the Legendary Boys of Floyd

What a ride! Pax this year was, simply put, unbelievable. For starters, there were twice as many attendees as last year and it seemed like it covered twice the floor space.  We had arrived about an hour prior to the doors opening and already there was about a 200 people in line ahead of us.  And of those people, the Nintendo DS reigned Supreme.  This was not the conference for the PSP.  I think I saw more iPhones/iPod touches than PSP’s.  But now you’re looking at a story best left for a tech site on the rise and fall of the portable gaming device, so we’ll let them take care of that.

Once the doors finally opened and the livestock were allowed to trod their way on into the exhibition hall, my excitement level picked up quite a bit.  I’m not sure if it was the total volume of nerd power flowing through the room or just the anticipation of the unknown heading toward the main hall not knowing what gaming treats we’d find, but the commotion of the crowd fueled the awaiting brood.

There is a piece of drama that they have set up with they overall layout. You walk across the brightly lit Band Land and then cross over into this eye teasing spectacle of vid screens, flashing lights and loud music.  And then you’re sucked in.

We were drawn to the left as we entered and traveled past the Microsoft booth and landed in the THQ booth.  The first game we grabbed onto was Red Faction 3.  This will be a must have for our collection.  We have been Red Faction fans from the beginning and this one is shaping up to be a good looking game.  Now in this booth there was another game, Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon.  Not a new game but a fun one none the less. But here’s were it gets good.  I’m sure you saw the Alien dude cruising around. If not we have a picture up in the picture feed.  If you were able to snap a picture of yourself with the little dude and show it to someone at the booth, then you got a special prize.  Its an Alien Bobble head. And we’ve decided to do a little giveaway for this guy.  Not now but in the next week or so we will post up a picture of our new little friend and have a comment contest to find a winner. So keep checking back for news on that.

After THQ we wandered the show floor hitting up Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, Mirrors Edge, and Spore. Co-op games are what we dig and from the looks of Mercs 2, that’s another keeper.  Mirrors Edge we wish was in the third person so you could watch all the amazing stuff she does through out the game but we may end up with this one after all.  As for Spore, the jury is still out.  It looks intriguing, and I was a big fan of Populus and Black and White back in the day. So maybe once they release a demo and I can really get my feet wet, I might fall in love with this one.

And on we go.

I would love to hear from you if you were actually able to get your hands on a controller for Left 4 Dead.  The line for that was insane and seemed never ending.  If you did get a chance to play it, first how long did you wait in line and second what was it like?  Because again we love the co-op games 2,3,4 player we don’t care.  But is it good?

Another long lined game was Starcraft 2.  Any takers on that one?  We stopped and watched some game play but never grabbed the stick.  It looks a lot like the original but with better graphics. I need a demo to get me hooked again.

Did you make it to the Renegade booth? Did you loose your hair or get a temporary tattoo?  Before we made it over to their booth, I snapped a shot of a guy with hell painted on the side of his head and just figured he was making a statement.  But once I saw the booth, everything was made clear. Still the line here was insane.  I could not believe how many ‘guys’, i didn’t see any ladies, were waiting to get their heads shaved and painted with ‘HELL’.  Needless to say next year I think we will need to do a 3 day at PAX and get our heads shaved.  Honestly though, I don’t know what game they were promoting.  I snapped a shot of the booth dude and didn’t see what they were there for.  I must have been blinded by all the hair flying around.

Next we went on the ‘How to make a strip’ panel.  I happen to have an inside man who helped us get some incredible seats.  We were only about 20 feet from the stage where Gabe and Tycho were working their magic.  We were stage left sitting behind the camera guys, you can see in the photos.  I think the only people with better view were the Omeganauts and the family and special guest seating areas.  I must admit that while the panel was entertaining, it wasn’t all that informative.  It was pretty cool to watch the process that they go through to make the strip. You should check out the pics there are some really good shots of the strip in process. Gabe said it would be posted either Monday or Tuesday.

Check out our visual take of the show to see PAX through our eyes and keep checking back for the ‘Destroy All Humans!’ giveaway coming up in the next week or so.