PAX East 2015

Went to bed Wednesday night, but couldn’t go to bed until 3AM Thursday morning. I woke up at 6 AM ready to embark on my journey to Boston for PAX East 2015. I drove to the Atlanta Airport. While waiting for my flight I saw the Bit Brigade again.

I had fears of PAX of super shitty weather. Like if there was a another horrible snowstorm, but none of that happened.

When Chris and I landed in the airport we got to meet Richard Colina. Afterwards we got a cab and proceeded to get fucked hard. Airport to the Westin by the BCEC. Instead he drove us to the Westin by the Hynes. What was supposed to be $21 was a $47.70.

Luckily the anger went away after playing some tabletop games. Rich, Chris, and I joined Bryant, Will, Hutch, and Jay for a game of Dredd’s Chest. It’s a game that is up to 9 players, and the purpose is to have the most gold coins, and not have the black abyss coin and win. There is 9 ranking positions, and they go in order from Captain to Cabin Boy. The game ends when there is no gold coins to draw out of the bag. Players can steal coins from other players and use cards to counteract stealing. Rich manage to win Dredd’s chest. Rich chose the female pilot because he viewed himself as a pretty lady.

The second game we played was Cosmic Encounters. It was complicated. There was over 100 different races to play as. The most number of players/races was 7. Each race had 5 planets with 4 ships. The goal was to be the first race to colonize 5 planets. There was a joke that the blacks had their own planet. I was purple. I was constantly getting screwed by Will. His mirror ablility prevented me from ever winning a battle. I was constantly being betrayed by my friends and my planets were invaded. My reward cards weren’t that great, and I was playing a game that I only had 10% understanding of. The other more experienced tabletop players tried so hard not to let each other win, Chris Ott manage to sneak out with the win. During Cosmic Encounters, I was drinking a mix drink called the Smash Brothers. Hutch was spilling more and more alcohol as the night went on.

FRIDAY

Friday Morning Chris Ott, and I woke up early and got outside the con at 7:40AM. Instead of going to the show floor we just walked around the convention seeing the theatre rooms and hallways before they get jammed packed. At that time the wi-fi was great before 25,000 people come in with 3 wi-fi devices a piece. I used the guidebook QRcode for the easy PAX XP but then fell short 4 codes, but I wasn’t going to go out of my way to find them. I saw some of the new special memory foam chairs which were awesome. You could sit on them and lean back and they still retain their shape.

After walking around the show floor I met up with Willy and Alex. Alex went his seperate way. Willy and I were now waiting in the queue line for the expo hall. Someone drew a giant cock on the beachball. It always happens to every beachball at PAX. You got to see the cock spin into the sky when it was spiked. There was the 5 people who didn’t give a shit and kept getting constantly hit in the fucking face by the beach balls. I was aware of the beachballs and I only got to hit the beachball once. That’s how it works.

Walking around the show floor for PAX East 2015 was the most disappointing East show floor of the 5 I’ve attended. There was no AAA game present on the show floor. It was the biggest show floor in total space but the lamest. Instead of games, the Food Court encroached on the show floor. 505 Games didn’t make it and in its place was tables and chairs in the middle of the expo hall. Besides F2P, the livestreaming, and anything related to Online Gaming personalities were drastically expanded. Twitch will be #1 for the loudest booth on the show floor. WE GOT THAT $970 MILLION AMAZON MONEY!

Willy was in his cosplay as Trevor from GTA V. When a person knew who Willy cosplayed as the first things out of their mouth was “I hate GTA V, I really fucking hate Trevor” Willy cosplayed for Trevor for 3 hours and never again.

The Swag bags are now sadbags. It came with a box of Magic cards with usually happens. 1 card a piece from Superfight and Never Have I ever in place of Cards Against Humanity. The rest was filled with headset advertisements. Instead of 4 years in a row of Behemoth lanyards all the lanyards provided were by Ubisoft. Which is strange since this was the first year Ubisoft skipped out at PAX East.

The layout of the vendors was not that well organized. Videogame apparel booths were all over the place than in one easy section of the show floor. Walking across the skybridge the show floor looked more boring and sad.

Some of the cool things at PAX was the Soda Drinker Pro booth, and their specialty Bonus Sodas. I loved the Bonus Sodas so much I bought 6 the first day, and 5 a piece for the next 2 days totaling 16. They said I was the #1 Soda Drinker Pro. I got a T-shirt after the 10th one due to how many sodas I drank. Nearby the Soda Drinker Pro booth was the Sumthing Audio which sold videogame soundtracks. I bought a lot of soundtracks. I bought the Deus Ex Human Revolution, Mass Effect 1, Uncharted 2, Halo, Halo 3, Halo Reach, Halo ODST, and Metal Gear Revengence soundtrack. All 8 soundtracks for $20. It blew my mind.

When you are drinking 6 sodas a day there is a reverse. If you are a Soda Drinker Pro, you will be a Soda Pisser Pro. At game conventions, it’s the only time men will have to wait at a public restroom. One time I wanted to piss, but I got piss fright. I manage to pee, but my urethra was as thin as it could be. That was a long 90 second piss. Worse pissing experience of PAX East. If you thought the pissing was bad oh god the pooping. The lint, pube, and dust of 1000 of pants making contact with the toliet every day for the next 3 days. One poop when it made contact looked like a candycane. Another poop looked like I was making clay for the French Open. Those were the most memorable of my pooping and pissing stories at this years PAX, now back to the regular programming.

Willy, Alex, Chris, and I got to talk to Brett Elston.

After walking around the show floor I went to the Jamspace area set up by Magfest. I proceeded to play some Vanessa Carlton’s 1000 miles. Some Blink 182 What’s my Age again, and some Smashmouth All Star. When I played some Kirby Gorumet Race, Dom from Magfest sprinted to the drums to drop some sick beats to the Gorumet Race. It was awesome. After jamming I walked to get something to eat and saw Will and Bryant from Thursday night at the Rock Band freeplay area.

I went to the first round of the Omegathon panel. The game was Geometry Wars. One of the matches was rough. The blue team was ahead, and the red team used the freeze powerup. The red team came from behind with a massive combo and beat blue team in the final 15 seconds.

For lunch I had a $8 Chicken Caesar Salad. There was no dressing. I ate it plain and the soggy croutons. I didn’t want to wait in line a long time.

Around 6PM I met Alex at the lobby and said there was a Gaming event going on at Guilt. It was a gay bar which made someone in the group iffy. I wanted to see the Just Cause 3 panel. The Just Cause 3 panel was okay. Even though it was cool there was the creative director and lead directors of their fields as panelists, nothing new was teased, and did nothing to change my outlook on the game. At the end they raffled off two prizes of a mega Avalanche Prize Pack. so 99.5% of the audience won nothing. Alex said the party was a lot of fun and there was no gays and free food. I should have gone to that party. It would have been better than the $7 hot dogs, $10 burgers, and $7 cracker thin pizza.

After the Just Cause 3 panel, Willy went his seperate way. Chris Ott and I went down to Jamspace to watch Mega Ran perform with Storyteller. Mega Ran did Prince of Bel-Air, Splashwoman, Forever, and Avalanche.

Friday night the last meal was the sad burritos. $9.50 for a burrito made like a Moe’s or Chipotle, but it tasted like it came right out of Jose Ole microwaved asshole. Depressing, yet filling in the worse way. It complemented depression. It was the most segregated burrito I ever ate. Top was nothing but sour cream. The lettuce didn’t kick in until the 3rd bite. Then no meat until the 6th bite. The rice was so dry. The tiny meat. If I was fed my own dick it would be more filling. The last 3 bites was nothing but jalapenos.

Friday night, Rich, Chris, and I got back in a cab and headed off to sleep. Rich didn’t want to be at the con until 10AM. What a lame-o.

SATURDAY

I woke up at 6:50 AM. I had my 7 hours of sleep. More than adequate for PAX.

The first panel I went to was Awesome Video Game Data 2015 presented by EEDAR President Zatkin. He shared about the whaling markets on F2P models of similarities and differences on mobile and PC. The influence of Steam on the PC market, and how many games get released on Steam on a yearly basis. The percentage of people who play games and it’s reaching a gender parity. Another small topic that was covered is that everyone is getting old. Review scores still matter but being a 90+ metacritic no longer matters as much. A lot of neat data was shared. The rise of twitch, and live streaming as another thing EEDAR is keeping track of besides games, and games releasing.  The successes and predominately failures of Kickstarter.

I went to the end of the Panel Simulator 2015. I arrived at the end of the Q&A. Boy was their some good zingers. One person asked “I actually play actual simulation games like Train Simulator and Flight Simulator. Who are you making fun of?” Another person asked why the objects change in size in Goat Simulator, and the creator said he was lazy and it only took one line of code to make objects change size dynamically. He said his game got a 62 on metacritic, and if you reviewed Goat Simulator you didn’t get the game. The World Record holder for the speedrun in Soda Drinker Pro gave Will his VHS speedrun tape. Walter Day refuses to acknowledge the fastest Soda Drinker Pro player in the world. Will Brierly believes we are in a simulation from the inside out in relation to Soda Drinker Pro.

At 2PM I went to the Universality of Videogame Music. Brett Elston was a panelist. I just made the cut off by 10 chairs. I sat way in the back. When Q&A open up. I sprinted to the front. It was like I was running 1000 mph while everyone stayed still, just so I could ask Brett Elston a question on what level does he appreciate the Muppets Party Cruise.

At 6PM I was with Alex, Willy, and Chris. Alex wanted to get some bumper from some person for the podcast and waited about 90 minutes. In that time Willy and I talked about games millions of other people love and we hate, and how we preferred the PAXses in the past compared to this one. We were becoming jaded fucktards. I said to Willy League of Legends is the Call of Duty of MOBAs. Regardless how popular Call of Duty is, 30 million people will not watch the livestream of the Call of Duty World Championships. They we talked about how much the show floor sucks. How come it is illegal for AAA publishers to show a game off before May? Willy brought up the reason Turbine is doing carnival games for Infinite Crisis is because no one would play the game. At the end Chris, Willy and I agreed that Bioshock Infinite was over rated. The art style gave it the 90+ metacritic. The multiple parallel universes is mindblowing if you never experience another form of media in your life.

Later that night was the what was left of the LaserTime meetup. Brett Elston the only one there 4 years later after the first. There was about 15 people there. Elston and chinspired had a conversation that would solve all the injustices of the world. Brett view on the 9/11 conspiracy was “WE CAN’T EVEN HIDE DLC? HOW IN THE WORLD CAN THEY COVER THAT UP?” Ted Rossi had grievances about Chris Antista and Henry Gilbert that he was lumped into the generic white winger group. He said “What do you think I’m crazy that I want a balance budget?” He said Brett was a libertarian and Brett said “NOOOOOOOO!” Ted Rossi could talk for hours on the 3 subjects of James Bond, Star Trek, and liberals. Ted brought up the reason California has marijuana is due to the state opposing Federal law, and it’s one sided to think States having their own legislation separate from federal law only benefits right white wingers. Everyone there wished that Mike Grimm was at PAX. Saturday Night the majority of the conversations were everything but videogames. After the meetup, Rich, Chris, and I went back to the apartment to sleep.

SUNDAY

Daylight Savings Time made the day move by faster. The first thing I did in the morning was go to the Gearbox Panel. I was expecting something awesome due to previous years of Gearbox panels. I was wrong. There was no voucher for the Handsome Collection. It was cool that Troy Baker was there. He is a fast talking joke guy. He is a good looking guy but he is part Benedict Cumberbatch eyes with some Bradley Cooper facial features.

After the Gearbox panel I went to Jamspace again to play on some instruments. I got to jam out with Doctor Ew and some random people that wanted to play some instruments. There was a guy that played Jonathan Coulton’s CodeMonkey I played Mr. Brightside on keys, while he sang it since he didn’t know the chords. He also sang along to All Star Smashmouth. A kid joked and said ”Play Wonderwall” and I did. After being at Jamspace for half an hour I went to the Wikia Qwizards Panel.

The Wikia Qwizards Panel was not that great. 50 people were picked out the crowd to be constants. No one had interest in raising their hands so I walked to the front of the line with my hand raised and got picked. The grand prize winner would get a NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 960 with a 1 TB portable Hard Drive, with a 500MB wireless data carrier. The 5 runner ups would get 32 GB flash drives.

Instead of it being audience 95% of the Qwizards were directed to 3 superfan panelists who had 10,000 edits on their most visited gaming wikis. The one who was an “expert” on the JRPGS was maximum level douche with his sunglasses he wore inside the con. Man did we boo when the “expert” on Halo didn’t know that the Battle Rifle was first in Halo 2.  One of the contestants in front of me trashed those guys with such great insults. For a tiebraker of the superfans it was a back in forth of naming Pokemon, and you lose by saying an incorrect Pokemon or a Pokemon twice. It went on for about 60 names, and then it sounded like they were giving each other snooty insults. If Mike Grimm was there he would have kept that one funny asshole in check. The audience was only asked 6 questions. The 6 people that answered correctly had another question and the winner of that question competed in the final round. The question was “What device in Assassins Creed let’s people travel back in time?” The audience member answered right away and won the grand prize. The entire panel took less than 30 minutes. It was a lame panel.

After that I went back to Jamspace and saw the Bit Brigade. It was 2 people playing Super Mario Brothers 3 while accompanied by live instruments The Two Tones, since it was just drums and keyboard. Dom from Magfest was on the keys. The guy playing the game said this is a completely original idea while the Bit Brigade were present. Dom didn’t know any ice music, so he just played the Super Mario Bros Underground 1-2 theme.

The guy playing Mario sucked at Super Mario Brothers 3, so Dom just played the Death Jingle multiple times. Then Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Mortal Kombat theme was played through the playthrough of Super Mario Brothers 3. It was very funny and entertaining.

After the Jamspace, Rich, Chris, and I went to the show floor to meet with Alex before the convention was over. Chris gave Alex a Mega Man 25th Anniversary soundtrack which made Alex feel like he wasn’t worthy to receive the gift. Willy took his button and poked holes through his Condom Against Humanity and gave it to Rich. Willy and I laughed, and then Rich realized what happened.

In the main lobby when the show was clearing up, I got to congratulate Omeganaut ComicSeans for coming back to win in Pac Man Battle Royale. When he was coming down the escalator there was a crowd of 30 cheering him on.

When the convention center was closed, our group of 8 people migrated to the Westin hotel lobby where we spent the next 2 hours making bad puns. Every random person who I had a conversation with as in 3, who also been to multiple PAXses were disappointed in the show floor. Willy and I were not the only ones.

Monday

Monday morning I headed out to the airport. My flight was delayed for only 30 minutes. Waiting at the gate, I remembered flying out when PAX East 2013 was over an a old guy said “The show floor will be more interesting in the future since the new consoles will be coming out.” Man was that far from the truth. I had a fun time, but this felt like this could have been my last PAX East and or PAX. If anything on to MAGFEST14!

MAGFEST 2015

Thursday Morning

My flight to MAGFEST was at 11:00 AM. I woke up at the crack of 2:30 AM. I couldn’t go to bed so I got ready to leave to the Atlanta-Hartsfield airport at 4:30 AM.

Waiting at the gate for my plane I met 3 people going to MAGfest. Rietz, Rodrick, and June. Reitz was looking forward to seeing Yu Mizake due to his composing in the Tekken series. He also scored Ridge Racer and Katamari Damacy. He told me his highlight at work was blasting Tekken music. Then some white person would look in his direction. Just when they are about to tell him to turn the music down, they see a black guy with dreads menacing, and then the person walks away and goes about their business.

After arriving in the Reagan National Airport, I took the Metro station to my Aunt’s condo. She squeezed her hands on my cheeks like an overbearing mother telling how much she missed her nephew. We ate an excellent Mexican restaurant District Taco. Imagine a Moe’s, but all of their salsas and sauces are superior.


Friday Morning

 I woke up at 6AM, anxiously waiting to travel to National Harbor for MAGFest. I was the first of the group of 9 to arrive at MAGfest. I went inside the convention center. It was beautiful. You could see the Potomac River from the atrium. Inside the atrium there was a variety of trees and plants, and shops in the shape of Colonial houses. Alex called it “It’s what the outside should be. Inside.”

I got my MAGFest badge and said I was part of Sadboys2K14. I was expecting Sadboys2K14 to be on the label but it was not. The badges looked like a Tron disc. On the way back to the hotel I ran into Sarah. A classmate I went to high school with back in Iowa. The last time I saw her was at PAX East 2013 in Boston.

I saw Matt in the hotel lobby at the Hampton Inn. We greeted each other and then later I saw Christina.

Matt and I proceeded to browse MAGFest. The arcade area was packed. MAGFEST had the largest selection of free play machines I’ve seen at a gaming convention and I’ve been to PAX East and Prime. The size of the arcade was East + Prime arcade freeplay x 6. Besides over 300 arcade machines to play, there was dozens of computers hooked up to play old PC Games. They had 2 386 PC’s connected to play Doom II campaign co-op. 

Around 1PM, Kori, Mitch, and Rory arrived. Mitch was in his weird suit. Matt had two rooms, the 504 room was ready but the 1004 was not. Until then, I had my luggage in their room. At this time, Matt and Mitch were changing into their cosplay outfits. Mitch “teased” me in the loosest of terms that I was getting a dick show. Oh was he in for a treat later on at MAGFEST. 


We were hungry and we headed out for the Cadillac Ranch. A good Burger, sandwich, American type restaurant. I ate a BBQ Burger all my fries, and all of Flabslapper’s or whoever’s fries.

When waiting for Alex, Mela, and Jayson; Mitch, Christina, Kori, Rory, and I watched Maury. It was boring. The Mike Slocum commercials were 100% Tim and Eric. Mitch asked if I saw any of those commercials because he had a law office in Alabama and I said no because there is a super successful lawyer Alexander Shunnarah that owns almost 20% of all billboards in the state of Alabama. While watching boring TV, Matt was waiting in the hotel lobby checking the progress of the other room. We were wondering a scenario where Matt got mad and start beating up the fuck out of nerds.

When the room for the “sexless nerds” was ready, Alex Mela and Jayson arrived. We automatically thought Alex was already cosplaying as Ermac or a Mortal Kombat character due to the color configuration of his coat and his ninja balaclava. 

From 3 to 5 PM I walked around the convention center. I went to Jamspace only to be disappointed there was no keyboard/pianos. I saw the concert hall which was a giant ball room with 2 stages on opposite ends.

I saw Jayson and Kori waiting in line at the Game Grumps panel. Kori cosplayed as Vera from Final Fantasy tactics. Ears made her 6’7’’ making her easy to spot in a crowd. At the Jon Tron panel Jayson was saying some crazy shit making some people in front of us to turn around. LONk and his friend JuanTron. Jayson said his grandparents worked at Auschwitz Germany, I corrected him saying it was Auschwitz Poland. LONk did believe for a split second that story was true. During the lead up to the Q&A Jayson, Lenk, JuanTron, and I were brainstorming the worse possible questions to ask for the Q&A.  Jayson “Hey Jon Tron could you say this one line because women don’t like me because of my acne and feces. What’s the hottest meme? What’s the dank meme? Are you going to that cosplay orgy and what are you dressing up as?”

After the panel most of the group of nine met up by the fountains in the atrium. We later ran into Hector our server at The Cadillac Ranch and he asked to get a picture of Matt’s Casey Jones. After 9 PM, I tagged along with Matt and Christina to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles tournament. Matt met up with a larger and beefier Casey Jones. We left due to seeing no progress on the TMNT tournament 15 minutes after it was suppose to start.

I went back with Matt to the hotel where we just chilled for 30 minutes and at 11PM he was getting old and said he needed some sleep so I went away.


Saturday morning

 I woke up early. Got some breakfast. Ate about 10 French toast sticks and 1 pork sausage patty that tasted funny. The first panel I went to was the Katamari Damacy panel. Featuring Yoshito Yano and Yu Miyake, the composers of the game. While waiting in line for the panel I reseen a person I met 2 hours earlier in the elevator at the Hampton Inn who traveled all the way to Iowa to come to MAGFEST. Also while waiting in line, I saw Emily Reese, who I’ve seen and been to her panels she hosted on Videogame Music Composers in PAX Prime 2012, East 2013, and Prime 2014. Before the Q&A started they played a little Q&A song. I was the first to ask a question. The question was “What inspired you to do the Q&A song?” They were inspired by the energy in the room and wanted to give something back. They were filled with joy and excitement, seeing hundreds of people to come to the panel because they love their music.

After the panel I went to the restroom only to arrive at the autograph area for it to be completely full. The most unorganized part of MAGfest was probably the autograph line. 

For lunch I ran into JuanTron and LONk and I suggested them to go to the Cadillac Ranch. They enjoyed it. During that time LONk talked how much he loved Modest Mouse, and love that their new album was only on vinyl and their youtube video of their new album is it being played on Vinyl. It then delved into that one fucked up friend in college that wanted to show you the grossest porn. Then he wondered about the craigslist cosplay orgy, wondering if his Link costume was enough. Which all he needed to do was make an exertion noise. After the meal we went our separate ways. Another topic that was brought up was if he got popularity to do panels he would have a lists of questions already answered and a rap air horn going off for horrible questions.

I tagged with Mitch, Rory, Kori, and Jayson to the Zaibatsu Best Friends Panel. Mitch and Rory got to ask their questions at the panel. Once again Jayson was brainstorming horrible questions like hottest meme right now, favorite meme, and dank meme.

After the Zaibatsu panel I followed along with Mitch Kori Rory Kelly and Eric to some restaurant and then we decided to settle on Potbellies. At first Subway, then the Oyster House, and then Potbellies. They have great sandwiches. Afterwards we went to the Peeps store where they had all the possible Peeps and Mike and Ikes products as possible. I tried 3 of the hottest Mike and Ikes. I didn’t feel anything the spice until 20 seconds later and it kicked in. Kori offered me her “white Gatorade” which turned out to be White Cherry Powerade. She lied, but she was more shocked that I remembered.   

After the Potbellies, I went to The Lonely Rolling Stars concert and Eric tagged along. They covered Katamari Damacy and some Persona. Some of their covers were very metally where they didn’t sound like Katamari.

For 45 minutes Eric and I chatted about the videogames. Like Alpha Protocol, the Bandai Wonderswan, the retardedness of the Vita, Mass Effect, Assassins Creed. Still to this day the ending of Mass Effect 3 still prevents us from replaying the game.

Sometime after that Eric and I parted ways. I tagged along with Mitch, Christina, Kori, and Matt to see Power Glove. Matt was thinking it was the 80’s PowerGlove of Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon but it was a metal cover band of 80’s and 90’s videogame music. It was super metally it no longer sounded like a cover. So much double bass pedal and guitar shredding. Matt left because he was old and the music was loud. Mitch during the concert grabbed me and I proceeded to hump him and make monkey noises. Later I grabbed Mitch and jumped up in the air.


Leaving the concert area I danced/jumped/ flailed limbs wildly to some music in the hallway to the point I thought I was going to throw up. There was a nice volunteer that gave me a bottle of water, and later saw me at the atrium and wondered if I was doing okay. I wasn’t. Anyway after taking it easy for 20 minutes I was ok.

Alex Mitch, and I embarked to get some alcohol to stay up late looking for any excuse. Unfortunately all the bars inside the Gaylord were closed after midnight. We proceeded to go to the Cadillac Ranch. There was a doorman not only requesting ID’s but also that we are 25. I was one week away from turning 25. Mitch said “We’re not trying to rent the Cadillac! Alex later suggested the guy wasn’t an employee but just wanted a conversation. Later Alex created a story, that it was his fault he didn’t fuck my mom sooner which is why we couldn’t go into the Cadillac Ranch. Afterwards we walked back to our hotel rooms around 1AM and went to sleep.

Sunday morning 

I ate breakfast early and the couples Mitch and Kori, Alex and Mela, and Matt, and Christina were going to spend the morning go to the Smithsonian museums. There was no panel I wanted to see Sunday morning, and I played a lot of arcade games on Saturday. 

Me being the single creep I was tagged along. Mela then said “Turbo why do you have to ruin everything!” I responded “Since when did I become Jayson?” The trip consisted of Alex and Matt joking back in forth about Dadslapper who tried to commit suicide but failed. In the process the shotgun dropped and both his legs were blown off. Matt told the taxi driver “How does it feel to have the worse people? Which taxi driver replied In order to have good you need to have bad. Anyway Matt invited the driver to look at the museums which he said he can’t because he has 6 kids. Which Mela told Alex she at least wants one kid. 

We arrived at the Smithsonian Castle where Alex started whispering at  joggers “What are you running from?” Mela went to slightly annoyed to more annoyed after the 4th instance. Alex made a joke about Obama sprinting which Mela and I correct him on Kenyans being long distance runners not sprinters. Otherwise southerners would say Obama sprint back to Jamaica. 

The first museum we went to was the Natural History Museum. Alex really wanted to see those Dinosaurs. Going to the Natural History reminded me back in Summer of 2007 when I went with my family and I just did a museum speed run. 

After the Natural History we split into groups to go to other museums. Kori, Mitch, and I went to the Air and Space Museum where we saw planes and rockets. All early flight with gliders and balloons was Bioshock Infinite. Mitch was impressed by my airplane and  NASA knowledge confirming in his mind that I know everything. Mitch would have stumped me if the questions involved eating ass.

The last museum we visited was the American History Museum. They messed up drawing Pac Man in the gift shop. We were all hungry and we wanted to eat burgers at Ollies. We walked for almost a mile only to find out the place was closed. We then decided to eat at DC Thai. 

When we got picked up by the Uber driver. While waiting on Kori and Mela picking up alcohol, there was a homeless man with really saggy pants which bothered the driver. If the butt was frozen soon the balls would freeze off. Alex and Matt joked about maybe his ass was so hot, every house he’s been in got burned down, and that’s why he sits on concrete. Alex thought of a scenario if he was offered a hot meal and tried to sell it to get money. Mela gave the homeless man $2 which Alex said was the tax of him being an asshole.

When we got back we did a RA tries of Edible Panties which were awful. It was plastic table cloths cheaper and more disposable than the the Dollar Store ones. It was shitty flavored trash bags and took forever to wash out. If someone ate an entire thing of edible panties they probably would have died of plastic poisoning and it would have taken days to rinse out their mouths.

An hour later I joined Alex, Matt, Mitch, and Kori for the Random Assault MAGFEST podcast. I read off my congratulatory roasts of Alex, Matt, Mitch, and the Random Assault show. I gave my gifts to Matt and Mitch. The end closed out a Cash Cash remix of Katy Perry’s Birthday. Mitch wondered how I knew he liked Cash Cash. 1. He mentioned it on Random Assault. 2. He follows Cash Cash on Twitter. Besides that nothing more needs to be said.

Monday morning 

I ate some breakfast and went to the arcade to play some games one last time. Some of the rhythm arcade games were packed up.  I said my goodbyes to Alex, Mela, Matt, Kori, Rory, Jayson and Mitch. Monday the MAGFest queue room area was removed to make space for the Window Blind Convention. The last thing I was going to see was the MAGFest Closing Ceremony just to check it out. Unfortunately it ended short. One of the attendees died in the Gaylord Hotel Sunday night. I later heard he banged his head on the bed board. Nothing was elaborated on alcohol or drugs in body. The panel only lasted 5 minutes. After that I walked to the bus stop to go back to my Aunt’s apartment.

One thing for sure, I’m going to MAGFEST 2016.

Forza Horizon 2 Review and why Forza Horizon is way better

Forza Horizon 2 Review and my thoughts on Forza Horizon, and both Need for Speed Most Wanteds 

Forza Horizon 2 is a cool game that takes place in southern Italy and France. It's been 2 years since the Colorado Horizon festival. Horizon has a car and music festival in Italy and France now. You play as a different silent white male protagonist with brown hair. In the the first game you played as a silent white male protagonist with black hair. There isn't much backstory on the protagonist. He just wants to race cars and be a champion. For all we know, he could have killed over thousands of people in a linear set piece combat tour.

On the 360 version progression is finishing at least 3rd place and above in 4 races in an area. After that a next section opens up where there is 4 more races in a area. You repeat this process 12 times to get to the Horizon championship. After that you win the game. What makes the game a mega grindfest for 100% is each race has 10 different race divisions, which means 480 races to complete. 
Forza Horizon did a better job of complete 3 to 4 races, race 1 to 1 against a champion opponent. Do it 6 times and beat the champion Darius Flynt. Forza Horizon 2 you play as a car racing against other cars instead of a human in a car racing against humans in cars. Forza Horizon did a way better job of the human element. Forza Horizon 2 feels dead. There was no people at the festival were tired of 3rd time in a row winner of DoucheChills Racer.

The soundtrack on 360 is significantly reduced compared to the Xbox One version. Instead of 7 radio stations and over 150 songs, it is only 3 stations and about 60 songs.
The soundtrack was way better in Forza Horizon. Starting the game hearing Porter Robinson's Language was amazing, because I heard that song a couple times before playing it and I was like "Oh shit Language is in this game awesome!" Mord Fustang Lick the Rainbow was awesome. I still think Mord Fustang is to seperate the low proletariat who quick glance and say they love Ford Mustang. 2012 had a better lineup. It was like hey man its 2012, weed is gonna be legal in Colorado man. We got cool music and cool cars.

Forza Horizon 2 soundtrack I can definitely say I ain't with it. The majority of the songs do not complement cruising down the southern France and Italy. The songs aren't catchy, and will not be ahead of the curve like the first game. After playing the first game, 6 months to a year later I started hearing Miike Snows Paddling Out on Coors light commericals, Santigold Disparate Youth beginning bassline when Youtube was doing commericals for the Week of Geek.
I really loved listening to Tesla Boy Spirit of the Night, Empire of the Sun Walking on a Dream, and Electric Guest Awake, just exploring Colorado at night. 

Am I too hard on Horizon 2? Am I experiencing ludo driving audio scenery dissonance. If I was European would I like it more? How come there isn't people in hoodies doing parkour on buildings in the Italian side? 

Forza Horizon 2 is a solid game, but Horizon was so much better.
The parallels of Forza Horizon 1 and 2 reminds me of Need For Speed Most Wanted 2005 and 2012.
I loved Need for Speed Most Wanted. It was a solid racing game. The pursuit system was great. The crashbreakers was a nice mechanic to get police off your tail. While bullet time in the game sounded silly, it was great for avoiding spike strips last second. The story and characters was a cheesy but didn't overstay its welcome. The main thing was getting from #15 to #1 and advancing to the next racer. It was a racer against racer. The first 15 minutes of the game set up the plot for the entire game. Get your BMW M3 car back.

Need for Speed Most Wanted 2012 I had high hopes for since it was made by Criterion. However the game was very minimal on content. It was just do 2 to 3 races per car to get upgrades, and grind for specific skills to get a 2nd tier higher upgrade. For progression it was just getting enough pursuit points to race against the next car while the police are chasing you. Do this 10 more times. Most Wanted 2012 became a post car apocalypse like Burnout where all humans are dead and cars roam the earth. 

Earth Defense Force 2025

The Ravagers are back. It's been 8 years since the last Earth Defense Force game made by Sandlot. 2017+8=2025. Pretty clever. Earth Defense Force Insect Armageddon was made by a Western Developer.

The campaign is large. It has 85 levels. Huge step up from the 50+ levels in Earth Defense Force 2017. This is the first Earth Defense Force game with up to four players online campaign co-op. Another nice feature is the ability to play two player split screen and play online. 

Red ants and dragons can pick you up and chew on you until you shoot them or your teammates do. Getting caught in spiderwebs is now a possibility. There is more destruction. Giant buildings and towers toppling is cool.

The dialogue from the EDF soldiers is funny. Besides top notch B+ dialogue, they sing the Battle of the Hymn Republic retrofitted for their fight against the Ravagers.

There are a swarm of insects, arachnids, robots, flying robots, dragons, and super dragons. The murder economy is based on killing bugs get better weapons, to kill more bugs and get better weapons. There are five difficulty levels. Essential to grind to pick up better weapons to fight insects on higher difficulties. 

Things EDF 2025 does better than Insect Armageddon, is not needing to grind points to buy guns to unlock. The four classes are more heterogenous compared to the 4 classes in Insect Armageddon. For example For some of the Fencer's weapons to be such as laser target rockets, an Air Raider needs a laser pointer in order for the weapons to work. For some of the Wing Diver weapons to be more effective, the Air Raider can shoot out battery packs so Wing Divers to cut reload time. There's no splash damage from giant carriers falling compared to Insect Armageddon where you always needed to get out of the way of falling carrier.

Things EDF 2025 does worse. The Fencer/Heavy class is super slow. When you pick up a health pack, doesn't heal everyone in the group only that person. There is a huge amount of vehicles but most of them suck. Vehicles in EDF IA handled a lot better and they didn't handle all that great. Also vehicles have limited ammo, thus making them not as effective. No sprint button. Levels are huge, and lack of sprinting prolongs commute time.

I give EDF 2025 a 4/5 with 100% conviction

2013 GOTY Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V by Rockstar Games is the greatest detailed open world game to date. The scale and level of detail is unmatched. The lightning and water effects are insane for a game on the Xbox 360 going on it's eighth year. I've played over 250 hours. Got all the achievements in the game, single and multiplayer. It's so good. You ain't gotta like it cuz the hood gone love it. Had some excellent memories in singleplayer and multiplayer.

In the single player there is three playable characters Mike, Franklin, and Trevor and they each have their own special ablities. Mike has bulletime, Franklin has car slow-mo, and Trevor has rage. Playing as three different characters did add some freshness to the series.

Some fun multiplayer experiences was robbing convenient stores with friends and making a break for it. Playing missions like Top Fun, and the Dog Fighting Last Team Standing. Another mission that was a lot of fun was Titan of a Job, On Manuevers, and a mission where 3 people drop off planes while the other 3 have attack helicopters to escort them. Putting bounties on my friends and hiding in a tunnel and sticky bombing anyone that drives through. Avoiding being killed bountywise by taking a submarine and diving to the bottom of the ocean. Being a asshole and sniping a guy a kilometer away just riding his bike up a mountain just to not die. I got to go to the strip club, and I got to flirt with the stripper how my level 70 character at the time was da shit.

When the missions work, it is a lot of fun, having specified role guys to complete a mission. The soundtrack was great. Animation impressive. Best addition to GTA is saving anywhere via phone. While GTA V didn't have the narrative focus as GTA IV, the gameplay elements and mechanics were highly refined. The cover system was a lot better. The driving was more responsive.

I got into the stock market metagame. Reading the updates on the stock prices on GTA V stocks. Grew my characters portfolios to $28 million to 1 billion dollars.

GTA V blew my mind more than any other game to be #1.

PAX East 2014

PAX East 2014

Thursday Morning

This was the first time I traveled to PAX with someone. When I picked up my friend Chris Ott, the first song I played in the car to the airport was Helix Nebula by Anamanaguchi. This was deliberately planned.  In the Atlanta airport a TSA agent said “Commander Shepard over here.” I was wearing a N7 shirt. While waiting to board to go to Boston, I got 25 streetpasses at the Atlanta airport. It was huge, since I finally had an Army to whoop some ass in Warrior’s Way.

Thursday Night

I went to the Pizzeria to meet some online friends. Landon was the first person to notice me. I got to speak to Addison @akd, Robert @23Breach, Cole, Curtis @zabu_san, Stephen @ShanghaiSix, Dylan @Phazon117, Bree, and Travis @turbobison. For Travis I questioned his 1st place Black Power Ranger doing the Black Power pose, as an homage to the 1968 Long Jump, since there was 2 Black guys that did the Black Power pose. There should have been 2 Black Rangers and not just 1.

Friday morning

I arrived in the queue line early at 7:40AM. What made this one nice, was they let people in before 8 AM. Chris and I got in a line the was 5 times shorter than the other lines, since the pillar was hid the line. The bag check was really quick. They didn’t check every zipper. It was basically a clearly a 7 quart pressure cooker isn’t in the bag, you can go through.

In the queue line I got to use my 3DS XL and streetpass and get tens upon tens of streetpasses at a time. It made the queue line wait go by faster, but I felt becoming less engaged and talking to people. I stopped so I could hit the beach balls in the queue line. I barely read the physical guidebook. When I was standing up clearing streetpasses, I ripped a fart that had some noise and I got a guy behind me just heard a smigedon and stood up. Man his face was cringing and he stood up within 2 seconds.  I felt like I fucked up bigtime in a way but he played it cool, but deep down he knew he got face farted less than 2 feet away.

For the beachballs, people near me started catching them and draw giant penises in Sharpie. Not only they drew penises there was random numbers associated with them like “If you want a good time.” The ball that had multiple penises drawed on it came back to our section multiple times. It was funny, seeing the beachball with the penises doing, crazy spins when it was being hit all across the queue line.

When the queue line opened, I got to demo Sniper Elite III and Wolfenstein New Order. Wolfenstein played well. For Wolfenstein they gave away Wolfenstein Bags. Sniper Elite III looked great on PS4, and a lot of the issues of Sniper Elite V2 were resolved. Sniper Elite III expected to release this July 1, 2014. I got a Sniper Elite III poster.

I saw Willy randomly while walking the show floor in the Indie Megabooth. I got to meet Alex, and gave a giant donation to his Random Assault podcast.

Went to the PC Gamer panel. It was ok. They started wanted everyone to rise from their seats for the PC Gaming anthem. They played Doom E1M1 a screen with a American flag waving gif said videogames. All Willy could say was slightly more interesting than I thought it would be. Saw Tyler Wilde there he saw me but no conversation. I had no idea Palmer Luckey the creator of Oculus VR  was only 21 years old. Didn’t like the random guy in the audience that shouted traitor when he was introduced. I streetpassed as much as I possibly could at the PC Gamer panel. Must have gotten about 50 streetpasses there.

I had my first real meal at 2PM. I had a shitty $5 cheeseburger. After eating lunch Chris and I chilled at the handheld gaming lounge. From 2 to 6:30 Chris and I cleared streetpasses. Willy later joined and did a mix of Pokemon and streetpassing. Some time later Alex joined us. It was just a new group of streetpassers. The fact there was a barrage of people from the PAX Pokemon league and other handheld tournaments provided a constant influx of new people to streetpass with. There was only 1 time I didn’t get 10 streetpasses. Friday I went streetpass crazy going from 25 tags to over 500. The Pedometer on the 3DS can verify my streetpassing for 3 hours. NOT ONE STEP. One of the best things I brought was a power bar to charge my and a friends devices. There was one person from Alaska that I streetpassed with which every 10 minutes there was some guy in the background saying “Thanks Alaska!” Thing I remembered most streetpassing that time was Willy saying. “I snore like I fart. Out the ass.”

Friday Night

After Streetpassing in the handheld lounge for 3 hours, I went to the gameshow night panel where once again I streetpassed as much as I could. During the streetpassing Willy would not have opposite sex with Alex because touching a womens penis is disgusting.The only thing that prevented me from streetpassing was the draining battery life. Alex got to be a contestant on Dan Amrich’s Game Show Night Jeopardy. It was brutally fast. Alex had no chance and the other people were so quick. For painful obvious person missed what was the game title of Oni when it was released. He said Marathon and the entire room sighed. The last question was What is blue, collect rings, and goes really fast. He would have accepted Danky Kang as an answer. Alex missed out on a Mortal Kombat 3 question, because he didn’t give his 100% Bergers. Next time I attend a PAX Game Show Night I will give a special gift for Blankety Blank. He should have gotten $2300.

Saturday Morning

Instead of going to the queue line right away I walked around the convention center before it got busy. First time I ever did that at East.

I went to the FirAxis panel where the revealed the Civilization Beyond Earth, and there I still did some streetpassing.

2:30PM I went to the EEDAR Awesome Video Game Data. He calls it awesome because it shows up earlier in the alphabetically by name. He shared about the gender breakdown and how it is reaching parity. The dilemma free to play games have with 5% responsible for 50% of the revenue and the other 95% for the 50% of the revenue. People who are willing to spend more on mobile games are people who already spend lots of money on all other games. The top 3-4 games in any market rake in 50+% of all revenue. Also he quoted that 12.5% 1/8 of all retail games bring in 75% of the revenue. While mobile has some success stories there is a huge signal to noise ratio with thousands of games released on the app store each year. He also gave great news that actually more games as a whole for the 7th generation consoles are having less multiplayer than in previous years. Multiplayer is good for a game if the multiplayer is really good. However there is just less AAA releases in general compared to previous years to explain for the drop. A point he brought up about single player gaming is it is a new phenomenon is the history of humanity in relation to games. Chess, checkers, tag, cards, all have elements of multiplayer, and in the beginning stages of game development the technology wasn’t there to make good multiplayer games.

After the panel I went to meet the Known Griefers Blog TalkRadar fans, Pat, Chris, and Rock. We went to the classic arcade section and they played Ghost Busters. We had conversations on what we’ve seen and so forth. For the Mass Effect related stuff, I said there will be a person “Hey I had sex with your character in Mass Effect” I showed them about Sniper Elite III, and they loved it. They played so far in, a guy from 505 games said whoa you were not supposed to play that. “Leaked reveal there is a mission you play during night time.” After they were done playing a little kid under 10 years old started playing it.

After hanging out with them I met up with Chris Ott again and went to go to the 2K party. The Empire Restaurant was a fancy smancy Asian restaurant. They had $15 to $20 appetizers. The party was for the first 250. It was free drinks and free food. It was $100 of food and drinks for free. 2K had an open bar for the entire night. While drinking the mixed drinks, they weren’t that alcoholic, and the long wait line to get another drink ensured your liver enough time to detoxify for another round. PAX Attendees were under dressed. They had a bathroom attendant. Alex wanted to know if the Bathroom Attendant would wipe the piss off his dick. Leaving the restroom there was a drunk guy saying I was the guy from Hong Kong and then the group of friends said I was in his group from Hong Kong. At the 2K party I got to meet Josiah, and he was previously at the Bethesda Party. I got to drink all 4 mixed drinks. The SpaceWalk was bad. I couldn’t eat any more food after that. The Spacewalk was like drinking vomit.

After the 2K party we foolishly embarked on a journey to the PC Gamer ASUS Republic of Gamers AfterParty at the Estate. The walk to get there was a lot of fun. Lot of jokes cracked along the way. For the 3DS pedometer. It was the only time I got 4000 steps in 1 hour. When we arrived at the Estate. It was a line of 4,000+ people snaking 2 blocks long for a venue that can only hold 800 people. Next to the Estate was another club of people waiting in line who were clearly in the night club scene. There was a couple of people who walked out of the Estate too well dressed. Willy said “The jokes on you you went to the wrong club.” After seeing a 2 block long line, I called it a day and went back to the apartment.

When I was about to sleep that night I felt like I was going to throw up and also Chris Ott was snoring very loud. It was horrible. Like he was trying to clear his nose while snoring. He always beat me to going to sleep.

Sunday Morning

I went to the queue line. I waited in line next to 2 guys in their early 30’s that were lifelong friends. One guy said he loves the NVIDIA shield because having a wife and kid hard to play on PC so just plays on shield. One bad thing Sunday was the queue lines were all leaving at once regardless of what line lined up first.

First thing I went to see was the Ocolus VR. I was the last person in line before the cutoff. The person in front of me was didn’t shower and the person behind me had a 1500 google glass.The demo was couch knights. The VR headtracking worked very well. It was short. It took me an hour to wait and to leave. My 3DS had no battery which was good because I could do other stuff besides clear notifications all the time.

I went to the Mass Effect signing line to have my games signed by the voice actors/face models but the line went nowhere. While waiting I talked about Mass Effect with another guy waiting in line who likes Mass Effect as much as everyone else in the line. In the meantime we also talked about Assassins Creeds about approaching a critical mass in too much stuff for newcomers to get into.

After reading a tweet that Paul and Keegan were going to leave soon I made my way out of the line to at least say hi to them. I learned that they had no Code Red Mountain Dew in Canada. I told him them about my first Code Red Mountain Dew story as if May 2001 really mattered to them. Also I speculated that the Mountain Dew Democracy is just surplus Mountain Dew from when US did it in 2010.

While waiting buying a Mountain Dew Code Red I saw Ted Rossi, Jeremy, and another guy for the first time at PAX East.

At 2 PM I went back to the Boot Hill Heroes booth. Got some Broccoli Beef courtesy of Alex. Had our Random Assault meetup of 5 people counting Alex and said our goodbyes. Streetpassed a Russian guy in the handheld lounge again. I said “Give back crimea” on personal greeting.

I was waiting by the Front Towards Gamer Operation Supply Drop back and forth Sunday as a hub. I got to speak to Rana McAnear the face model of Samara and Morinth in Mass Effect 2 and 3.

At 5pm on the show floor, Alex, Curtis, Chris, Willy, and I had our group pics before we said our goodbyes. After saying goodbye, I just chilled near the entrance and I streetpassed for the next hour. I got over 1000 streetpasses.

Level 83 thoughts on GTA Online patch 1.04

I made some progress since the last announcement. I have been making paper. I'm sittin' on 1.5 mil in cheddar. I now wield a grenade launcher, modded out advance assault rifle and combat MG. The new laws passed in the State of San Andreas had one good policy of lower the cost of going to the hospital from $2000 to $500.

However Rockstar tryin' to take away my shine by cuttin' the payouts of all the missions in half. I'm always thinkin' ludicrously it's all about the progress, and if it's not makin' that money then it ain't part of my process. Less dough = less hos and less blow.

I try to advance to level 84. I quit out and get back in, only for them to tell me, those missions and hustlin' didn't count. That's bullshit.

The main way to make money in a GTA shouldn't be drivin' in circles. While there's a good amount of people in the crew, people have gotten tired of being shot in the face by a punk ass bitch until they have no money.

When heists get implemented it will be too late. My homies will go to Whereveristan and squat and drop nuts on enemies. I'm stuck at level Eight Fo' with no place to go.