Pax Prime Day 1

This applies just about everywhere – not just at PAX; if a person approaches you asking for directions, it’s a lot less rude to reply “I don’t know” if you don’t know than it is to think you know and give bad directions. “You’re on the 6^th floor” or “you’re at PAX” really don’t count as reasonable replies when a person approaches and asks “where am I right now?” A white cane is not a symptom of dementia – it means that to a degree I may require visual assistance.

With that out of my system; I missed my first scheduled appointment of the day – I was probably somewhere around 2^nd and James (streets) when my first appointment of the day was supposed to take place. Sorry. I should know better than to take directions from anyone on the streets of Seattle by now.

My second appointment of the day was with Hi-rez – the people behind Tribes: Ascend and Smite which are both team-based PvP MMO’s. I wish I could say that my first interview at PAX went down without a hitch, but unfortunately I didn’t capture the interview with my recorder. I forgot to stop the recorder before powering it off (which saves the recording), but I didn’t and lost them. My bad.

After that slight oversight on my part, it was off to meet with Hello Games to talk about Joe Danger: The Movie which is more of a game than it is a movie but does take a few cues from movies such as Joe Danger having a director, making appearances in mining carts and certain hats which may have been famous by certain movie trilogies which aren’t really trilogies anymore. It basically looks like more of the same Joe Danger that was seen a few years ago as a Playstation 3 exclusive plus some.

I didn’t make my 12:00 meeting either – it was another bout with dementia.

Next on the agenda was En Masse and Tera (which this guy named “Bob” is really not good at). While waiting for the town-car to pick me up to go see the game, a really helpful homeless guy found me. He went to all the trouble of finding out where I was, pointing me in the direction of any streets and major landmarks I may have missed in my nearly 30-years in the area, and all he wanted in return was a light in which I couldn’t give him. In more relevant news; I have never been rode in a nicer car, been in a swanker elevator, or looked out at the Puget Sound from so far from sea level… oh, and the game was pretty cool, too! If you’re not a fan of MMO’s, get excited for Tera! Unfortunately, I had an issue with my recorder again – I forgot to take it out of my pocket. The controls might be a bit much to jump in having very little experience with an action-PC game, but Tera supports gamepads, is fully remap-able, looks fantastic, and even though I’m no authority of MMO’s – the other member of the media who was in attendance sounded like she was and she was excited about it. If that’s any indicator of where Tera is headed, it’s probably not a bad sign.

I was late for my next meeting (you guessed it - dementia), and the person who demoed the game with me wasn’t all that excited at that point, so rather than making the game/studio look bad, I’m just not going to write any more than that about it.

It was back up to the 6^th floor for me to see a game called Q.U.B.E. from Toxic Games. This first-person puzzler has minimal use of color going for it, as well as a studio which seems to be more receptive of what AbleGamers is intent on doing than anyone else throughout the day I talked to. Good luck to Toxic Games in finding success.

Since I had time before my next scheduled appointment, I spent more time on the 6^th floor among the indies, and after I decided I was standing around watching retro games, I wandered around some more and found someone to tell me about their game even though the head-honcho at the booth didn’t seem to want to give me the time of day.

Plantronics was next on my media tour, and I really enjoyed the time I spent with them. I don’t know that it was much in the way of an interview so much as it was being interviewed and educated which I was fine with because they seemed genuinely interested in what they do as well as what AbleGamers does. Good people.

Before I called it quits at PAX – for Friday at least, I stopped to talk to Square Enix and got a few game previews; most notably for Dead Island which I will try to have written up before the game comes out in a little over a week. Final Fantasy XIII and Heroes of Ruin, but I think a lack of personal interest kind of got in the way of them being what they could have been, though I will try and get a preview of Heroes of Ruin done at some point in the not-too-distant future.

With that, and all the red lines under all the misspelled words, I’m going to hit F7 and go face-plant on my bed.