Pax Preparations

 

With PAX just days away, my anticipation for the upcoming trip is simmering, to say the least. 30,000 nerds (including myself) are about to descend on Seattle for the most unique gaming event of the year–one whose importance grows with the diminishing of E3. But PAX’s biggest draw is that it’s a gaming event not for the industry, nor for the gaming media, but for ordianary citizens like me and you. Guys and gals who grew up on Mario and Sonic and for whom playing video games is a part of life.

Most of my time this weekend was spent tuning up for the Omegathon.  In no particular order, this is how I spent my gaming time–

First of all, my Jenga tower has got to be the most handicapped, crooked, drunk stack of wooden blocks that has ever come out of the Hasbro factory.  I bought it at my local Target a few weeks ago (a dubious decision, I know),  and it’s been taunting me ever since.  A couple of the blocks are rejects from a twisted dimension of misfit puzzle pieces–they’re oddly shaped and sized, sometimes just a little too big, sometimes too small.  It makes it so that even before I’ve pulled out a single piece from the stack, it tips and sways like a top heavy crabbing vessel on the Bering sea. 

Using someone else’s stack at a party three weeks ago, four of us managed to get the tower up to a respectable 33 rows before someone knocked it down (not me! 🙂 ).  That was just on the very first try. Needless to say, my own personal demon-spawned Jenga tower hasn’t risen to such lofty heights, but I set new records for it this weekend.  In the long run, it’s probably better that my tower is a little messed up and difficult.  It’s really made me have to hone my block plucking skills.  Just one more tune up with the friends I’m meeting up with at PAX on thursday night, and then it’s time for the real thing.

Calling All Cars is really a pretty fun little diversion, and I would definitely pick it up off the Playstation network if I owned a PS3.  At 10$, it’s the right amount of fun at the right price, which is more than I can say for Sony’s next-gen console.  In order to play this minigame from the maker of Twisted Metal and God of War, I had to find someone else who owned a PS3, a feat that was harder than it sounds.  No one in my circle of association owns the darn thing.  No one.  I followed lead after lead in the intervening weeks since hearing that Calling All Cars was on the competition list, only to be frustrated at every turn.  I had pretty much given up, when one of my drummers (I work as a musician) mentioned that he knew not one but two people who owned a PS3. 

 /joy.

In the end, he got me hooked up with his contacts, and I got the playing time I needed.  Last night was one of those play sessions, in which Greg (my drummer friend) asked his buddy Caleb to bring over the PS3 to his house.  They played a little bit, but for the most part they chatted and Greg studied for his pharmaceudical exam while I got engaged in some highly valuable online competition.  Greg and Caleb–I owe you big time.

Overall, I was much happier coming out of this gaming session.  I won just about every game I got involved in online, even in the expert lobbies, which was suprising.  Even when there was one person who ended up beating me out, it was always close, and I never finished any lower than a comfortable second.  In the Omegathon I don’t have to win at Calling All Cars, I just have to avoid being last.  If the competition at PAX is anything like the competition online, I should be ok. 

Finally, I spent many hours honing my fragging skills in the world of Quake 3.  This is the stumbling block round for me–I’m not a hardcore FPS player, and in a genre that is so “twitchy”, I may already be past my prime reflex wise at the tender age of 26.  My one bastion of hope is the knowledge that I don’t have to win–in fact, I don’t even have to be in the top half–I just need to be somewhere in the top 8 of 12 players.  Over the weekend I did see some improvement in my rankings, proof that the “sink or swim” education of the online deathmatch servers has been time not wholly wasted.  I’ll keep working on it right up to the moment of departure.

That was all the time I had for gaming this weekend.  I’m actually less worried about the later rounds of the Omegathon, should I make it that far.  I’ve been practicing up Puzzle Quest for weeks, as well as refreshing myself on the titles that are my guesses for the secret round.  Not only that, but I’ve got my secret strategy in place for Round 4 (sorry guys, no telling).  I expect that a few of the other Omeganauts will be worried about Karaeoke Revolution, but it’s shaping up to be my favored round. 

 That’s all for now.  I’ll post again a little later with some non-gaming PAX preperations.