Alright, I know it's been a long time but hey life gets in the way sometimes. We haven't been doing much gaming as of late what with the holidays followed by birthdays followed by finishing the basement in record time so we could have family stay with us. Add in sickness and toddlers being toddlers and there you have it, my excuse for not blogging...
How ever, I do have something new to talk about over here, Yay! Last weekend we left the kiddos home with grandma and traveled over to Boston for a micro mini vacation and went to PAX!
We had a great time over all, the hotel we stayed at was pretty fancy. It was a Police barracks that was turned into a hotel, so the building it self was pretty interesting, the bar (Cuffs, creative huh?) served some pretty great drinks and the food at the restaurant was very good. The rooms were mediocre, it was extremely hard to control the heating/cooling and there was something rattling (not sure if it was a fan or light fixture) allll night long which made it sound like there as a rat going in a wheel all night. Whatever it was didn't make for great sleeping conditions. Luckily breakfast and the fact that we could leave our car in parking even after we checked out made up for it though.
We got to the convention center right at 8 am. We hit it just at the right time as people were being allowed to head into the building to the waiting area. We were in the second line which was pretty decent. The picture below is of the lines that formed behind us.
The great thing about having a 2 hour wait before the doors opened? We had about a 20 minute head start on the vast majority of people so we could pick what game we wanted to play and get right to it, no lines no waiting.
M chose Fire Fall for the game he wanted to go to first. And judging by the fact that he has been playing the Beta version with all his free time since we got back home I think he liked it :). I have an account to play it as well since I tried it there for about 60 seconds. So I suppose I'll try it more here at home and do a review on it? Maybe if I get the time :). I would have loved to try it more there, but owing to the fact that I'm new at this whole gaming thing and there were people who a) developed this game and b) who know how to play games like this watching over my shoulder I chickened out and gave up the spot for some one else who might get more out of it.
I did, however, find a game that I could play by myself!! Yay for that! It was Magic The Gathering 2013 playable on the Xbox 360 (also they have a version coming out that is going to be available on the iPad!) Couldn't wait to play it again so we downloaded the 2012 version when we got home. So far I still love it, even though it's still on tutorial mode. I'll post more when I get the hang of things.
Toward mid day we started loosing steam fast and furious and the crowds just kept getting more crowded. Not being ones to stand in line for hours to play games for 10 or 20 minutes we decided we had gotten our money's worth out of the experience and so we headed home to our girls.
Things that surprised me...
1) The politeness of everyone there! Seriously everyone that I ran into seemed polite and good natured. With that many people there it was surprising to me how I didn't see any line cutting, pushing or shoving. I also didn't hear any cussing or see any adult tantrums...
2) The prices really didn't seem all that ridiculous to me. Merch and food seemed pretty reasonable. But maybe that's because I've seen the prices for food at the Saratoga Race Track...
3) Cabs in Boston weren't nearly as pricey as I was expecting...also the cabbies are not chatty at all...
4) People will wait for insane amounts of time in a line to play a game for 10 minutes, how do you even decide if you like the game in that amount of time? Or is it just to be able to say you played said game at PAX before it was released to the world?
Things we learned for next year...
1) Get there early again! Totally worth sitting in line for a couple of hours to get to play one game before the crowds really start picking up.
2) We could bring the girls! Next year depending on their personalities at the time we will probably be bringing the girls with us. I was very surprised to see there were people there with their toddlers there! What a great experience for them to be a part of.
3) If there is someone who you know is going to be there doing a signing and you would like to meet them...get in line for the darn signing...Totally missed out on meeting Felicia Day, next year though...
4) They have food upstairs, go and purchase it there. Have a sandwich or a burrito for lunch, don't settle for snacks and a fried dough...
5) If you bring snacks and water don't forget to munch on said snacks and drink said water...you will be a much happier person for it, and probably wont end up crashing at 1:30.
6) Research some table top games. We wanted to come out of this weekend with a game we could play at home since M sits at a computer all day the last thing he feels like doing lately is playing on one when he gets home. They had "how to play" D & D sessions going on and we were going to do one of those, but we had each gotten a deck of Magic cards in our swag bags and I liked the xbox version so I think we are going to go with that for a while and figure it out on our own. But walking by the Table Top section I realized just how much there is out there to try! It would be fun to just hang out and play some while we're there and maybe meet some great new people!
