My Pax Purchases
My first day in Boston I wandered over to Gamestop to pick up SSX and FIFA Street for $39.99. I’ve briefly popped in both games and have to say they were a lot of fun more importantly $20 off each game and less sales tax. Win!.
My first move once inside the Boston Convention centre was straight to Astro Gaming to pick up a wireless mixamp and a 2012 upgrade kit for my A40′s. The gentlemen manning the astro booth was incredibly helpful and even showed me how to place the new ear pieces on my A40′s.
The Wireless mixamp was a breeze to hook up once I got home from my flight. Since I had the previous wired mixamp hooked up. All I had to do was plug in the power source for the new wireless mixamp and than plug in the optical cable and turn it on. Next up was to put three triple A batteries into the RX (receiver), install the belt buckle, plug the headphones into it and the chat cable into the unit, power it up and were done. Once I turned on the Xbox muted my receiver and enjoyed my 7.1 surround sound into my ears.
Gunnar Optiks
On the last day of PAX I wandered over to the Gunnar Optiks booth to try and score a deal on a new pair of glasses. I got a pair last year however my biggest complaint was how heavy the frames were otherwise I enjoyed my purchased. I picked up a pair of MLG Phantom Neptune’s. There blue in colour with the yellow tinted lenses. In case your wandering I use the Gunnars frequently at work to avoid eye strain or after a night of little sleep I wear them to keep me going.
New Trent iCurve IMP70D 7000mah External Battery Pack
Before PAX I listened to the @thevowel discuss on the Major Nelson podcast how he just ordered a new external battery pack for conventions and while we all know how bad the iPhone battery is I decided this was a worthy investment for $45.99 from amazon.com but the kicker was no shipping to Canada. So this device has two USB ports one to charge and Iphone and one to charge an iPad and since I carry both devices this is a win. The good news is I really didn’t have a personal need for it but I did charge a few friends phones. I started writing this article at 1:53 pm with 62% battery on my iPhone and at 2:30 pm I’m 93% charged which is pretty impressive.
I also managed to pick up one of the official PAX shirts.
Pax Day 3 Recap
Sunday marks the last day of PAX where tired legs roam the show floor for the last time. Queue’s are generally the shortest on Sunday as well. It’s the last chance for 60 thousand people to see the games, play a tabletop game and most importantly the single reason we all go to PAX is to see our friends.
My Sunday plan off attack was to give the show floor a final walking and checkout Trails Evolution, Gunnar Optiks, The Witcher 2, Minecraft. I also watched people play Max Payne, Borderlands 2, Ghost Recon Future Solider which looked really good but I really didn’t want to spend my last day queuing for hours.
The first game I played was Trails and if you played the original Trails you’ll love this. The demo I got was a 3 player verus race on the same screen. The race consisted of 7 heats with points associated for winning each race but you lose points for crashes. If you somehow manage to crash which you will you’ll be automatically placed at the next checkpoint. You’ll respawn and start driving as soon as the last player goes through the checkpoint.
Next up I wandered to the Gunnar Optiks booth where I booked up a pair of the MLG Phantom Neptune glasses.
I left the show around 3pm, wandered around Boston for a bit, went bowling and called it a night.
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The day started with a long brisk walk from our hotel to the convention centre in which we were fueled by Dunkin Donuts.
Shortly after arriving at the convention centre I got in line for the Epic Games: Past, Present and Future panel hosted by Epic Games Design Director Cliff Bleszinski – President Mike Capps. Epic and Mike answered 10 questions from the community as well as a question and answer period at the end of the panel. The best part of this panel was this young lady asked a question when we will we see Gears of War on the Playstation. Cliff immediately said, Should I troll this? in which he did by going on to say when the Dual Shock controller doesn’t suck.
Next up we hit the show floor as we had a few hours to kill and we over to the Robot Entertainment booth to see @Six Okay – Justin Korthof and get a hands on demo of Orcs must Die 2 which was recently announced for the PC. There was a single player and co-op demo going on. Courtney and I got a chance to team up and kill some Orcs in the new co-op mode. The maps are two or three times the size of the original game and feature a new character. Our tactic was simple she would kill everyone and I would manage the tower defense portion by laying all the traps and such. After 7 waves of enemies and a few good laughs this was easily my favorite game of the show.
We had to queue up about a good 2 hours before the Major Nelson Podcast since Felica Day was guest staring on the show but I was excited to see Stepto join the show but there was no mention of puppy talk. If you’ve listened to the show before you know what to expect from this panel which is a lot of laughs. It was good to see the cast I listen too every week.
After the show was over the exhibit floor was closed we headed back to our hotel relax, eat dinner, find @ubersully some clothes at the mall and I went back to try and get into the Giant Bomb podcast but failed which kind of bummed me out a lot.
read morePax Day 1 Recap
Man I didn’t eat to get out of bed today, this damn hotel bad was super comfy. Anyways, why is it so hard to find a breakfast joint in Boston. Where do the locals eat breakfast? What do Boston folk each breakfast? This adventurous journey lead us through various parts of Boston like Chinatown. Finally, we arrived at the convention centre ready to set it and make new memories with my best friend, friends and new friends. After getting I’m we headed right to the show floor and I bolted for the Astro Gaming booth where I finally purchased the wireless mix amp for my A40′s. Next up we walked over to the official PAX merchandise booth to pick up some t shirts, an hour later we were finally done a d ready to explore the show floor.
Our plan of attack for today was to walk around and figure out what was at the show and figure out what we wanted to see. We walked around for hours.
The first panel we decided to check out was an An Uncharted 3 Story: The Chateau, Creation to Ashes which went through the process on how Naughty Dog created the level. The panel was hosted by Justin Richmondc, Game Director, Eric Schatz, Game Designer, and Arne Meyers Community Strategist. The concept for this panel was to walk us through from concept to final product how they created the level. It was very interesting to see how they’ll place a headless drake (more later on this) in a level with cubes and objects to see how there initial concept pans out once in the Uncharted universe. Often times a really cool idea will be made into the game at this stage and get cut because it just isn’t working. They do this they don’t want to invest art assets into something that just isn’t going to work. For example the sequence where you climb down a well actually started as the player climbing out of the well. Another interesting tie bit was when Sully and Drake were running up the stairs that’s actually the same set of stairs used but with the scripting in place it allows each stair case to fire a different mechanic thus providing the player with one hell of an adventure. After the designed the level they didn’t know how to end it and they walked us through the various prototypes they came up with. One was a sequence they Drake and Sully climb up a tower, fight some badass’s and jump into a helicopter and escape. The art assets and time they had didn’t allow for this kind of ending so what they decided to do was have the roof of château collapse and have the player escape it by jumping off and not a pole, slide down and escape it.
That was it for the day just a lot of relaxing after that.
read morePax Day 0 Recap
Day 1 of pax was travel day which saw myself travel down to the island airport and fly to Boston on Porter airlines. I have to say the short fairy ride over was pleasant and checking in was a breeze with no line ups. Security had no line and simple. The Porter lounge was awesome free snacks, drinks and wifi. The flight running a few minutes behind schedule. Once we were in the air we were treated to an in flight snack that consisted of a wrap and salad and beer. Coming thru US customs was simple and I finally got a stamp in my passport.
We checked into our hotel to the Colonnande hotel, unpacked and proceeded across the street to the Prudential Centre, did a little bit of shopping at GameStop, Lord & Taylor and Shaw’s to pick up a few snacks for the hotel room. I picked up SSX and FIFA street for $30 bucks each.
We meet up with some friends and headed to Cheers were we waited forever a table all so we can enjoy a good beer, enjoy good company and say we had a beer ate Cheers.
Later we went on to the Microsoft NERD campus to meet up with some fellow Canadians. We than went to a place called Beacon Hill Pub and enjoyed some beverages.
Bed!.
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