Today was the first day of PAX West 2017, so I thought I'd chronicle how the day went! I'm going to keep this short, since I'm kinda tired.
Woke up at 6am to get ready, pack, and catch a 8am bus to the Washington State Convention Center. Arrived at WSCC at around 9pm and got into line. Caught some interesting graffiti while I was there:
Couldn't agree more, anonymous chalk message.
Aaaand we're in! Naturally, the first thing I run to is the Nintendo booth:
Impressive booth! And the line wasn't too bad, either! About 20 minutes and we were in. Got to play Super Mario Odyssey. Now let me tell you -- this game's controls were AMAZING. I played the desert stage, up until the first green moon atop this tower past the little desert town. The game is a true sandbox, meaning you can choose to do things as you please. Scattered across the map are checkpoint flags that act as fast travel points you can return to at any time. The penalty for death is only a meager 5 coins before you're returned to your last checkpoint. Naturally, the demo had no form of "lives." Throwing Cappy is super intuitive -- just shake the joycons and away he goes! There's also a form of auto-targeting so Cappy will automatically target points of interest (objects, platforming elements, enemies, etc.). When you throw Cappy at an enemy, you possess that enemy immediately. I really like how simple everything is, but also how much freedom the simple controls give. All your normal platforming skills are there -- long jump, triple jump, backflip, etc. along with a couple new maneuvers with Cappy and a ground pound jump where after you ground pound, if you immediately jump, you can leap high. At any rate, it was a fantastic experience and it just gets me even more hyped! I didn't get to try out the New Donk City stage since that would've required me to get back in line, so I explored the rest of their booth.
They had Fire Emblem Warriors, Pokken Tournament Deluxe, FIFA 18, and BA 2K18 playable on Switch. For 3DS, they had Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions and Metroid: Samus Returns. Of these, I tried out Fire Emblem Warriors. I was never into the whole Dynasty Warriors/Hyrule Warriors gameplay, and from all I can tell, Fire Emblem Warriors is pretty much Hyrule Warriors with a Fire Emblem skin. Exactly what you'd expect. Not a Metroid fan (gasp?) so didn't stop to try Samus Returns. There was a stage there where an announcer was holding 1v1 Pokken Tournament DX battles with random passerbys he'd pick from the crowd. There was quite a sizeable crowd, but unfortunately it completely blocked the flow of traffic in the middle of the showfloor, haha. But people were cheering like heck and having a good time, so all's good!
I walked to a little-trafficked corner of the showfloor next where Capcom and a few others were. There was that new Dragon Ball game there, and Capcom v. Marvel, but nothing I was interested in. Most of the booths and activities here were seemingly going to open later, and there was a large stage that was mostly empty but had computers set up in an eSports style, so I assume there was some kind of tournament here later.
Next up, I went to the Square Enix booth!
The very first thing I stumbled across were some Nvidia-marked laptops running Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition.
Now this is a game I'm really looking forward to! FFXV is a game I've wanted to play since I first heard about it back in 2013, but alas, I had no PS4 or Xbox One to play it on. Now that it's coming to PC, you can bet your ass I'll be pre-ordering this immediately. It looked and played really nice. The keyboard/mouse controls were kinda weird, tho, and felt kinda odd. I think I'll definitely have to remap them later to something a bit more intuitive.
And then I found this little thing!
This is Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition! Got to play it for a bit. I'm surprised! It actually doesn't look too bad! It's everything it's advertised to be. I don't think I'll play it, just because I rarely play games on my phone, but hey, it's a small, quirkly little thing that no one asked for but that I don't mind existing. It's gonna be episodic and the first episode is going to be free. Give it a try when it comes out!
Around the Square Enix booth, there were gameplay demos of most of the titles you saw on those banners in my earlier picture. Off the top of my head, there was FFXIV: Storm blood, Dissidia, Secret of Mana, Lost Sphear, and some of Square's mobile Final Fantasy games, like Brave Exvius and Mobius FF. Secret of Mana is a 3D remake of the old NES classic and it looks great! Lost Sphear has a curious name, but I get the same vibes from it that left me unmotivated to play its predecessor, I am Setsuna. Overall, not a bad showing from Square.
I mentioned Life is Strange, and by that, I specifically mean the new prequel, Before the Storm. I attended the developer panel for this event next. At the panel was the lead writer, a developer at Deck Nine Games, and a member of a studio partnered with Deck Nine (Deck Nine is the studio contracted to make this LiS prequel, btw, and they are a different company than DontNod, the folks behind the original LiS). I really enjoyed this panel! The devs talked about the process of making this game and the challenges behind it, and then opened the floor to audience questions. The questions were quite insightful as well, asking about specific parts of the development process and about how narrative experiences across different mediums are produced. Solid.
Here's some pictures from that panel:
After this, we went and ate some food. There was a Subway nearby, so we picked up some sandwiches and headed down to Benaroya Hall, aka the PAX Main Stage, for a Panel/Q&A by JackSepticEye. I don't really watch his videos on YouTube, but his and Markiplier's panels are always hilarious, so I make sure to attend them.
We ate in their cafeteria space and then headed upstairs to queue up. There were a LOT of people lining up for this, as you can imagine. We were waiting there for a little less than an hour and a half. We were constantly being moved closer and closer to accommodate more people. Throughout all this, the PAX employees were going around playing games and giving people challenges to keep us entertained. Occasionally, they'd get a wave going and you'd hear random cheers erupt now and again. Good on them for making sure we weren't bored! Soon, we headed inside...
About 10 minutes before the show started, Markplier, Wade and his buddies came in a side entrance (to a lot of cheers, as you can imagine) and they took the front row, which was reserved for them and the camera/stage crews. Jack came on right on time and wasted no time getting to the Q&A. I shot some video clips of the whole thing, but I'd have to stitch 'em together into one video and upload them and I don't feel like doing that right now, so I'll share that later maybe if anyone asks for it.
Anyways, HILARIOUS show! Loved it. I'm not a fan of any of these guys and I don't know 'em very well, so I wasn't super hyped to see them or anything unlike literally everyone else there. I came for the laughs, and he absolutely delivered! 'Twas a great time.
It was 5pm by the time this ended, and the showfloor is open 'till 6pm, so we rushed back there to look around for another 40 minutes. The very first thing we did was this little Nintendo stamp hunt. Basically, they gave a card and you had to visit all their booths -- their showfloor booth, their stage, and their Nindies Arcade room and collect stamps. Get all three stamps and you get a Super Mario Odyssey poster! The poster's very big and shows the giant T-Rex from the E3 trailer possessed by Mario and rampaging about. Nice!
On our way to collect this poster, we came across this:
Ooh! The booth wasn't busy so I waltzed onto one of those stations and got to try some Sonic Forces. I've never been a Sonic fan and this game failed to hook me, but if you want an accurate description of it compared to the other *decent* 3D Sonic games, I'd say it's just more of the same.
At PAX West, there are three major showfloors. Two of them house mostly AAA games and the third houses mostly Indie games. We only covered one of the two AAA showfloors, so we went to the second. First stop -- Bethesda! We just looked around since we didn't have much time before the showfloor closed. Saw some booths for Fallout 4 VR and Doom VR. Definitely gonna try those out tomorrow! There was a big crowd gathered for a raffle so we couldn't see the rest of their big booth. Moving on, we came across a guy chucking mouse pads from a booth titled "Survived By." Never heard of this game in my life, but hey, free mouse pads! We quickly glossed over Xbox. Saw Cuphead, Sea of Thieves, and other titles. Will come back to those later.
The last stop on today's journey was Sony's booth.
I didn't know what to expect, but once we got there...
KNACK 2 BAYBEE
THA FUTURE
IS HERE
Oh my god, this game shouldn't even exist, it's that good, it pushes the envelope of every genre -- first person shooter, mobile puzzle, free to play MMO, extreme racing, JRPG, flight simulator, you name it
You will never play a game this good for another decade until Knack 3, I promise you
The future is upon us
Truly a momentous time
And it's there, reveling in what we just witnessed, that we ended our first day of PAX.
Woke up at 6am to get ready, pack, and catch a 8am bus to the Washington State Convention Center. Arrived at WSCC at around 9pm and got into line. Caught some interesting graffiti while I was there:
Couldn't agree more, anonymous chalk message.
Aaaand we're in! Naturally, the first thing I run to is the Nintendo booth:
Impressive booth! And the line wasn't too bad, either! About 20 minutes and we were in. Got to play Super Mario Odyssey. Now let me tell you -- this game's controls were AMAZING. I played the desert stage, up until the first green moon atop this tower past the little desert town. The game is a true sandbox, meaning you can choose to do things as you please. Scattered across the map are checkpoint flags that act as fast travel points you can return to at any time. The penalty for death is only a meager 5 coins before you're returned to your last checkpoint. Naturally, the demo had no form of "lives." Throwing Cappy is super intuitive -- just shake the joycons and away he goes! There's also a form of auto-targeting so Cappy will automatically target points of interest (objects, platforming elements, enemies, etc.). When you throw Cappy at an enemy, you possess that enemy immediately. I really like how simple everything is, but also how much freedom the simple controls give. All your normal platforming skills are there -- long jump, triple jump, backflip, etc. along with a couple new maneuvers with Cappy and a ground pound jump where after you ground pound, if you immediately jump, you can leap high. At any rate, it was a fantastic experience and it just gets me even more hyped! I didn't get to try out the New Donk City stage since that would've required me to get back in line, so I explored the rest of their booth.
They had Fire Emblem Warriors, Pokken Tournament Deluxe, FIFA 18, and BA 2K18 playable on Switch. For 3DS, they had Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions and Metroid: Samus Returns. Of these, I tried out Fire Emblem Warriors. I was never into the whole Dynasty Warriors/Hyrule Warriors gameplay, and from all I can tell, Fire Emblem Warriors is pretty much Hyrule Warriors with a Fire Emblem skin. Exactly what you'd expect. Not a Metroid fan (gasp?) so didn't stop to try Samus Returns. There was a stage there where an announcer was holding 1v1 Pokken Tournament DX battles with random passerbys he'd pick from the crowd. There was quite a sizeable crowd, but unfortunately it completely blocked the flow of traffic in the middle of the showfloor, haha. But people were cheering like heck and having a good time, so all's good!
I walked to a little-trafficked corner of the showfloor next where Capcom and a few others were. There was that new Dragon Ball game there, and Capcom v. Marvel, but nothing I was interested in. Most of the booths and activities here were seemingly going to open later, and there was a large stage that was mostly empty but had computers set up in an eSports style, so I assume there was some kind of tournament here later.
Next up, I went to the Square Enix booth!
The very first thing I stumbled across were some Nvidia-marked laptops running Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition.
Now this is a game I'm really looking forward to! FFXV is a game I've wanted to play since I first heard about it back in 2013, but alas, I had no PS4 or Xbox One to play it on. Now that it's coming to PC, you can bet your ass I'll be pre-ordering this immediately. It looked and played really nice. The keyboard/mouse controls were kinda weird, tho, and felt kinda odd. I think I'll definitely have to remap them later to something a bit more intuitive.
And then I found this little thing!
This is Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition! Got to play it for a bit. I'm surprised! It actually doesn't look too bad! It's everything it's advertised to be. I don't think I'll play it, just because I rarely play games on my phone, but hey, it's a small, quirkly little thing that no one asked for but that I don't mind existing. It's gonna be episodic and the first episode is going to be free. Give it a try when it comes out!
Around the Square Enix booth, there were gameplay demos of most of the titles you saw on those banners in my earlier picture. Off the top of my head, there was FFXIV: Storm blood, Dissidia, Secret of Mana, Lost Sphear, and some of Square's mobile Final Fantasy games, like Brave Exvius and Mobius FF. Secret of Mana is a 3D remake of the old NES classic and it looks great! Lost Sphear has a curious name, but I get the same vibes from it that left me unmotivated to play its predecessor, I am Setsuna. Overall, not a bad showing from Square.
I mentioned Life is Strange, and by that, I specifically mean the new prequel, Before the Storm. I attended the developer panel for this event next. At the panel was the lead writer, a developer at Deck Nine Games, and a member of a studio partnered with Deck Nine (Deck Nine is the studio contracted to make this LiS prequel, btw, and they are a different company than DontNod, the folks behind the original LiS). I really enjoyed this panel! The devs talked about the process of making this game and the challenges behind it, and then opened the floor to audience questions. The questions were quite insightful as well, asking about specific parts of the development process and about how narrative experiences across different mediums are produced. Solid.
Here's some pictures from that panel:
After this, we went and ate some food. There was a Subway nearby, so we picked up some sandwiches and headed down to Benaroya Hall, aka the PAX Main Stage, for a Panel/Q&A by JackSepticEye. I don't really watch his videos on YouTube, but his and Markiplier's panels are always hilarious, so I make sure to attend them.
We ate in their cafeteria space and then headed upstairs to queue up. There were a LOT of people lining up for this, as you can imagine. We were waiting there for a little less than an hour and a half. We were constantly being moved closer and closer to accommodate more people. Throughout all this, the PAX employees were going around playing games and giving people challenges to keep us entertained. Occasionally, they'd get a wave going and you'd hear random cheers erupt now and again. Good on them for making sure we weren't bored! Soon, we headed inside...
About 10 minutes before the show started, Markplier, Wade and his buddies came in a side entrance (to a lot of cheers, as you can imagine) and they took the front row, which was reserved for them and the camera/stage crews. Jack came on right on time and wasted no time getting to the Q&A. I shot some video clips of the whole thing, but I'd have to stitch 'em together into one video and upload them and I don't feel like doing that right now, so I'll share that later maybe if anyone asks for it.
Anyways, HILARIOUS show! Loved it. I'm not a fan of any of these guys and I don't know 'em very well, so I wasn't super hyped to see them or anything unlike literally everyone else there. I came for the laughs, and he absolutely delivered! 'Twas a great time.
It was 5pm by the time this ended, and the showfloor is open 'till 6pm, so we rushed back there to look around for another 40 minutes. The very first thing we did was this little Nintendo stamp hunt. Basically, they gave a card and you had to visit all their booths -- their showfloor booth, their stage, and their Nindies Arcade room and collect stamps. Get all three stamps and you get a Super Mario Odyssey poster! The poster's very big and shows the giant T-Rex from the E3 trailer possessed by Mario and rampaging about. Nice!
On our way to collect this poster, we came across this:
Ooh! The booth wasn't busy so I waltzed onto one of those stations and got to try some Sonic Forces. I've never been a Sonic fan and this game failed to hook me, but if you want an accurate description of it compared to the other *decent* 3D Sonic games, I'd say it's just more of the same.
At PAX West, there are three major showfloors. Two of them house mostly AAA games and the third houses mostly Indie games. We only covered one of the two AAA showfloors, so we went to the second. First stop -- Bethesda! We just looked around since we didn't have much time before the showfloor closed. Saw some booths for Fallout 4 VR and Doom VR. Definitely gonna try those out tomorrow! There was a big crowd gathered for a raffle so we couldn't see the rest of their big booth. Moving on, we came across a guy chucking mouse pads from a booth titled "Survived By." Never heard of this game in my life, but hey, free mouse pads! We quickly glossed over Xbox. Saw Cuphead, Sea of Thieves, and other titles. Will come back to those later.
The last stop on today's journey was Sony's booth.
I didn't know what to expect, but once we got there...
KNACK 2 BAYBEE
THA FUTURE
IS HERE
Oh my god, this game shouldn't even exist, it's that good, it pushes the envelope of every genre -- first person shooter, mobile puzzle, free to play MMO, extreme racing, JRPG, flight simulator, you name it
You will never play a game this good for another decade until Knack 3, I promise you
The future is upon us
Truly a momentous time
And it's there, reveling in what we just witnessed, that we ended our first day of PAX.
Or others 
