brought new flavor to a usually very typical class.<\/p>\n
Next, we checked out Monaco and Spy Party, both of which are my favorite indie games at PAX. Spy Party is a very cool little game where one player controls a sniper and the other tries to carry out a mission as a spy without being killed first. The point of the game is to try and act like the AI to the point where the other player can’t tell the difference between what is computer and player controlled. Monaco, the other little indie game next door, was a really entertaining four player game where you play a group of burglars that break into various high security buildings, complete an objective and then get the hell out. It’s been a while since I’ve played a game with other people sitting right next to me, so it was very high energy with a crowd behind us cheering everyone on. At one point, I had almost been caught by some angry guards and a blood thirsty hound, but managed to get out by the skin of my teeth. I was so excited that I did a fist pump into the air, which actually smacked a guy in the face behind me. Remember kiddies, it’s not a convention until someone gets face punched.<\/p>\n
Did we mention the Nvidia Booth is awesome because of all the games you can play in 3D without waiting in huge lines? If you’re at PAX now, do yourself a favor and get the hell over there. They have Guild Wars 2, Dead Rising 2, Civilization 5 and even Fallout: New Vegas. I got the chance to play a good 20 minutes of Dead Rising 2 and it was actually a lot of fun. The first game completely destroyed my fear of zombies by hitting them over the head with hilarious weapons and this one is no different. You can actually craft items together to make stuff like a bat with nails in it or just search for stuff to kill zombies with on the casino floor. My personal favorite thing to do was push a wheelchair through a horde of zombies while dressed like Evil Kenevil.<\/p>\n
The only downside of the booth is that when they start giving out swag, an entire mob of very excited people suddenly appears whilst screaming and reaching towards the booth like hungry zombies who just spotted rotten meat. I’m pretty sure Josh got smacked around and almost trampled to death in the process.<\/p>\n
 <\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nOn Friday, we went to a panel that was pretty lack luster that had a lot of indie game developers hammering the message of “Making games is hard, but rewarding” into our skulls over and over, so I was worried the panels were going to follow suit. Luckily, the “Pitch a Game Idea” panel was the American Idol for nerds. People went up to the mic, pitched a stupid game like kittens that set people on fire and then competed for the “best” idea. Some people made the big mistake of pitching games that they had clearly thought about for a long time before they even made it to PAX. They were shot down pretty quickly and completely upstaged by hilarious ideas. The winner (and my personal favorite) was a game called Bee Cool wherein the lovely suburb you live in suddenly discovers you are actually a swarm of bees. I would play that game.<\/p>\n Finally, we went to the Star Wars presentation, featuring The Old Republic and Force Unleashed 2, in one of the coolest, Opera Style theaters I’ve ever been in. Did my ears almost break from the loudest lightsaber sound effect I’ve ever heard? It’s possible. Was it worth it? Totally.<\/p>\n We’ll have more information later that will include a fireside chat with Shamus and lots of in depth articles of the games we got to play later on this week. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go stand in line for Portal 2.<\/p>\n
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