PAX 2013: Xenos's Rambling Write-up *OT* (DBO)

by Xenos , Shores of Time, Wednesday, September 04, 2013, 12:32 (4104 days ago)
edited by Xenos, Wednesday, September 04, 2013, 13:16

Arrived in Seattle around 10am on Friday morning and attempted to find the Joe Staten panel at PAX, but after confusing myself repeatedly ended up getting in the Titanfall line. Titanfall is pretty sweet! Mech Titan action is nicely balanced against the Pilot action, and I even ended up killing more Titans as a Pilot than as a Titan and also ended up scoring better than anyone else playing (I ended up playing two more times throughout PAX and ended up scoring best all three times). I think the reason I did so well was because I am used to games like Halo where armor abilities play a large role and a lot of the people I played against were CoD fans. I was wall jumping and double jumping all over the place while the majority of players ran on the ground and tried to fight Titans head on. I thoroughly enjoyed the smart pistol, which will lock on to enemies at short range and empty a clip to kill them (even if they run around corners). Surprisingly it is not as easy to use as described, and against a human skilled player takes longer to kill them than just lining up a head shot so it was well balanced. Titans feel powerful and don't feel lumbering. I definitely think I will pick up Titanfall day one.

I did try Battlefield 4, but the demo was terrible. On the plus side I got to try out the XBox One controller which feels great, basically a 360 controller improved subtely so it feels almost perfect. The triggers are more comfortable, your thumbs rest more easily on the sticks and the overall controller sits in your hands easier. I also tried Killzone: Shadowfall to try out the new PS4 controller, and while I had trouble getting into the game the controller is a massive improvement over the PS3 controller. The sticks are much more responsive and the triggers feel much better. I still prefer the configuration of the 360/One controller, but I was much happier with the PS4 controller over the PS3.

The rest of day 1 on the floor was spent wandering around watching videos. That night I was lucky enough to meet a few Bungie employees and DBO/HBO regulars at a Bungie Community event. I already talked about my conversation with the Bungie graphic designer that designed the Fallen T-shirt. I also was snubbed by Urk once or twice, cornered DeeJ about him joining one of our community game nights (more about that later), and met Sage, Marty, and Lars Bakken as well as a few others. I was also able to meet Gavin and Gus from Rooster Teeth and talked with Gavin for around 20 minutes including a hilarious story about testicle surgery he had. The rest of the night was spent discussing various video games with an incredibly drunk Uberfoop.

Day 2 of PAX I played a lot of games on the floor and saw Kermit on the floor (the only DBO/HBO member I saw actually AT PAX all weekend). None of the games stuck with me too much but I had a great time just spending massive amounts of time devoted to video games. That night we had the DBO/HBO community meet-up. I spent a lot of time discussing Bungie games with Craig Hardgrove of NASA/Guardians of Destiny and received an awesome Hot Wheels Curiosity rover from him for mentioning the secret codeword. I also got to meet Luke Timmins and we discussed the Halo launch for awhile. He told a pretty awesome story about CES the year Halo launched where nobody cared what Halo or the XBox were. Basically they put Luke and one other Bungie employee in charge of showing off the XBox at the Microsoft booth and told him to show off Halo campaign. Almost nobody came and nobody could figure out how to play. So on the second day they told Microsoft to eff off and setup Halo multiplayer on all four stations and gathered a crowd just from them playing snipers 1v1. That's when Luke knew Halo was going to do well.

Day 3 was pretty uneventful, I spent most of the day visiting Seattle with the friends who had come with me to Seattle but not to PAX. I did get to visit the floor for a couple hours and saw a few more Bungie employees and Bungie fans at the public Bungie Community meetup. I left before noon the next day and drove through the mountains in Idaho in a thunderstorm and ended up replacing all four tires on my car when I got back.

It was a great time and I loved meeting all of you that I did meet! Hopefully I will see you guys again in the future!