PAX Aftermath

I meant to make posts about each day of PAX but ended up spending so much time writing reviews and answering questions on the LoTRO forums that I never managed to update my blog. So here's a quick run down:

Saturday - So crowded I couldn't breath, honestly. The expo hall, which I expected to be busy obviously, was so bad that just walking down the aisles you were often stuck for twenty to thirty seconds completely unable to move because of some traffic jam ahead. This situation made it near impossible to stop and look at anything much less talk to people. I spent very little time in the expo hall on Saturday and most of it was spent at the Turbine booth. The panel I was looking forward to most, one about writing and marketing a gaming blog, ended up being such a fanfest for the internet celebs in the panel that it was more "Meet and scream at your favorite blogger" rather than an instructional panel. I ended up leaving about ten minutes inot because of that and the fact that it was held at the smallest and most poorly set up theater in a corner of one of the main halls. Standing room only and so loud and poorly lit that you could hear or see anything on the screen. 

The highlight of the day was the Fallout 3 demo. I am not much of a FPS player, I've played a few but there has to be something else to hook me there aside from shooting crap. I am a huuuuge Bethesda fan. I've spent more time playing Oblivion than any other game, save MMOs. Somehow I caught that Fallout 3 was a shooter but missed that it was Bethesda until I read it in the PAX program. Also, shame on me for not realizing that Bethesda = awesome RPG. I am going to play the hell out of Fallout 3. It's like "post apocoliptic Oblivion with guns".  We called it an early day Saturday because there was a four hour chunk of time between panels that we wanted to see and with the crowds just decided that going home would be more fun.

Sunday - We spent most of our time on Sunday in the main theater, we watched the end of the second PA Q&A, the Spore demo (more coming up) and about half of the Dragon Age Toolset demo before we wandered off to get in some last minute expo hall action before the doors closed. Sprore.was.awesome. Like a good chunk of gamers, I've been waiting on Spore for years. I didn't realize that it was going to be SO freaking awesome nor that it's coming out next week. Everyone in the theater was excited afterwards, I was surrounded by people calling friends on their cell phone to rave about Spore. 

The expo hall time after was another highlight because ... we finally managed to demo Aion. Brit and I have been waiting for that game for over two years now. Finally getting our hands on it after so long was like crack. Our reaction after playing it for about fiften or twenty minutes was "Can't wait till that releases" and Sunday night at home was filled with both of us randomly commenting "I want to play Aion..." 

We ended up skipping the final Omegathron round. It didn't start until 5 but the line started at 3:30 and was already packed. We just dropped off our punch cards and left to get some dinner at Westlake Center before heading home.