My PAX West 2017 Trip - Part 2: Actually at PAX!

Time is flying...I went to PAX over a week ago! Maybe next time, I won't be so late when actually jotting down what happened then. Oh well. Anyway, I spent my Thursday at a Pac-Man themed place in Chicago before flying to Seattle. Friday is where the actual PAX part of my PAX trip started. This time around, I actually didn't walk around alone! Sure, I was with the T.I.C.G.N. guys for two of the three days I visited PAX South, but I didn't exactly have free reign until I was by myself. Here in PAX West? I went with none other than , and decisions were all up to us! T'was the first time we ever met in person. Funnily, she thought I would be a lot taller - It's probably a good thing my younger brother didn't travel with me, or else the height difference could potentially lead to mental breakdowns for all of us.  

Come to think of it, her roommate for college was supposed to be with us as well. She tried detailing the schedule with us beforehand, and like me, Blaze hadn't actually met her in person yet. When I finally got to meet up with Blaze.....her roommate was completely absent. She went off with her own circle of friends, apparently, leaving us with just each other. Was it because we weren't interesting in seeing the Jacksepticeye panel, Roommate?! Well, sooooorry! I think I'd rather go to the Exhibit Hall and play freaking SUPER MARIO ODYSSEY than watch some guy from YouTube talk about nonsense (Psst, didn't mean it like that, Jacksepticeye)! There were a lot of scheduled events and panels at PAX, but I would never really take the time to visit any of them. The only panel Blaze and I were remotely interested in was the panel where JackBox Games would demonstrate the upcoming JackBox Party Pack 4. The only problem? We could never find the theater it was to be located in. After spending plenty of time trying to follow the map and observing the color coding, it was then we realized that the theater it's located in...Isn't color coded with all the other theaters. Well, that's convenient. We ended up skipping out on the panel altogether and just explored the Exhibit Hall. That's what I go to PAX for, anyway, and now Blaze knows why.



As I expected, there were loooooots of games to pick and choose and wait in line for! There were also loooots of indies!

The first booth was for a game called "Coffence". This one was funny to me from the concept alone. It's a fighting game, but rather than trying to knock each other down, you are trying to fight over the amount of coffee you have in each other's cups. Watching the fighters hit each other's cups and chucking the coffee up into the air was hilarious, and it does make for a unique way to approach the typical fighter formula.

Next, we went to a booth for a game called "Dead Static Drive". It had pretty cool visuals, and the gunplay seemed engaging. Only problem? The demo we played was kind of...glitched? The first thing the game would tell the player to do is go to the bathroom. Yeeeeaaaah. You had to drive to a building that has a bathroom in it, and then...use the bathroom. The protagonist is female, and the game depicts her using the bathroom as a guy would - standing in front of the toilet to pee. I was tempted to point that out at the booth, but I felt like that might have been too awkward   (Then again, it isn't like Blaze and I are unfamiliar with each other's awkwardness). Besides, any thought we could have had on the game was drastically overshadowed by the fact that I broke the game, like, twice.  Using the car, I drove off-road for a period of time until suddenly the game no longer wanted to render the ground!  Fortunately, the developer says that the game is to come out next year, so it still has a long road of development left.

Sonic Forces was the first AAA title we got to play at PAX. I already detailed my experience of it in a fuller preview article of the game for T.I.C.G.N., but I do want to point out that I saw Aaron Webber by the booth. Keyword being "saw". I didn't say anything. I stood there for a couple seconds before moving on. I guess it was for the best; there probably wasn't anything I could have actually said to him that didn't make me sound like a clumsy Sonic fanboy ("OMG YOU RUN THE SONIC TWITTER? DO YOU KNOW MY FRIEND MATT? WE BOTH KNOW MATT AND LOVE SONIC. WE SHOULD BE FRIENDS!!  "). That said, I took home the Sonic Mania instruction manual. It's surreal to see my friend Matthew Manheimmer, along with other YouTubers I watch, have their names in the Credits. The manual itself is also fun to look through, because there are some cool little insights and drawings scattered throughout the thing.



Slime-San has been looking deviously good and challenging as always! The Slime-San booth had this cool mini-statue with the title protagonist running away from the giant worm that's to gobble him up, and Nintendo Switch versions were present for play! There isn't that much I had to say about the game that I didn't already say, to be honest. All I want to say is you should get it. Get it. Join us. Join us, Ed. JOIN US, ED.  


I guess the next one I'll bring up on the fancier side is Super Lucky's Tale. Both Xbox and Playstation had booths side by side, and they consisted of individual games having their own lines (Well, Xbox anyway. Never did look at the Playstation booth). At first, I wanted to play Cuphead, but the line was wayyy too big for my liking, so Super Lucky's Tale it is! Rather ironic for me to go to a Microsoft booth just to play a Mario clone, but eh. Blaze actually once played the original Lucky's Tale on Oculus Rift; while waiting in line, she told me how the camera was controlled with the headset while the game still played like a platformer. That made me glad I didn't go out of my way to buy an Oculus Rift to play it. Super Lucky's Tale was a fine game, if a tad on the underwhelming side compared to the house of Mario, but then the staffer by the booth provided each player with two tokens.

These tokens were for an arcade claw machine where you had to try and pick up a Lucky plush or a container with a few pins inside. Despite the tokens, we were able to try as many times as they could allow us. Eyeing someone else play, I expressed to Blaze how much I believe these things are rigged...before that someone managed to actually grab a Lucky plush, leaving me absolutely dumbfounded as Blaze laughed. After a generous amount of attempts, I managed to get my own Lucky Plush, and I took a picture of it while we were eating at The Cheesecake Factory.



We went to the place to eat because that was part of the plan before I made it there. Kinda. Blaze's roommate apparently wanted to eat there for dinner instead of lunch. Uh.....about thaaaaat.  

When we got the cheese pizzas there, Blaze was kind of hesitant. She actually expected them to be kind of smaller, and I do get what she means. In fact, it wasn't until later when we realized there was a place within the PAX building that had smaller personal cheese pizzas. Oops. She ended up eating half the pie, as she doesn't eat like a wolf like I do. Without wanting to waste any food, I decided to more-or-less steal that other half from her plate and devoured the thing.
The day after, we discovered there was a grill within the building, and we really could have just had something there the whole time. At least we obliged then. 

Since walking around PAX can be pretty darn exhausting, there were times where we would go to a booth with a sofa/bean bags just to sit and relax ourselves.  One of those booths was for a game called A.E.R.: Memories of Old. We were so distracted by the sofa that our time playing the game consisted of tiredly getting lost as we took turns flying the protagonist around the ginormous world. Finally, after a little while of hypnotic in-game flights, sofa relaxations, and navigation confusions, the developer of the game pointed out to us that there's actually a line for people to play, so we had to stop right then and there  



Another game with seats was Yoku's Island Express. Although when I hopped onto the seat, it turned out to be kinda bouncy (Blaze got a good chuckle out of that). The name rang a bell to me, and as I played, I remembered - It's that pinball-adventure game coming to Nintendo Switch next year! It was pretty fun from what I played, too. The designs were neat, and the controls were tight. 

This journal entry is getting way too long, so I'm gonna end this part with the last sofa we sat on - One by a booth of smart device-emulated tabletop RPGs. It was neat virtual dice rollin' to determine events and outcomes, albeit I had a weird habit of dying in one of the games I played whereas Blaze played one that she had much better luck in. Then I tried that same one................only to die before she did again

For Part 3, there'll be some other indies, the Nintendo booth, a look at the Console/Arcade Freeplay area, etc.

(I actually didn't take much pictures of everything)