Blogs about gaming from Pew Pew Laser Blog

PAX Prime 2011.

I had a blast at PAX again this year. Compared with previous years, I spent more time watching rounds of the Omegathon (the Portal 2 round was a little disappointing), concerts, and hanging out and playing games with friends.

Of the video game demos I played, there were several standouts: Mario Kart 7 (for the 3DS), Super Mario 3DS, and Word Fighter for mobile devices (this was excellent, but it's not out yet). We also played quite a few table top demos: Monkeys with Knives and Guns, Nanuk, Sentinels of the Multiverse. We also checked out a copy of Ticket to Ride from the PAX Tabletop library; it was fun and pretty simple.

A final thought about PAX: as a Seattle local, I generally carpool with some friends and park downtown. But it can be challenging to find cheap parking, which is also open late, downtown. My new favorite option is at Pacific Place around 7th and Pine - they're open until 2pm because of their theater. Parking at Pacific Place is $10 all day on weekends, and $13 all day on weekdays if you're in by 9:30 am.

A Cleansing.

At the beginning of the year, I started offloading many of my video games that I don't play any more, and even those that I had just never got around to playing. Before last year's bankruptcy, I always traded-in my used games at Hollywood Video / GameCrazy, but now I had to find new options.

Amazon and Best Buy both offer video game trade-in programs, though only for games which still have their manuals and boxes.

• You can check the video game trade-in prices offered by Amazon here. Amazon will pay to ship the games to them. Since Amazon has such a huge offering of products, the Amazon store credit that they will give you is almost as good as cash.
• Best Buy has an iPhone app to check the trade-in prices, and the iPhone's camera works really well to scan game's UPC. You do the trade-in at one of the best buy stores, and they'll give you a gift card which is good in the store or at the website.

I also found Goozex - a website where members trade games with each other; earning points by sending games, or spending those points by getting games from other traders. The site handles administration and arbitration, and makes it's money with a $2 per trade fee (on the receiver's side). It costs me roughly $5 to ship a game to someone else - $2 for the padded envelope, and $2 or $3 for postage.

I weighed each of these trade-in options for each of the games I was looking to get rid of. (I was surprised by the difference in trade-in values between Amazon and BestBuy.) In the end, I got about $15 at both BestBuy and Amazon by trading in video games. I've also a nearly-new copy of Final Fantasy XIII through trading at Goozex, and I'm on the wait-list for a few more games. And I have less stuff sitting around the house!

PAX Prime 2010 - Leftovers.

Here are my final PAX thoughts:

• Enforcers are the camp counselors of PAX. They have amusing nicknames, and they will direct you to line up in a tight and orderly fashion. Respect your volunteer enforcers, and they will get you through PAX.
• At PAX, there were tons of vendors handing out stuff. I scored a Slime drawstring bag. I eschewed buttons and most other silly junk. I did wear a silly Plants Vs. Zombies cone hat - but only for half a day; I had succumbed to the promise of winning an iPad.
• I played Fluidity at the Nintendo booth. It's simple concept, and the play style was unique to me; though it's actually quite similar to Loco Roco. I liked it, and I'm looking forward to it coming out on WiiWare.
• JoCo has evolved into Jonathan Coulton. He is now a real rock star, with a backup band and everything.
• In another publisher's demo area, we played Catan - Settlers of America: Trails to Rails, a railroad themed variant of Catan. I found this version of Catan to be way too complex, even more so than regular Settlers of Catan. I did like the more visible victory points in Trails to Rails, as well as that the victory points were connected to real in-game accomplishments. I also liked how Trails to Rails gave players currency (gold), which solved a lot of problems in getting specific resources.
• I got a ton of awesome treasure maps for Dragon Quest IX. Thanks to all the other DQ players who shared their maps with moochers like me!

PAX 2010 - Steve Jackson.

Hidden away under the WSCC escalators is one of the best parts of PAX, and one of the easiest to miss. Steve Jackson Games hosts a space where you the official Steve Jackson demo monkeys will teach you how to play almost any of the games that they publish. The husband and I played a hilarious round of Zombie Dice. We also enjoyed Revolution, a town-themed resource management game which was a bit less complex than Catan or Agricola with an interesting bidding system.

In future PAXes I'd like to see Steve Jackson in a panel (a table-top focused panel, perhaps) or even the keynote. Mr. Jackson has the old school chops to qualify for this, and he deserves your respect. A 1990 Secret Service raid on his company offices was largely responsible for creating the the EFF.

At one point during PAX, I took a little nap on a bean bag. When I woke up, some folks next to me were just opening their brand new game of Munchkin, and reading the rules. I sent them to Steve Jackson land; where I'm sure they got straightened out, and received oodles of free cards and tokens.

PAX Prime 2010 - The Omegathon.

Last weekend, it was again time for PAX - the massive video and tabletop gaming exposition right here in Seattle. I will do a couple of posts about PAX, staring with the Omegathon - a weekend long competition between selected attendees with a grand prize trip to TGS in Tokyo.

I missed the first round of the Omegathon - where the contestants (Omeganauts) battled Zombie Dice. Zombie Dice is essentially a zombie themed variant of Farkle. I suspect that the decision to use Zombie Dice might have been influenced by the Penny Arcade forums.

I did get to watch the second round - Bomberman Live. Though I've played Bomberman on and off for more than 15 years, I did learn a new strategy - tunnels are traps! I really enjoyed watching this with a crowd of people.

Just before she stepped up to the controller, I offered a lonely Omeganaut (Kirsten) a brief explanation and beginner's strategy for Bomberman. Kirsten survived Bomberman by a hair; utilizing the "don't blow yourself up" strategy, and she asked if I could show her Katamari to her in advance of the 4th round tomorrow morning. We got Beautiful Katamari set up in the console freeplay area and I demonstrated basic Katamari mechanics and recommended that her time would be best spent putting some hours into the game.

It was great to watch the Beautiful Katamari round (#3). The audience politely clapped when an Omeganaut increased their katamari size, and cheered when they rolled up a nice tight string of big items. Alas, poor Kirsten got berated by the King of All Cosmos for the size of her Katamari and was out of the Omegathon.

Round 4 was Rock Band, with keyboards. The Omeganauts played in two four-man teams at Benaroya hall like real rock stars. I thought that the first group did better at being rock stars, but the cool technical performance of the second band won them the night.

Puzzle Bobble was the penultimate round. This was another great round to watch, where the audience cheered for combos, and were sympathetic when round was lost. At some point during the Puzzling and the Bobbling, Jerry Holkins appeared a few seats away from me. He said that he and Mike had liked this as an Omegathon game because of the interesting in the long-game. He vanished shortly before the end of the round, when the remaining Omeganauts numbered two.

The final Omegathon round was brilliantly conceived. Our hosts for this final round, Holkins and Krahulik, gave us some hints before it was revealed:

It's tremendously ancient.
It is turn based.
It involves resource gathering.

The final challenge was The Omegaclaw: a claw machine filled with plush gaming delights such as Koopas, Moogles, devious Pikmin, Vivis, and Heartless. Each contestant got a dozen or so attempts at the claw, and the most toys eared the winning Omeganaut a trip to Tokyo. The Omegaclaw behaved as all claw machines do - retrieving some toys with a vice-like grip while merely tickling others, and capriciously dropping some toys just before the threshold of the retrieval area. You can watch the whole saga on YouTube, of course, but being in the theater and being immersed in the live experience with 2500 other folks was a thrill to which I cannot apply enough hyperbole.

I have just a few closing thoughts about the Omegathon:

• Each and every round needs some kind of host, commentary, and interpretation. What's happening? Which 3d meatspace avatars are connected to which moving pixels on the screen? Which Omeganauts are in terrible danger of going out? For this duty, I nominate Stepto. His speech at w00tstock proved his ability both to understand a game and, most importantly, to hold an audience's attention.
• Having one or two non-digital games in an Omegathon is critical to keeping a wide breadth and "anything can happen" feeling to the tournament. While the format for Omegathon seems to be playing games which are, generally, easy to grok and quick to resolve, I would love to see a Monopoly round.
• What will the Penny Arcade team come up with for next year? What could possibly be more epic and awesome than the Omegaclaw? I propose pinball! While its source movie should be scrubbed from our consciousness, the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull pinball machine is fantastic. Elements from all of Indy's outings are represented there, with the most exciting being the Ark of the Covenant. You'd better look at this Ark - it contains 4 more balls! (Last time I was there, this machine was available at Pinball Cove at Shorty's in downtown Seattle, if anyone in blogland is interested.)