I just got back from PAX West and I wanted to tell you about my experiences. I arrived Thursday at around 5 P.M. The only thing I knew that was going on, besides the ID @ Xbox thing, was the Nindies at Night event at the EMP Museum. It was next to the Space Needle so it easy to find.
There were huge lines for the indie games which puzzled me since some were already available on other platforms for months. I wasn’t going to wait in line so I kept going. I found the “Indie Revolution” exhibit and it was completely empty. Two other guys and I laughed as we walked in and picked anything we wanted to play.
The next day I got up early for media hour. Media hour is when they let the media onto the show floor an hour before everyone else. Resident Evil 7 was right there so I got into that. The RE 7 demo is simply sitting in a chair and looking around during a cut scene. It was ok. After that I pretty much went to the shops and got the exclusive merchandise like Psychonaurts vinyl, Octodad for Vita, and some pins.
When the sixth floor opened at 10 a.m., I went to Adult Swim Games to try and get that ToeJam and Earl pin. I was successful. I continued to wander the show floors until my appointment with Karma Incarnation 1. This game looks and plays great. It’s a point and click adventure game with no language. You also just click on things, no inventory system, no dialogue, just clicking. It’s one of the games you’ll want to play after a very tiring day where you just want to relax.
Next there were two panels I wanted to see: Tomb Raider and Mega64. Both were great. After that I went back to my hotel, worked on CAG and then got ready for my panel. If you didn’t watch the panel you can see it here: https://www.twitch.tv/pax3/v/87232887?t=4h17m38s.
On Saturday I had lots of appointments and some time to run around to talk shop with people. The first game I saw was Vikings Wolves of Midgard at 10 A.M. It’s funny, the guy was like “Are you sure you want 10 A.M.?” I usually don’t care about playing the majority of video games months or years in advance because one day a polished version with no bugs will show up in my mailbox or I’ll be able to download it to my system.
Anyways, Vikings Wolves of Midgard was surprisingly a really fun experience. You play as a newly elected Viking chief in a village that has been through a lot of chaos. The focus of the game is to venture out and to help restore your village to glory. As you play the village will change throughout. The gameplay and control is smooth and the combat system is great.
I then went back the Adult Swim Games booth and played more ToeJam and Earl. For me, ToeJam and Earl is just the first game. With this game, they finally go back to the game’s roots and improve every aspect. It has more enemies, more environments, more obstacles, etc. It’s an amazingly fun game to play. The best part is it has online co-op up to four players.
I also played the Rick and Morty VR game. You’re a Morty clone with just hands and a head in Rick’s garage. You’re given simple tasks as you psychically move around the garage as Rick and Morty argue. When I finished I told them, in my opinion, this was a lot more fun than the Resident Evil 7 demo, and they were very happy about that.
My next meeting was with the people who create the ModMic. ModMic is a microphone you can attach to your headphones and turn it into a headset. It’s a cool idea that I think a lot of CAGs would want to do in order to create their own cheap do-it-yourself headset.
After working on CAG deals in my hotel room, I went to the Big Fish party. The two groups of people I talked to knew what CAG was so it made socializing a lot easier. When I’m at these cons I either get someone who doesn’t know about CAG or someone who’s like “Oh shit, I love you guys.”
Sunday I went around talking shop with the people who the CAG community loves. For example I went over and talked to the Rising Star people and talked to them about Assault Suit Leynos, a game that keeps going out of stock on Amazon because it’s a badass Gundam looking game that’s only $15.99 w/ Amazon Prime and is hugely popular with CAGs.
The first game I saw was Let it Die. If you like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, etc, but think they are too hard this might be the game for you. It also has that Suda 51/Grasshopper Manufacture style that goes with it. After playing Let it Die, I met Hideyuki Shin, the game’s director.
Now I knew I was going to meet this guy. Whenever I know I’m going to meet a developer, I always look at what their past works are. Chulip, a PS2 hidden gem, showed up in his history. I took the copy I’ve owned since the first day it came out and showed him. His eyes lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. I asked if he worked on Chulip, and with his reaction, I already knew he did.
He told me it was the first video game he ever worked on in the industry and I told him how kooky and great a game where you try to figure out how to kiss everyone in town was. He said it’s a very rare game in Japan and I then explained how it has a high value of the secondary market here to. I then opened up Chulip and had him sign my Killer is Dead booklet which also got a good reaction. As I was talking to the PR rep afterwards about contests and to let me know when Gung Ho games are on sale, Mr. Hideyuki Shin flagged me down and gave me his personal business card. This was my favorite moment of PAX West.
Next I went over and saw Gigantic at the Perfect World booth which was packed during the entire con. To be completely honest, I don’t care about the MOBA genre, but the Perfect World people are so nice, professional, and very good at what they do that I’ll take any Perfect World appointment. The game looks great. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do half the time, but neither did the rest of my team, so I didn’t feel bad. If you like MOBA games, check it out, but based on that line I don’t need to tell you that.
The last place I went to was Tiny Build. I played Party Hard Tycoon first. It’s a game where you need to set up and maintain a party and make sure everything is going well. It’s pretty much the bizarro version of Party Hard where you are trying to kill everyone at the party. Very fun.
I also played Cluster Truck. You need to jump from semi-truck to semi-truck in order advance to the goal. The game has a lot of chaos and you’ll die a lot. It reminds me of Super Monkey Ball of all things since physics and maintaining balance are two keys elements to both. The game is hard, but it reloads immediately once you die, so you can die a ton in minutes without any kind of punishment.
Lastly, I played Mr. Shifty. Basically imagine that the Hotline Miami dude became Nightcrawler from X-Men and that’s the game. You teleport from room to room while killing guards in order to advance. If you’re shot once, you die. You can transport as much as you want so the chaos is pretty great.
That was it for PAX West. At this point the only thing I knew was going on was the Dishonored 2 event at the Center of Wooden Boats. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one because I saw the world’s longest line. I met my friend Ryan and we walked around. The second he saw an actor who was playing a part from Dishonored 2 Land whisper into someone’s ear he lit up about this mystery that was going on. I spent the next three hours having a fun time walking around as Ryan got more and more excited as he talked the Dishonored 2 people, and figuring out the mystery.
About 20 people, out of what I imagine was 2,000, people could finish the mystery game. You needed to go to the Virginia ship, get the elixir from a mafia dude, go to another ship and win a cup in a card game, and then go to the gambler and get the sliver dust dice in order to meet Pablo on a special boat and create the antidote to create a cure to the bloat fly problem. Figuring this all out was a tough thing to do, and they ran out of props at around 8:30 P.M. when the party started at 7 P.M. The cast members from Dishonored 2 Land were kind of in a pickle because they needed to keep playing the game while the game was already over. No one working there knew the game was over until we told them. Maybe next time they could give out a shirt or something cheap. The journey is what fun, but the reward was not.
Monday; home and back to my CAG duties. I did a lot of other stuff, but I'm tired. Anyways, I had a fun time.
There were huge lines for the indie games which puzzled me since some were already available on other platforms for months. I wasn’t going to wait in line so I kept going. I found the “Indie Revolution” exhibit and it was completely empty. Two other guys and I laughed as we walked in and picked anything we wanted to play.
The next day I got up early for media hour. Media hour is when they let the media onto the show floor an hour before everyone else. Resident Evil 7 was right there so I got into that. The RE 7 demo is simply sitting in a chair and looking around during a cut scene. It was ok. After that I pretty much went to the shops and got the exclusive merchandise like Psychonaurts vinyl, Octodad for Vita, and some pins.
When the sixth floor opened at 10 a.m., I went to Adult Swim Games to try and get that ToeJam and Earl pin. I was successful. I continued to wander the show floors until my appointment with Karma Incarnation 1. This game looks and plays great. It’s a point and click adventure game with no language. You also just click on things, no inventory system, no dialogue, just clicking. It’s one of the games you’ll want to play after a very tiring day where you just want to relax.
Next there were two panels I wanted to see: Tomb Raider and Mega64. Both were great. After that I went back to my hotel, worked on CAG and then got ready for my panel. If you didn’t watch the panel you can see it here: https://www.twitch.tv/pax3/v/87232887?t=4h17m38s.
On Saturday I had lots of appointments and some time to run around to talk shop with people. The first game I saw was Vikings Wolves of Midgard at 10 A.M. It’s funny, the guy was like “Are you sure you want 10 A.M.?” I usually don’t care about playing the majority of video games months or years in advance because one day a polished version with no bugs will show up in my mailbox or I’ll be able to download it to my system.
Anyways, Vikings Wolves of Midgard was surprisingly a really fun experience. You play as a newly elected Viking chief in a village that has been through a lot of chaos. The focus of the game is to venture out and to help restore your village to glory. As you play the village will change throughout. The gameplay and control is smooth and the combat system is great.
I then went back the Adult Swim Games booth and played more ToeJam and Earl. For me, ToeJam and Earl is just the first game. With this game, they finally go back to the game’s roots and improve every aspect. It has more enemies, more environments, more obstacles, etc. It’s an amazingly fun game to play. The best part is it has online co-op up to four players.
I also played the Rick and Morty VR game. You’re a Morty clone with just hands and a head in Rick’s garage. You’re given simple tasks as you psychically move around the garage as Rick and Morty argue. When I finished I told them, in my opinion, this was a lot more fun than the Resident Evil 7 demo, and they were very happy about that.
My next meeting was with the people who create the ModMic. ModMic is a microphone you can attach to your headphones and turn it into a headset. It’s a cool idea that I think a lot of CAGs would want to do in order to create their own cheap do-it-yourself headset.
After working on CAG deals in my hotel room, I went to the Big Fish party. The two groups of people I talked to knew what CAG was so it made socializing a lot easier. When I’m at these cons I either get someone who doesn’t know about CAG or someone who’s like “Oh shit, I love you guys.”
Sunday I went around talking shop with the people who the CAG community loves. For example I went over and talked to the Rising Star people and talked to them about Assault Suit Leynos, a game that keeps going out of stock on Amazon because it’s a badass Gundam looking game that’s only $15.99 w/ Amazon Prime and is hugely popular with CAGs.
The first game I saw was Let it Die. If you like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, etc, but think they are too hard this might be the game for you. It also has that Suda 51/Grasshopper Manufacture style that goes with it. After playing Let it Die, I met Hideyuki Shin, the game’s director.
Now I knew I was going to meet this guy. Whenever I know I’m going to meet a developer, I always look at what their past works are. Chulip, a PS2 hidden gem, showed up in his history. I took the copy I’ve owned since the first day it came out and showed him. His eyes lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. I asked if he worked on Chulip, and with his reaction, I already knew he did.
He told me it was the first video game he ever worked on in the industry and I told him how kooky and great a game where you try to figure out how to kiss everyone in town was. He said it’s a very rare game in Japan and I then explained how it has a high value of the secondary market here to. I then opened up Chulip and had him sign my Killer is Dead booklet which also got a good reaction. As I was talking to the PR rep afterwards about contests and to let me know when Gung Ho games are on sale, Mr. Hideyuki Shin flagged me down and gave me his personal business card. This was my favorite moment of PAX West.
Next I went over and saw Gigantic at the Perfect World booth which was packed during the entire con. To be completely honest, I don’t care about the MOBA genre, but the Perfect World people are so nice, professional, and very good at what they do that I’ll take any Perfect World appointment. The game looks great. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do half the time, but neither did the rest of my team, so I didn’t feel bad. If you like MOBA games, check it out, but based on that line I don’t need to tell you that.
The last place I went to was Tiny Build. I played Party Hard Tycoon first. It’s a game where you need to set up and maintain a party and make sure everything is going well. It’s pretty much the bizarro version of Party Hard where you are trying to kill everyone at the party. Very fun.
I also played Cluster Truck. You need to jump from semi-truck to semi-truck in order advance to the goal. The game has a lot of chaos and you’ll die a lot. It reminds me of Super Monkey Ball of all things since physics and maintaining balance are two keys elements to both. The game is hard, but it reloads immediately once you die, so you can die a ton in minutes without any kind of punishment.
Lastly, I played Mr. Shifty. Basically imagine that the Hotline Miami dude became Nightcrawler from X-Men and that’s the game. You teleport from room to room while killing guards in order to advance. If you’re shot once, you die. You can transport as much as you want so the chaos is pretty great.
That was it for PAX West. At this point the only thing I knew was going on was the Dishonored 2 event at the Center of Wooden Boats. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one because I saw the world’s longest line. I met my friend Ryan and we walked around. The second he saw an actor who was playing a part from Dishonored 2 Land whisper into someone’s ear he lit up about this mystery that was going on. I spent the next three hours having a fun time walking around as Ryan got more and more excited as he talked the Dishonored 2 people, and figuring out the mystery.
About 20 people, out of what I imagine was 2,000, people could finish the mystery game. You needed to go to the Virginia ship, get the elixir from a mafia dude, go to another ship and win a cup in a card game, and then go to the gambler and get the sliver dust dice in order to meet Pablo on a special boat and create the antidote to create a cure to the bloat fly problem. Figuring this all out was a tough thing to do, and they ran out of props at around 8:30 P.M. when the party started at 7 P.M. The cast members from Dishonored 2 Land were kind of in a pickle because they needed to keep playing the game while the game was already over. No one working there knew the game was over until we told them. Maybe next time they could give out a shirt or something cheap. The journey is what fun, but the reward was not.
Monday; home and back to my CAG duties. I did a lot of other stuff, but I'm tired. Anyways, I had a fun time.
Last edited by a moderator:
