Karin points out in the comments on Part One that I didn't say she won at Eye of Judgement and in the WoW Trading Card Game. As far as WoW:TCG goes, I'll claim that I hadn't covered it yet, but it's a fair point about Eye. So. Karin won both games. Let it be so recorded.
As far as the World of Warcraft:TCG itself . . . I'm not sure there's much interest in me talking about it here. I like it, I was actually surprised about how much I liked it. It captures a lot of the feeling of the computer game, and the game design is pretty modern, adopting the "any card can be a resource" strategy that seems common in recent TCG's. One thing they do that is intriguing is that there are "Quest" cards which are dedicated resources. You prefer those, but in a pinch you can throw a duplicate card, or an expensive card you won't live long enough to cast or whatever.
The concert on Saturday night was just freaking unbelievable. Jonathan Coulton opened and his set was quite a lot of fun - I was holding out a slight hope to hear First of May, but y'know we got Skullcrusher Mountain, Baby Got Back, Re: Your Brains, Mandelbrot Set and so forth, so one can hardly complain. It's fair to say I would have been entirely happy to have seen a whole concert Jonathan Coulton (Oh but hey - he's in SF a week from Friday, so I will!), but then they segued straight to MC Frontalot. Front's set was full of goodness, and there was no car to get out of parking. I hope his next album includes the live version of the Penny Arcade theme song because it totally blew my mind. The band managed to set the chorus to the Katamari Damacy theme music, and kept weaving back from the one song to the other. It was quite astonishing.
After that it was the Minibosses, but again we bailed out early (sorry Minibosses!) I like the Minibosses fine, but it's the same schtick as the One-Ups, and honestly one rendition of the Super Mario brothers theme per weekend is enough for me.
Sunday we had a late breakfast/lunch and then it was time to head back to the airport, so we didn't go to the show on Sunday. I have this feeling that some people would read this and say "so you pretty much flew to Seattle for one day and to see two concerts?" Well yeah, that's basically what we did. There were some ancillary things, like seeing Rock Band and Eye of Judgement. (Oh! There were DS WiFi stations and you could download this demo of a game called Drawn to Life. Karin and I both played it while waiting in line for the Saturday concert. Basically you draw a character which then animates through a 2d sidescrolling platformer. In the one level demo you also are called upon to draw a cloud, which then lets you reach higher platforms you couldn't orginally. It was neat, and I had heard absolutely nothing about it prior to PAX.)
I can't believe I almost forgot the Omegathon! At PAX there is this multi-round tournament where 16 randomly-selected attendees play a variety of games. Round 4 opened the Saturday night concert and was supposed to be Karoake Revolution. But it turned out to be Rock Band, so we saw the Penny Arcade people play one track, and then two different bands tackled Radiohead's "Creep". I am SO buying that game.
As far as the World of Warcraft:TCG itself . . . I'm not sure there's much interest in me talking about it here. I like it, I was actually surprised about how much I liked it. It captures a lot of the feeling of the computer game, and the game design is pretty modern, adopting the "any card can be a resource" strategy that seems common in recent TCG's. One thing they do that is intriguing is that there are "Quest" cards which are dedicated resources. You prefer those, but in a pinch you can throw a duplicate card, or an expensive card you won't live long enough to cast or whatever.
The concert on Saturday night was just freaking unbelievable. Jonathan Coulton opened and his set was quite a lot of fun - I was holding out a slight hope to hear First of May, but y'know we got Skullcrusher Mountain, Baby Got Back, Re: Your Brains, Mandelbrot Set and so forth, so one can hardly complain. It's fair to say I would have been entirely happy to have seen a whole concert Jonathan Coulton (Oh but hey - he's in SF a week from Friday, so I will!), but then they segued straight to MC Frontalot. Front's set was full of goodness, and there was no car to get out of parking. I hope his next album includes the live version of the Penny Arcade theme song because it totally blew my mind. The band managed to set the chorus to the Katamari Damacy theme music, and kept weaving back from the one song to the other. It was quite astonishing.
After that it was the Minibosses, but again we bailed out early (sorry Minibosses!) I like the Minibosses fine, but it's the same schtick as the One-Ups, and honestly one rendition of the Super Mario brothers theme per weekend is enough for me.
Sunday we had a late breakfast/lunch and then it was time to head back to the airport, so we didn't go to the show on Sunday. I have this feeling that some people would read this and say "so you pretty much flew to Seattle for one day and to see two concerts?" Well yeah, that's basically what we did. There were some ancillary things, like seeing Rock Band and Eye of Judgement. (Oh! There were DS WiFi stations and you could download this demo of a game called Drawn to Life. Karin and I both played it while waiting in line for the Saturday concert. Basically you draw a character which then animates through a 2d sidescrolling platformer. In the one level demo you also are called upon to draw a cloud, which then lets you reach higher platforms you couldn't orginally. It was neat, and I had heard absolutely nothing about it prior to PAX.)
I can't believe I almost forgot the Omegathon! At PAX there is this multi-round tournament where 16 randomly-selected attendees play a variety of games. Round 4 opened the Saturday night concert and was supposed to be Karoake Revolution. But it turned out to be Rock Band, so we saw the Penny Arcade people play one track, and then two different bands tackled Radiohead's "Creep". I am SO buying that game.
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Tags: PAX, gaming, convention, JonathanCoulton, MCFrontalot, RockBand