What You Did There; I See It.

First and foremost – PAX East photos! I’m notoriously terrible at remembering that I have a camera when I’m having fun, so I apologize that this small bundle is all I have to offer.

Quick and easy link to the photoset can be found here.

So PAX East – I loved it. There were aspects that were terrible, certainly (*cough* most panels *cough* – I’ll rant about the Girls On Gaming panel soon), but the sights, sounds, and pure gaming fun? Can’t be beat, and I can’t wait for next year. As everyone has already said, the Hynes Convention Center was a terrible location for such an event, but they tried and did what they could. The location was right (right smack dab in the middle of Boston Proper), but the failing was just that the convention hall didn’t have the customization required for such an event. The preexisting halls were too small to contain even a fraction of the people who wanted to be present for a given panel, and I foolishly spent the majority of the first day learning that it wasn’t really worth trying to get into any of them. Once I took that to heart and got to the wandering and sporadic gaming, I had a blast. Next year I expect will be even better.

Oh, and I totally would have OWNED the RB2 tourney had I decided to compete. Winning song was freakin’ Bad Romance. No shit. Come ON.

A few high points of PAX East for me:

• Competing in the Portal challenge – a brand new map incorporating anti-gravity and concluding with cake (!!). Completion entered me into a raffle for an Alienware machine, but I did not win. Bah.
• Playing Fluxx with my guildies – What do you do at a gaming convention? Play games, of course! There were long hallways full of awesome beanbags where we camped ourselves and played Fluxx and Bang! (though I never got a chance to play Bang!, it looked fun).
• Limbo demo - Limbo will be hitting the xbox live arcade sometime this summer, and it looks amazing. Dark, foreboding, simple in concept yet complex in execution. You play a small shadow boy in a dark forest world filled with numerous gruesome deaths, and you try to avoid them. That’s about all I was able to figure out from a few moments of play, but it was enough. I’ll be getting this game the day it comes out.
• Split/Second demo – This game was very, very polished, and while I’m looking forward to seeing how it looks once it releases, if I had to guess right now, my money on breakaway awesome racing hit of 2010 will still be Blur.
• D&D Multi-Touch Table – This thing is totally sick. I’d heard about this rich boy toy for a while now, but seeing it in action is something else entirely. *drool*

Tons more, for sure, but those are some of my favorites.

So one con down, another coming. In a little less than two weeks, ROFLcon will be upon us. I have a lot less guildies coming into town for this one, but I’m looking forward to seeing Eitri again, and hopefully kicking his ass at some Fluxx. I’ve glanced over the schedule a bit, but since it’s still a week and a half out, I figure a lot of it is still up in the air, and there’s no use in getting all worked up about a schedule that’s just going to change 8 times before the day comes. I’ll update more as we get a little bit closer to it (not to mention during).

Oh, and before I go – the Blur Multiplayer Beta Demo is in Open Beta status, which means that if you have an xbox 360 and a gold live account, you can download it for free. Check it out and hit me up; I’ll crush you.

This weekend, expect -

• PAX East decom post (wih pictures!)
• RB2 DLC update (Hendrix!)
• Ascended Meetup! (tons of fun, and even more beer!)
• D&D Discussion (yes, I’m starting again)
• FFXIII talk (not much, as I’m not far in)
• ROFLcon Anticipation (less than a month!)
• Lich King 10m update (hint: still trying)

and MORE! You’ll see; it’ll be rad.

First things first – if you have an xbox 360, you should see about getting yourself into the Blur Multiplayer Beta if you can. I got my code from The Escapist, via this link, though I’m not sure if they still have any available. I know that Joystiq had some as well, though I do not have the exact link at my fingertips (you could search it just as easily as I could, you lazy bastards).

It’s basically like Mario Kart (you know how much I love Mario Kart) meets Burnout Paradise, but with a leveling/skillup/loadout system. It’s super fun and I highly recommend it. I’m not sure when the beta ends (probably in a few days), but if you can get it, you should, and we should play. Also – I will crush you. My gamertag is Valiscariot. Drop me a PM on xbl and we’ll have some fun.

Second – Lady Gaga pack for RB2 coming this Tuesday. Who’s got two thumbs and is totally stoked? THIS GUY. Seriously, what a great party pack this is. I realize that it will completely kill my training for the PAX East Rock Band 2 Tournament, but I’m still not convinced I’ll participate anyway. As fun as it may be, I’m not quite convinced that I want to miss Saturday/Sunday panels because of it (not to mention the dozen or so guildies that will be in town for PAX). We’ll see.

Third – Bioshock 2 was everything I wanted it to be. Yeah, yeah, Yahtzee didn’t like it, but he doesn’t like anything – that’s his thing. It was a really good combo of old and new. Goodbye minigame of Pipe Dream, hello quicktime event that doesn’t suck (although I did find a bug in it – if you initiate the hack on a turret, and then auto-hack dart it while the quicktime screen is up, the quicktime screen stays up until you reload the game – boo!). The game was as long as I wanted it to be, the Little Sister events happened about as much as I could tolerate without getting annoyed, and there were enough Gene Tonics to make me wish I had more tonic slots. Well done. Multiplayer ended up being really, really sloppy, but fun for a while. The Sinclair Solutions addon didn’t really add anything I wanted to the game, but we’ll see what happens in the future. All in all, I’m happy.

I’ve somehow avoided buying FFXIII, and instead I’ve added it as the only game in my Gamefly queue. We’ll see how long it takes to get here. Gotta save money for PAX!

• (+) Borderlands is one of the coolest games I’ve seen in a long time. I have it on the xbox 360, if you wanna play.
• (-) Borderlands has nearly consumed my non-work time.
• (=) My enjoyment with Prototype has been greatly hindered by Borderlands. In fact, since acquiring the latter, I have yet to replay the former. This is a shame, as I’m paying GameFly for the privilege of borrowing it. Conundrum.
• (=) My guild is working on, but struggling with, Northrend Beasts hardmode. Phase 2 is rough.
• (-) I am Thassarian’s Legplates of Triumph away from my 4pc. Tier bonus, which is still stupidly overpowered. I have enough emblems, but do not have a trophy. I still need a VoA 25 run this week. Wish me luck!
• (-) The past few weeks of Rock Band 2 DLC are of no interest to me. This doesn’t matter much, though, as I cannot even afford the Beatles Rock Band DLC that I do want. All in good time.
• (-) My downstairs neighbor apparently works nights, and hates it when I play drums. This will end poorly.
• (+) I have found a new hobby within WoW!




• (-) That hobby is going for The Loremaster on my death knight.




• (-) The folks over in Maine voted against equal rights. To their credit, it was a thin margin, which says to me that only slightly over half of Maine voters are bigots. Yep, I went there. You suck, assholes.

I’ll post something substantial on these or other subjects soon, but I have a lot of games to play tonight, and not enough time to play them all.

• (+) It’s Friday!
• (-) I am very, very tired.
• (+) I am currently doing what all real men do when they get home on Friday – drinking scotch.
• (-) We wiped on Yogg at 2% this week.
• (+) My GameFly games arrived in NetFlix-time; what an awesome service!
• (=) While I find the controls for Prototype a little tricky to grasp at first, they get easier the more you play/the more skills you acquire, plus the sheer carnage and mayhem make up for control issues.
• (+) I have discovered several new awesome sites this week, including TweetMeme and Translation Party. These make me happier and more entertained than I feel is reasonable, but I’ll take it.
• (+) Alice In Chains Pack 01 was released for Rock Band 2 DLC this week – I purchased it the second I got home on Friday.
• (-) I cannot, for the life of me, get through “Would?” on drums.

More good than bad makes for a good week. This weekend will most likely entail lots of watching TV/NetFlix, lots of playing Prototype, trying out Batman: Arkham Asylum, and much sleeping. I love my life.

• (+) The previously mentioned Gymkata is supposed to arrive at my house today, in plenty of time for Bad Movie Night.
• (-) At the time of this posting, however, it has not yet arrived.
• (-) [Justicebringer] failed to drop for me again.
• (+) On the upside, we downed the new Onyxia as well as Sarth+3 tonight.
• (=) The changes to DKs this patch make unholy Oblit useless, while buffing SS to a roughly reasonable level. Rotation is borked, but might be good once I get used to it. We’ll see.
• (-) The change to Bone Shield (one less bone, 1-min duration, 1-min cooldown) is obnoxious to work into a rotation.
• (+) This week is flying by, speeding quickly toward Bad Movie Night.
• (-) Aion retail has hit stores this week. I really wish I had gotten into the beta earlier, as I may have enjoyed the game more later on. Unfortunately, it wasn’t good enough to grab me right away, and hey – that’s how you sell stuff.
• (-) Pearl Jam’s Backspacer was released for Rock Band 2 DLC this week – I have no interest in purchasing it.