PAX day three was all about the exhibit hall. I went in with a mission to check out a bunch of games I missed the first two times and did pretty well I think

Champions Online seem to be pretty much be City of Heroes 2. That isn’t a bad thing though since I enjoyed CoH way more than WoW. I talk to one of the developers a bit while I was playing. Cryptic apparently bought the Champions IP so they could have complete control over it and were trying to expand the universe’s stories to for the game. They have cross-platform play between the PC and 360 working in test versions at the office but she wasn’t sure whether or not it would make it into the final product. She also wasn’t sure how DLC and expansions would work on the 360. I got a hopefully but no overly convincing vibe. The game itself played pretty well on using a controller but I could for the life of me figure out how to swap different powers in and out.

I checked out all of the PAX 10 games but the only one that caught my attention was The Maw, an Xbox Live game developed by Twisted Pixel Games. The basic premise is you play as a captured alien whose only chance of escapes means releasing a blob that will eventually eat the entire universe. You start out the game leading the blob around on a leash and as he eats more and more he grows larger and larger until by the end you ride on him. The blob gains different powers depending on what he’s eaten and I saw some sort of fire power and some sort of flying power.

I’ve pretty consistently had very little interest in Little Big Planet. First of all I don’t own a PS3 and secondly I had almost no idea what it was supposed to be and no interest to find out. After seeing Sony’s demonstration of LBP I still have no idea what it’s about but it did look kind of neat. Sony showed off a small jungle level that was created during the demo. Four players had to then race to the finish line which was rather uneventful until one of them figured out how to use the rocket cars. They then proceeded to kill everyone with it and crashed into the spawn point which caused everyone to die when they respawned.

I played Resistance Retribution for a few minutes mainly just to get a free hat. The controls were tough to get used to, the analog stick moves you, the ABXY buttons look around and the shoulder buttons fire. It was OK but it’s not really my thing so I’m biased. Other people seemed to like it. This was the first time I’ve ever used a PSP and I was pretty impressed with the PSP’s analog button.

I briefly played Sega’s Bleach: Dark Souls. Despite hearing a lot of buzz about the game it didn’t impress me much. I think they were going for an old school SNES type fighter look but the graphic mostly just looked meh. All I thought about while playing it was how awesome Smash Bros DS could be and why Nintendo hadn’t created one yet. I mean it’s just about the only Nintendo IP without a DS version.

Gearbox was doing a promotion where if you let them shave your head and paint Hell on the back of your head they’ll give you a free copy of Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway. A free game sure is tempting but I’m not sure I could pull off the bald look. I also once again hit the PC free play area for some more TF2 LAN goodness. Mmmmmm

After I was finished with the exhibit hall I got in the very long line for the final round of the Omegathon which also served as a sort of closing ceremony for PAX. The Omegathon is a tournament featuring 20 contestants randomly selected from those who pre-registered for PAX. Over the course of expo they compete in various games that generally aren’t considered competitive games. The winner of the event gets $5,000, an all expenses paid trip to the Tokyo Games Show, and custom PAX versions of the 360, PS3 and Wii. This year’s games were Peggle, Boom Blox, Geometry Wars 2, Rock Band, Jenga (the real version) and a secret surprise game. I skipped all but the final round.

The absolute best marketing at the fair was in the Omegathon line. A could of people from 5th Cell showed up right as the line was forming told everyone that they had downloadable demos of Lock’s Quest available via DS download play. There were about a dozen people who took them up on this offer. Lock’s Quest is a tower defense game, but instead of just watching as the enemies pound away at your defenses you can have your character, Lock, who can attack the enemies and repair your structures. I mostly played the battle mode which was just straight up tower defense. I ran through part of the single player campaign but only got through part of the tutorial. It was a fun way to waste sometime in line and an interesting take on tower defense. Hopefully other companies will catch on and do the same thing in lines next year.

The final game of the Omegathon was revealed to be Vs. Excitebike for the Famicom Disk System. One of the guys easily beat the other, 4-0 in a best of 7 matches. It wasn’t a very exciting end but it was pretty cool to have be watching a video game competition with that many people all of whom were into it as much as I was. Gabe and Tycho then took their turn at the competition and Gabe bested Tycho 4-1 which was apparently the second year straight that Tycho has lost. With that PAX was over. I had a great time and was sorry to see it end but there’s always next year.

I started my day at PAX a little bit later than I would have liked. I woke up and wandered down to the Pike Place Market to check it out a bit.

When I did get to PAX the first thing I went to check out was Starcraft 2 which was disappointing. Not that SC2 is a bad game but the lines to play it were really long, at least an hour and a half. The game itself looked like Starcraft with updated graphics. The Terran Thor units looked pretty sweet and combines with some siege tanks tore through a Zerg base in no time. The interface looks basically the same but with more stuff; they still appear to limit the number of units you can select at once to ~36ish. Nobody had that many units in the demo so I’m not exactly sure. The interface took up a lot of screen real estate; it would have been nice if they had slimmed it down a bit more. I’m sure SC2 will be a blockbuster no matter what. Blizzard makes good shit.

Rather than waiting to play I decided to go to the History of Harmonix: The Rockening panel. This was basically a bunch of Harmonix employees sitting around and talking about Harmonix and how everything came together behind the scenes.  It was a little boring at first since it was mostly just them talking about games they made but I did learn some interesting facts there. Disney made one of the attractions at Epcot, it’s a music game (go figure) where you wave your hands around and it makes different sounds. I remember playing with it when I was at Disney and thinking it was kind of neat. I believe it’s location in the imagination building after you get off the Figment ride. Harmonix is also the world’s largest maker of drum sticks. There was also a Q&A section where one guy asked a really technical question about how they did the voice detection in Karaoke Revolution using the PS2 hardware and another guy complained that he couldn’t re-download “Brass in Pocket” on his 360. The answers were “None of us worked on that” and “you need to talk to MS about that”. The panel picked up a bit at the end and Harmonix made two announcements. First, they are going to be releasing a PAX Pack for Rock Band, featuring Darkest of the Hillside, MC Frontalot and Jonathan Coulton. The second was a new play mode in Rock Band 2 called the Bladder of Steel set list. Harmonix noticed that a lot of people were completing the Endless set list in RB1 and decided to kick it up a notch. The bladderless set list requires that you beat all 84 songs in the game without pausing or failing. That seems pretty impossible to me but I’m almost positive some will have done it within a week. Although it seems like disconnecting the controller might allow you a brief respite but who knows maybe they’ve prevented that.

After the panel I check out the table top lounges and then headed back over to the exhibit hall. While there I bought a SNES controller. I also checked out the PC free play room which was probably a bad idea since I ended up playing TF2 on the LAN for about an hour. Eventually I ended up in the Handheld lounge where I played some Mario Kart DS over Wi-Fi and watched people draw penises on Pictochat. Pictochat was a really fun thing to have while waiting in lines. It was a bit laggy at times but when it worked it kept me entertained.

I should also say that Brawndo failed utterly today. Before I had got there yesterday they didn’t have any cups AND wouldn’t let you take the cans. Which made it a bring your own cup event; this was cleared up before I arrived yesterday. However, when I got to their booth at about 11 am today, I discovered they were out of Brawndo. Apparently used up all 40 cases of the stuff on the first day. Today they just had a bunch of empty cans on the table and a pad where you could write your info down for chance to win a year’s supply of Brawndo.

After doing a bunch of non-PAX related stuff (dinner, wandering around the city) I decided to watch the first half of the Nerdcore for Life documentary and then go see what they were playing for “Geek Movies”. Nerdcore for Life turned out to be more interesting than I expected so I watch the whole thing and then seeing as I just watch a documentary about it went to see if I could get into the concert downstairs. I didn’t have any problems getting into the concert and MC Frontalot came out at almost the exact time I joined the crowd. Even though I didn’t know any of his stuff I enjoyed the concert. After MC Frontalot was the MiniBosses. I was tired and not really into them at all so I went back to the hotel after the second song.

I ended up arriving late and had to wait for over an hour in the will call line to pick up my pre-ordered
badge. Which was mildly annoying since it was only a two minute wait to buy a badge. Right after I got out of the badge line I got in line for the keynote, there were a lot of lines at PAX.

Ken Levine’s keynote was entertaining. He gave a brief overview of his history as a nerd. From his early days of wanting to fuck the scarlet witch and his first awkward experiences with D&D all the way to his failed screenwriting career and his decision to go get into the game industry and join Looking Glass Studios. The theme of the whole boiled down to “We’re all geeks, love it, embrace it and go have fun together”.

I skipped the Q&A panel to hit the exhibit floor. After a quick walk around I stopped and checked out Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour . I discovered that Brawndo The Thirst Mutilator, did indeed have what I (and plants) crave. It’s pretty tasty but oddly not got sale. (I’ve since learned that it wasn’t for sale because the convention center doesn’t allow non-convention vendors to sell food or drink)

Nintendo was nearby so I checked out some of their stuff. WarioLand: Shake It seems like a decent platformer although depending on how much it’s used; constantly shaking the controller could get annoying. Kirby Superstar Ultra was fun but there really isn’t much new about it. After that, I had some fun creating a creature in Spore Creature Creator for the DS. I couldn’t do anything more than walk around with it once it was created which makes me what the game play would be like in that game. I finished off my day in the exhibit hall with Left 4 Dead which was amazing.

Next up I hit the concerts. It was probably the strangest concert I’ve ever been too. No one was really getting into any of the bands mostly everyone was just sort of hanging out listening. The OneUps were kind of neat but it sounded a lot like they were just jamming the whole time and not really playing songs. Freezepop isn’t really my thing but they ended up being pretty good. During their entire set, there was a guy nearby playing Final Fantasy Tactics which was odd. Freezepop’s encore ended up being a cover of The Final Countdown and it was really good.

Finally Jonathan Coulton was up. I wasn’t really looking forward to seeing him but figured it would be cool to see “Still Alive” from Portal performed live. Of course, I was completely wrong and he ended up being the best of them all, I suppose that’s why he was “headlining”. I enjoyed all his songs, my favorite was “re: Your Brains” there is nothing cooler than a room of people out of sync and groaning “All we want to do is eat your brains”. He also managed to Rick Roll the whole audience twice. The first time the video played over the projectors and most of the crowd started singing along. The second time was mixed in the middle of “Mr. Fancy Pants”. For “Still Alive” Felicia Day, who is like geek goddess, came out and sang with him. He ended the night with a sing along cover of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” which was unexpected and really cool. Over all, Day One was amazing.

Pictures still to come.

Just arrived in Seattle a few hours ago. The guy I’m rooming with is delayed for a few hours. So I’m chilling on the couch in the hotel lobby waiting for him. I thought about joining the pre-PAX pub crawl but decided against it. I’m tired and don’t feel like walking to a bar a half-hour away at night in a city I’ve never been too before. Work then PAX tomorrow. Woohoo.

The past few days I’ve had a hell of a time with XBL.

First I could stay connected for more than a few minutes without getting strange errors. Turns out I switched the MAC address on my 360 to match my laptop’s so I could use it at my hotel. It worked great in the hotel where I only had a single LAN line. When I brought it home and had both of them plugged in to the same switch; however, it didn’t work quite so well.

Once that was straightened out, I wanted to add MS points to my account. Every time I tried I got error code 80169d94 and some “Not available” message. At first I figured maybe it was a temporary problem on MS’s end. After a  few hours I began to suspect something else was up. I finally got around to googling the code today and it turns out that my account has been locked. Which means I need to call MS support and then convince them to transfer me to the credit department. From what I’ve read that isn’t going to be an easy task. I’m hoping I can find out what caused this and avoid it in the future. Right now I’ve got three possibilities:

1. Rapidly connecting and disconnecting from XBL because of the duplicate MAC addresses.
2. I bought points with my 360 using both the original and  changed MAC address.
3. Repeatedly traveling cross country with my 360.
4. Some combination of 1-3.

I’m going to give MS a call in the morning and see how it goes.

***Update***

0:00 Called MS Support someone picked up right away. She sounds a bit like a character I saw on Mad TV.

19:30 After spending 20 minutes S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G out all my information and explaining my problem I finally get transferred to Billing.

33:24 Billing confirms all my information a second time and makes me update using the XBL site. Transferred back to support.

41:50 Transferred to the supervisor. Apparently MS randomly audits the XBL information and if there is anything missing locks the account. Turns out when I originally setup my XBL account I entered my name as Ryan T and their system didn’t like that much. In 5-10 DAYS, MS will unlock my account and call me to let me know I can buy stuff from them again.

47:08 Done. For now.

***Update 2 – 9/01/2008***

MS called me twice.

The first time after putting my phone on speaker and turning the volume all the way up while putting it against my ear all I could make out was that it was the words “hi…xbox…call”

The second time I managed to get the number but they left the main support number. After 20 minutes on the phone all I had managed to get was a lot of voice prompts without an option to talk to a real person. I hung up and said screw it.

***Update 3 – 9/5/2008***

I finally made it home and managed to buy more points. FYI, Castle Crashers is awesome.