KellyPlaysGamesAndStuff: April 2014

So this past week I was able to attend PAX East 2014 in Boston. PAX is definitely one convention that I try and go to every year, mostly because I absolutely love wondering the Expo floor, but also because I get to seem a lot of my friends that I normally only get to see once or twice a year.

This PAX was probably the best convention I've been to yet, simply because I had the most fun with this event.

Thursday April 10th

To start the PAX journey, we (Tina and I) had to leave our apartment with our friend Ben N. at like 4:30 in the morning. We were "lucky" enough to get one of the earlier flights out of Austin. After getting through security ok (which itself is a miracle because according to Tina, I am the worst person to travel with since I always forget something), we were on our way to Boston (well Houston to catch a connection but still). Both flights to Boston were easy enough, Tina & Ben slept most of the way, and I tried to unsuccessfully breed a shiny piplup on my Pokemon X game. Once we arrived at the airport, that's when the fun began. We got to see our really good friends Connor, Haneef, and Kevin. It was especially awesome because we had never met Kevin before in person and it was awesome to finally be able to actually meet him. We also met a friend of Haneef's who had the unfortunate experience of sharing a car ride with us to her hotel.

Tina, Connor, & Kevin jammed into the backset of Haneef's Car

Said car ride consisted of Connor, Kevin, and Tina rolling down the window and shouting at random people & items (at one point one of them yelled at a bicyclist and told them how they had loved them in the Tour de France). We also had amazing Mexican food at this tiny restaurant that Haneef knew of in Boston called Taqueria Jalisco .

Tina, Kevin, Connor, Haneef, & I at the Mexican Place

Many good times were had, but finally it was time for us to check into our hotel and chillax for a super exciting three days of PAX East.

Friday April 11th

After waking up slightly early we enjoyed a hotel provided breakfast and headed over to the convention center. This year was slightly different, because security did Bag Checks, but other than that, it was smooth sailing into the actual convention. Originally, we had decided to skip the Keynote and head straight to the Expo floor, due to the fact that most of us had no interest in the Keynote Speaker. We queued up and wandered the floor for a while before heading up to the Main Theater to ensure we had seats for the Rooster Teeth Panel. Unfortunately we had to sit through the second half of the Keynote, which by far was the most depressing and boring Keynote I've ever heard (sorry Harmonix).

One thing people don't really realize with Panels is how cut throat people are when it comes to seats up front. We had a group of people saving us a few seats, but by the time we walked the 50 ft to actually get to the seats, someone had taken them. Luckily enough, Tina, Haneef, and I were able to find seats to the RT panel pretty close to the front.

Overall the RT panel was a definite 10/10. The new content they showed, coupled with the fact that no one asked exceedingly stupid questions was awesome. I for one am definitely looking forward to RWBY Season 2 & Immersion is always exceedingly funny.

Afterwards, the day was mostly spent exploring the Expo Floor and streetpassing (if you go to a convention, even a smaller one bring your 3DS!!! I was able to complete like 8 puzzle panels from all the streetpassing I did at PAX).

Friday was especially happy for Tina, since she got to meet Clayster who is one of her favorite pro Call of Duty players from OpTic Gaming

Tina & Clayster (she got to briefly meet nadeshot, but she actually got to talk to Clayster)

She was really excited, and shaking, and it was really funny to see her fangirl over him (Shoutout to Haneef for going up to him and asking for a picture when we were too scared to).

We ended up having a really large group of people we wanted to hang out with after the con, so we headed to Chipotle, which was like a 15 minute walk away from the convention center. Due to the fact that it was the closest Chipotle and there was such a large group of us, we ended up eating outside...next to some dumpsters (but that didn't kill any of the fun or excitement!)

Everyone at Chipotle, eating outside because there wasn't enough room inside

Saturday April 12th

Saturday dawned bright and early for Tina & I, because we got to see some friends of ours that live in New Hampshire that weren't able to attend PAX this year. It was super special because it was the first time we got to meet their daughter.

Tina with Khloe

Afterwards we took a cab to the center for another day of exploring the Floor and Streetpassing. Below are some of the Games we saw:

Evolve

This game looks awesome! By far the most interesting Game that I saw at PAX this year, by a longshot! Best part is that it was made by the same development team that made Left 4 Dead, which is hands down one of my favorite games ever made. One cool thing about this game was that if you pre-ordered the game there, you got a free beanie. The beanie they gave us is super comfy and my favorite thing I brought back from PAX this year.

Civ: Beyond Earth

Second best thing about PAX this year was the announcement of the New Civ game that is suppose to land sometime this year (personally I think it won't come out until next year, but I could be wrong). This Game was announced on Saturday of PAX, and so was not playable at PAX. Fingers crossed that we see more when E3 rolls around, and possibly have it playable at PAX Prime or New York Comic Con. Haneef & I were able to get the limited edition poster for preordering the game, and I was super excited about that. Apparently they all went on Saturday, so I'm glad I was able to get my hands on mine.

Galax-Z

This was one of the Indie Games that I tried out at PAX this year, and it was a ton of fun! I definitely recommend checking out the videos they have of it online (http://galak-z.com/). I believe they are planning on releasing it to the Vita, PS4, and the PC, so if you play games on either of those, keep an eye out for it.

Borderlands the Pre-Sequel

The Borderlands series has always been super fun for me, so I was excited to see that Gearbox and 2K had brought the Pre-Sequel to PAX. Unfortunately, there wasn't any Gameplay available of the game, but again fingers crossed for more info at E3. One thing that surprised me about this game, was the fact that they have no intention of bringing it to the current Gen of consoles. As of right now, the game is slated to release on the PC, 360, & the PS3. No release date yet, but speculation has this releasing in October or November of this year.

Binary Solo (Indie Van Game Jam)

Another really cool, interesting thing that I found at PAX was this group of guys that make games while on a Road trip to interview other Indie Studios. They are going to be making a Youtube series about their adventures and I definitely recommend giving it a look at, because it's a really cool concept. They had a few of the games that they made at PAX to play, and they tend to take the theme of the studio they are going to visit into account when they make the game.

Overall those were definitely the highlights from the Expo floor at PAX, at least for me. I spent a lot of my time in the Indie section, because that's my favorite part of PAX and there were a lot of games that I tried out that were tons of fun.

I also got to meet the Completionist (https://www.youtube.com/user/ThatOneVideoGamer/videos) on Saturday afternoon, and I was highly disappointed in myself for not knowing who he was. My friend took a picture with him, and I just assumed it was someone that he knew personally. I got to spend a little more time with him on Sunday and I highly recommend that you check out his videos and follow him on twitter, because he is an extremely nice guy! (Twitter: https://twitter.com/JKCompletesIt)

Saturday night we all went to a super fancy dinner at Maggiano's.

Everyone at dinner. From Left going down the table and around: Connor, Ray, Tina, Me (Kelly), Juls, Steven, Lammy, Ben L., Kevin, Newbs, Lauren, Tora, Michal, Bunny, & Haneef

The dinner was absolutely amazing and the food there was extremely good.

Now there is something that most people should know about cons, is that by the 2nd night, people start losing their minds. Our friend Connor definitely displayed this by claiming he was a goose from 3 hours. While it was super late, and we were all exceedingly tired, those three hours of Goose Connor were by far the funniest three hours of PAX hands down.

Here is a recording of a voice message that Goose Connor sent to our friend Ali

Sunday April 13th

Sunday started out slow, since we were exhausted by the Goosing around that had happened the night before and the constant go go go of the previous two days. Since this was our last day of convention, we wanted to make it just as awesome as the other two days. We headed into the con a little later than normal, but again we headed straight for the Expo floor. Deciding to finish checking out the Indie section we wandered around there for a bit before separating from the large group we were in and just wondering. One of the greatest things about PAX is that you can literally wander anywhere in the Convention center and you can find something fun to do, or someone cool to chat with. Tina, Connor, & I ended up meeting with Ryan who is a friend of a friend. He does some really awesome artwork for Mega Man, and I definitely recommend you check it out (http://ryanjampole.deviantart.com/)! After talking with him and saying hi to a guys named Thaddeus that we had met on Friday that was working the Intel Booth, we wondered off.

I got separated from Tina for a bit, and just meandered around the Expo floor before meeting back up with her and Connor, and again talking to Jirard (https://twitter.com/JKCompletesIt). Sunday by far is probably one of my favorite days at PAX, because while its the last day, its not as fast paced as the other days, which means less people and more availability to see things. Overall Sunday was a great way to end an awesome PAX. Hopefully, I'll be able to see people again for RTX and hopefully it will be as epic as PAX was. ^_^