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.

My lvl 57 thoughts on the $500,000 stimulus package in GTA Online

Yo' dawg, it's me TURbo. I flew in to Los Santos to make a name fo' myself. The only contact I had was Lamar from life invader.

I started small. Did some low pay high risk jobs from Gerald, and Simeon. I robbed over 20 convenience and liquor stores in the state of San Andreas. I risked my life to repo a car for only 2 G's.

Now I hear, that the State of San Andreas is giving $500,000 to all hustlers, just because they flew into Los Santos? That shit is wack. I had to save my money to get a nice 10 car garage, with a penthouse high end apartment off the Del Perro Freeway. All I had was a 9, and hustle on my mind, and now pussy ass bitches can get that without tryin? Dat shits fucked up.

 I stole a large cargo transport aircraft from a private military contractor. I broke into a military base to steal transport helicopter and also destroy fighter jets.

I went from nothin' into something. I started as muscle and worked my way up to commissioner in my crew. I got 335K in the bank, and made over 2 mill.  I only had a Cheval Fugitive. Now I have a tricked out Ruiner, Dominator, Cavaclade, Bati 801, Elegy Rh-8, and a Sabre Turbo. I got a nice flat screen, and I blow endo, and take shots of henney in my crib. I got a mothafuckin' arsenal of AK's M4s, sawed, pump, Double A, shotty. Cops or other punk ass gangs can't stop me.

Anyway Rockstar got the whole block bumpin, I ain't gonna like it but the hood gone love it.

 Peace out. LASERTIME Fo' Lyfe.

TURbo

My PAX Prime 2013 Adventures

Thursday Morning 2:45 AM CST

I woke up 1 hour early before my alarm went off. I couldn’t go back to sleep so I put my bags in the car and headed to the Atlanta Airport for PAX Prime.

Thursday 11:21 AM EST

I just got boarded on the plane and I saw people that was on the PAX Prime flight from the previous year. I saw Darren, and the Deputy Enforcer Jon. The Bit Brigade was also on Flight 1532 to Seattle. I got to sit by Jace, one of the two guitarists from the 8-Bit Brigade. I felt sleepy, but I could never fall asleep. Also I met another guy coming to PAX, Matt who flew all the way from Orlando to go to PAX Prime. During this time I was reading my Prime 12’ experiences. There was one page of me calculating, how long I had to live if I fell out of the plane and hit the ground at sea level during the 4 hour 15 minute flight last year.

When we got off the flight, Matt and I instead of walking straight out of the gate, went down the escalators, and we got a little lost. We later found the light link rail. It was nice the one way tickets were still $2.75 like last year. We talked about how many PAXses you been to, what are you looking forward to, and the insaneness of college football in the southeast. Peers back home, “Excited for college football starting this weekend!” Me “Yeah..” (Brain “PAX! PAX! PAX! PAX!)

When we arrived at Westlake Matt and I went our separate directions.

The first thing I did after checking in at the Green Tortoise Hostel was eating a burrito at Chipotle. I haven’t ate a burrito from Chipotle in 6 months. I went with a half shredded beef and half pork burrito. You can actually do that.

First TalkRadar buddies I ran into was Joe Garcia and Landon VanBuskirk. We went to Gameworks. Landon did great on the Big Reel Push game landing on the 125 and 250 ticket zones. On the Deal or No Deal game he only won 2 tickets. Not only that, the machine didn’t vend a single ticket. Landon quoted a great chinspired tweet of “Deal or No Deal, No Deal. The object of the show is to choose whether to watch Deal or No Deal.” There was a ticket game called Titanic with half of the ship being sunk, which Landon said “TOO SOON!” I said it was okay because they last Titanic survivor died 1-2 years ago. Then we talked about when we die there will be games like Hiroshima and 9/11 where you win tickets. Landon bought me an Apple Cider. I got to meet Zach Beason again at Gameworks before heading off to the Omeganaut party gathering at the TapHouse organized by Jason Dansforth.

The gathering was for Current competing Omegas, and former Omeganauts. There was Prime 11, 12, and current Omeganauts. I wore more PAX East 2011 Omeganaut shirt to the event. I was the only East Omeganaut present at the event. The organizer said the Taphouse was the best location for them to organize, since it only cost them $30 to hold a room for 3 hours. One of the Omeganauts Andrew Nguyen wished there was WWE intro music for the Omeganauts being introduced. He gave excellent insight of why Mighty Ducks 3 was a good movie and should not be dismissed. It was the first movie in the series they learned to play defense, and you can’t always have the same coach. Angela the Omegathon Enforcer, was also present at the party. This would be her 6th PAX she was an Omegathon Enforcer. 2011 East, was her first Omegathon she enforced. I got to chat with Lt. Hummus who managed to be runner up of the Prime 13’ Omegathon. Beyond Celery, the runner up of last years Omegathon was 6 months pregnant, which if you state your disability and accommodations, certain types of games will not be played in the Omegathon. She was 7 seconds away from being the Prime 12’ champion in Trials HD. It was 50 minutes of the Omeganauts failing back and forth. Breaking monotony, she had an amazing run, which the crowd went wild when she completed the stage. Unfortunately her opponent, pulled out an amazing run. Beyond Celery’s husband said the moment she completed Trials HD was insane. He said to me he has been to 9 Omegathon final rounds, and to see his wife compete was unreal. I saw the champion of the Prime 12’ Omegathon, which I recognized his face before because he was an Enforcer on the expo floor at PAX East 2013.

When I left the Taphouse it was raining hard. It was the only time it rained I was there. Back at Gameworks, I got to see Jake Petersen again and I got to meet Darryl Miller. I went back to the hostel at 7pm to eat some tacos with Jake Petersen, and Zach Beason. Eating tacos that day was the most fortunate thing that happened to me the entire weekend. A guy from the Spellbrium booth was selling a 4 Day pass at face value. I lifted my wallet up into the sky showing I meant business. He didn’t have any change, so I paid $100 for it. It was better than getting a Sunday pass for $35 and then getting a Saturday pass for $50 to $130.

After eating tacos, Joe Garcia and I, and Landon with his pals went to John John’s. John John’s was a nice little pinball, and arcade place that served alcohol. It was about .75 miles away from the hostel. Joe used the uber I got to meet Ted Rossi, Jeremy, (the guy that is always with Jeremy), Casey, Casey’s roommate Allison, and Trevarrow. Mitch Dyer, Chris Antista, Brett Elston, and other guys from IGN trickled in. At this time I’ve been up almost 20 hours straight and felt super tired. When I said this, just about every person there one upped me, on them having shitter sleep schedules. One thing about going to PAX is hearing about the behind the scenes stuff. What goes behind the twitter of the people you follow. PAX PRIME 13 YOU HAD TO BE THERE EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

I drank some Apple ciders at John John’s. After getting the 4 day badge, I showed Joe, Landon, Casey, Allison, and Chris Antista a tweet that was a draft on what I was going to do to get a Saturday badge. PAX PRIME YOU HAD TO BE THERE EXCLUSIVE CONTENT I got to tell Brett Elston how much I appreciated LaserTime Shame Songs episode 80, and told them it was the best podcast they have ever done counting TalkRadar. I got to meet his co worker Greg which was mentioned a lot on the LaserTime Episode 80 Shame songs, when they sang karaoke in Japan during TGS. After midnight Joe and I ubered back to the hostel, and I fell asleep right away.

Friday morning

Ate some pineapple, bananas, and toast at the hostel, and proceeded to the Target to buy some Gatorade and snacks. I tagged along with Kenneth DelaCruz @TechnicalFart on twitter. We got in the queue line 2 hours in advance. While walking in the queue room, I saw the one Asian girl that cosplays as a new character every day that I saw last year in the queue room for Prime. That was neat in synchronous way. The queue room was littered in Mountain Dew, Doritos, and Xbox One ads. There was a big marketing push, where they were going to have a party in the queue room Sunday night 9PM to 1AM. They were going to raffle of 6 Xbox Ones, and the people that got them would get them before the general public. They had a DJ playing 80’s rock, to snippets of PAX musical guest line up such as, The Protomen, MC Frontalot, Mega Ran Splashwoman, and Jonathon Coulton. But they really just wanted to play the pop hits, and what the KOOL KIDZ are into. Yeah because screw the videogame nerd music at a videogame convention. Anyway in the queue line everyone there just tasted an exclusive piece of the Xbox One Multi billion marketing campaign to come this upcoming holiday season.

Waiting in the queue, I made some line friends. I talked with Dustin from Vancouver, and Mark locally from the Seattle area. Mark did work at Microsoft for 3 years on the backend of the Xbox Live. Overall he viewed the Xbox One as a more powerful machine with its services compared to the PS4, and that the PS4 is marginally more powerful than the Xbox One from a hardware perspective. Also he debunked the Kinect will watch me jerk off myth. That would be a ridiculous amount of bandwidth to take thousands yet alone millions of people with their Doritos stained fingers jerking off in front of their TV’s or whatever is the new fear. 22 minutes before the expo show floor would be open there was a MC promoting the shit out of the Xbox One, Doritos, Mountain Dew event, as if there wasn’t already a dozen banners, and 10 projectors projecting Xbox One, Doritos, and Mountain Dew. The MC was talking pseudo Macho Man like with a XTREME abrasive way. He said “OPEN” which was 22 minutes before the show floor actually opened. There was no way they were going to open the show floor 22 minutes early. So the entire crowd waited another 22 minutes.

First thing I did on the show floor was look at XCOM Enemy Origins. They showed off new abilities, weapons, mechs, and enemies. Overall, I’m looking forward to the expansion, and I’m happy that XCOM is relevant in the best of ways. I walked to the Indie booth area and I got to see Lucas Pope, the creator of Papers please. He had a small card where you can stamp rejected or accepted for the paper sheet. It was really cool. I saw the creator play one of the endurance modes of his game and he got stumped in a couple of areas. I played the Wall with you game. Procedurally generated. The jumping felt floaty. I saw Audiosurf 2. Looks spectacular. It now has a new mode where the surfer gets big air by jumping the drops or heavy beats in a song. When in air, the surfer can do front and backflips to rack up a higher combo.

I went to the D3 Publisher booth to play Earth Defense Force 2025. One of the best series of this generation. Might be an overstretch, but a fun game to play. Plays a lot smoother than 2017. It will come out in North America February 2014. One the features to distinguish from the previous installment on Insect Armageddon is 4 player online co-op. I’m buying that game day one. The guy working the booth at D3, says he will be online day one playing it.

After seeing those games, I went to the How to forge a career in the game industry. The Cookie Brigade was there and I got to have something to eat in 4 hours. Where they had people in PR, Marketing, Community Management, video producer and a game journalist talking about how they got started. Most important things is initiative and networking to get in. Also important to not be an douche, since it is small industry, and people you don’t like now can be your boss in a couple years.

Right after that panel was another career panel that was focusing just on marketing. On the marketing side, they work closely with video producers, Community Managers, and PR. They are very connected. Also the stressed knowing how to interpret big data and know statistics.

After back to back panels I ate at Jimmy John’s and got a #10. I bought a lot of videogame shirts at Weartheshirts.com I got to meet Chris Ott’s aunt who was a vendor at the Off World Designs booth on the skywalk.

I got to run into my PAX East 2011 Omeganaut friend Alex Dobrian who I haven’t seen in 2.5 years. The Localization panel Q&A was informative and very funny. A lot of stories was horror stories of translations and content that would never fly in North America. One DS game with a mic a tester was paid to say as many obscene words towards Disney characters to make sure Simba or Stitch wouldn’t respond to obscenities. Another story was a Chinese MMO Age of Wushu set in the Ming dynasty. Most dialogue about women was raped, getting raped, will be raped, or in the process of getting raped. They had to change almost all the dialogue from towards women from the ground up. There was a Japanese game where goal is to shoot at bosses. The bosses are female, and their clothes come off after being shot. Then when they are defeated they do a sexy pose. The bosses were mid 20’s females except this one 9 year old, so they had to completely reskin that part of the game. There was one Chinese game with dead kids, and they can be killed, which doesn’t fly in America. The Chinese people thought it would be okay, since US is super violent in wouldn’t be a big deal. The United States is still “Think of the children”. There was another story of a EULA gone wrong with the German EULA where language was in 3rd Reich language. The German lawyers were ready to get sue. The moderator said, “3rd Reich language? was this game made by EA?”

After the Localization panel, Alex and I went to the Infamous Second Son panel. It was cool since the game takes place in Seattle, and Alex and I were in Seattle. The panel was completely full, so we had to sneak our way in. He opened up another door. I saw no Enforcers were looking at us, so I walked right in and Alex followed suit. Game Director, Animation Director, 2 voice actors Laura Bailey and Travis Willingham, and the surprise guest was Troy Baker. Troy Baker was very funny and crude. Made jokes about child labor and black dicks. Panel was moderated by Greg Miller. The Game Director said in the game “You can be good, or you can be Troy Baker.” Laura Bailey character couldn’t share much, so she just said “I play this female in the game.” After the signing I really wanted Troy Baker to sign my badge, however Troy had somewhere else to be and the only people signing badges was Billy Harper, Laura Bailey, and Travis Willingham. Having sharpies on standby made it a lot quicker for signing autographs. Billy thanked me for giving him a sharpie to sign and said he would send me a bag of Infamous swag in the mail.

Right after the Infamous Second Son Panel I went to the Game Night Panels. Saw the Blankety Blank it was very funny and crude. Fleshlights, and shit jokes galore. In between the game shows, Kyle Orland was giving prizes away to people who had the rarest and nerdyist stuff. Kyle Orland asked one kid what was his most valuable card, and one guy blurted out v-card. It was 50/50 oooohh, and laughs. Might have been too close to home. Anyway it was an excellent burn. 1st game of Jeopardy, Will Smith, Brett Elston, and Chris Kohler were contestants. Chris Kohler cleaned house.

2nd round, Landon was a contestant for Jeopardy. He didn’t know until afterwards the entire panel was streamed online. Otherwise he would have been completely failed under the pressure. Andrew Edgarton won. He was a beast. Landon looked so sly when he answered the Michael Keaton Chick Hicks Cars question. People couldn’t believe he didn’t know the charity of Penny Arcade, which shows how big the convention is, and how tertiary the comic strip and charity are to the convention..

After attending 6 panels in a row I wanted to get something to eat at Jimmy John’s only to know that most fast food places close at 8pm. Friday night I went to the Paramount theater to meet up with Kenneth for the concerts. When I arrived I saw the beginning of Mega Ran. There was one guy Phil. He saw Brett Elston and was like “Let me introduce you to Brett Elston. Are you a fan of TalkRadar?” I said to him “I’m a fan of TalkRadar.” I later told him I was TURbo and he was “HOLY SHIT!” Brett Elston saw this magical moment happen in front of his very eyes. Phil said to me, look behind you. I looked no big deal. He told me to look behind again. It was Kenji Inafune the creator of Mega Man.

The Protomen concert was amazing. I was 25 feet from the main stage. So much energy. There was one guy Steve and his girlfriend Timber. His girlfriend name was easy to remember because her parents did a lot of drugs. There was also a big guy 6’8’’ 260+ that was drunk and moving all over the place. During one of the Protomen songs he grabbed Steve and started humping him and he just stood there paralyzed in horror. Steve looked like he was 5’ 7’’ 140 lbs. What could he do? After the concerts I went back to the hostel and fell asleep right away.

Saturday Morning

Woke up ate some pineapples, bananas, and a PBJ sandwich at the hostel before buying drinks at Target. During the queue the Mountain Dew MC was there. Part I remembered most of Friday was Skrillex remix of Avicii's Levels playing whiling seeing Xbox One, Doritos, and Mountain Dew in all directions. Main difference was the projectors rotated on screens, so the Mountain Dew, Xbox One, and Doritos screens were not stationary in the queue room. The queue room was graced by Geoff Knighley’s presence.

First thing I did when the show floor open was super speed walked to the Xbox One area, which the first thing I got in line for was Battlefield 4, running on the PC, with Xbox One controllers. The Xbox One controllers feels nice. Battlefield 4 was visually impressive. I was spawned in a boat and I went back and forth shooting guys from 100 of meters away. The maps were large. Overall I got to play it for about 10 to 15 minutes. It plays well, but I’m not interested nor do I play a lot of contemporary military shooter multiplayer.

When I was lounging around the Machinima area, a guy asked me to try out the F2P Blacklight. He was like you play FPS? I was like somewhat, downplaying how much I play. The screen was a little ghosty. I started getting a kill streak which I redeemed for a mech, which completely made it game breaking. Anyway my team won. F2P games look a lot nicer than they were 5 years ago, but I have no interest spending hours in a F2P game.

After seeing Battlefield 4 and walking around the convention center I went to Jimmy Johns and ate my 2nd #10 Hunters Club. I ate one yesterday. I didn’t feel full after eating a foot long sub sandwiches. Anyway I proceeded to walk back to the convention center until I saw Zach Beason and for the first time at Prime 13, Mikel Reparaz on crutches. They said they were going to Jimmy John’s, which I proceeded to show them where it was and I decided to eat another #10. I could only eat 8 of the 12 inches before stopping. I got Mikel Reparaz to sign Golden Axe Beast Rider for a friend, and he wanted to understand the rationale. I told him a friend back home got into TalkRadar and just about bought any shitty game mentioned on TalkRadar that had its 5 minutes, and was under $9.99 in the used bargain bin at Gamestop. Brett did tell the 2 TalkRadar fans meet each other for the first time story to Mikel from last night, when I told Mikel what I did at PAX.

After downing 20 inches of sub in a 20 minute period I slowly walked to the XCOM Panel on the Sheraton hotel. At the Sheraton, 25 minutes later I finished the remaining of the sandwich. Lying on the carpet on the Sheraton to pass time felt so good. When I was writing down all the experiences up to this point I ran into Phil from the concerts from last night. Also there I saw a person wearing a LaserTime shirt, which I said hi to him.

Waiting at the XCOM line, an enforcer shouted “NO DASHING” which a person in line blurted out “A Good XCOM never dashes.” During the wait, I had a excellent experience talking about XCOM Enemy Unknown 1994, and the new one with people in line. At the panel the first 200 people got exclusive XCOM Enemy Within posters for free. I got to sit near the front row. They showed off a 20 minute game, highlighting the new enemies, powers, and weapons. The gave a standing ovation to Mike Aruciao, a guy that 100% all the achievements in Xbox 360, and iOS. Owns all the versions of the game except the PS3. They gave him a muton figurine.

After the panel I tagged along with Landon at Gameworks, where we wasted credits, not getting any luck on the ticket games. I was going to assemble a kick ass trivia team, but was canceled due to the GamesRadar, PC Gamer meetup which a lot of people attended.

We met up at 8PM. It became a group of 40+ people. I saw Hollander Cooper there for the first time. I saw Keenan Weaver who I knew on the internet for the past 4 years in person. Saw a lot of people that day. I also got to say hi to Tyler Nagata and told him about the Kimiki Q arcade story and beating all of PC Gamer at Starcraft II tournament TalkRadar stories to engage is his memory. While a bit strange, for people I’ve known for years but never met in person, I use a TDar tidbit to jog their memories. He has a good smile and laugh. For beating PC Gamer at Starcraft II He was like “Not too loud, there’s a lot of people from PC Gamer here.” Saw Rhys Edgar for the first time. Hollander Cooper encouraged me to listen to RadioRadar. First time I saw Ryan Taljonick since PAX East 2012. At the WSCC floor, there was a guy dressed as one character in Earthbound, Ness. Anyway he had a sign that said free twerks. I told Landon to hold my bag while to counter twerk him. We both ended up twerking. I had more range of movement in twerk. He stopped twerking 10 seconds in after realizing, that I was twerking on him. The Gameworks was busy at first so we decided to go to the Taphouse. When we told them a group of 40, they said it was not possible, so we went to Gameworks, where we got drunk.

At Gameworks I showed Anne, the picture of Anne the cow she didn’t like in VidjaGame Apocalypse. I made her remember things she didn’t want to see again. I laughed, and the other people around thought it was funny. She left it on the ground, for someone else to horrible pick up and look at. I drank 1 Long Island Ice Tea, then I drank 2. I talked to Keenan Weaver at Gameworks. He got his badge signed by his favorite game designer Chris Roberts.

When it was 15 minutes till at Gameworks, there was a notification on the intercom that all under 18 year olds had to be out in 15 minutes. During the intercom was going on I shouted “GET THE FUCK OUT!” Looking at it at the time, the +18 more rowdy than the kids could ever be. When it was 10PM I was on my 2nd long island Ice Tea and Gameworks started playing some EDM. I was like fuck yes Swedish House Mafia Greyhound and I started dancing. They also played Yelle’s Que Veux Tu remix by Madeon. I was having an amazing time. Then I went down and got my 3rd long Island Ice Tea. Which was smart, because I left my debit card there. After buying my 3rd, I made sure to put my debit card in my wallet. When I was dancing I bumped into one guy just trying to walk through and he looked a bit upset. Whatever. I ran into Jason Dansforth who I saw earlier at the Taphouse on Thursday. We talked about our fun PAX experiences. He was eating bacon pepperoni pizza. In my journal I wrote down eating pepperoni pizza only to realize later he was eating it and I never did eat any of his. On my way up already half way done with my 3rd Long Island Ice Tea, I felt the stairs more jittery. I noticed the huge differences going from 2 to 3 Long Island Ice Teas. Walking around wasn’t as smooth. Going up the stairs felt like a shakycam.

I saw Gabe Grazini and talked about Assassins Creed III, and Assassins Creed IV Black Flag. I told him the story in ACIII was the best in any Assassins’ Creed game but some of the main missions were very linear and the stealth wasn’t that well implemented. I saw Jeremy Acker and his silent friend Craig at the meetup at Gameworks. To the side he told me that I should not be proud, or make known getting drunk on Long Island Ice Teas and said I should have said beers or something less sissy I assume. Landon and I were dancing on and off at our time at Gameworks. I got to speak to AJ Glasser and Shaun McInnis, 2 interns formerly of GamesRadar. Gabe Grazini at one point worked at GamesRadar, which is pretty cool how many people that cover games worked at GR at one point in their careers.

During the night when I talked about handjob, churcheswife was condescending saying handjobs is for middle schoolers, and they are not in the big leagues. If Casey ever heard a girl talk about giving a handjob she would shame her.

After drinking my 3rd Long Island Ice Tea, I just drank water for the rest of the night. When Gameworks started to close we went to the Taphouse. On the way to the Taphouse I started talking a lot to Greg from Capcom. We talked about id software, their early FPSes, and how much videogame development has changed the past 20 years. Then it branched off into family and culture, and he had a grandmother that could speak Yiddish. While he couldn’t speak it, did pick up on some customs, and said same with my Asian mother while not fluent in Chinese, more aware of the customs. The Taphouse stopped serving food and Greg was hungry. I still had a Twix in my backpack and we split a Twix.

At the Taphouse I saw Jessica Brohard and said hi to her, and said she was #1 in the first round of Beautiful Katamari. I went on for at least 20 seconds because when I was done talking I don’t know my group went. When I met up with my group Landon, Kevin, Chris Antista and I were talking about Ryan Davis and his contributions. Chris Antista said the reason why you got into TalkRadar was the videogames and then you stayed for the personalities. Landon got into Giant Bomb due to TalkRadar 29, with Jeff Gerstmann as a special guest talking why he thought Mortal Kombat vs. DC was a great game. Landon decided to hang with us compared to the Giant Bomb panel because for this meetup he would be an active partcipant than just being a spectator among the thousands in the crowd.

When Taphouse closed, we went outside and we continued chatting. I got my pictures taken with Tyler Wilde and Anne Lewis after 2AM. Anne Lewis said she wasn’t on a TalkRadar episode which I said she was on TalkRadar E3 2011 Day one podcast talking about Hitman Absolution and went to the Sega Sonic party. Then Anne remembered.

I got to go to bed that night at 2:25 AM Sunday Morning.

Sunday Morning

I woke up and it was 6:51AM. Jesus, I did a lot of shit last night and roughly got 4.5 hours of sleep. Instead of going to the queue line I went to the Hyatt and waited for Alex to go to the Top House Donuts. Waiting I heard Enforcers talk about the Kickstarter panel which they said it wasn’t very good. “It was assembled last minute.” “You mean like Kickstarter?” What I heard was the panel was centered about the most 3 generic games that gets Kickstarted all the time. Which he wanted to go since it was ranked as one of the best donut stores on the West Coast. On the way to the get donuts we talked about our PAX experiences. He went to the keynote panel that had Peter Molyneux as a guest. He said it was the worst developer keynote he saw at PAX. Cliffy B, at PAX East for his keynote talked about his career as a designer as a kid to present day, while Molyneux used 80% of the time to promote his new game. On the way I talked about I was going to attend the panel on Awesome Videogame Data by the president of EEDAR. He told me that Halo Combat Evolved, MS forced them to have a subtitle because games with subtitles sell more than those that don’t. Due to how successful Halo was, Bungie could call Halo 2, Halo 2 with no subtitle and became the greatest selling game on Xbox. He asked me what I liked about Halo, and I said the setting, and as a child how open the levels were compared to other FPSes, at the time and the vehicle segments. Besides having fun Alex asked me important questions what I wanted to do with my life. I responded with working on the business side of videogames, which he encouraged me to apply to companies in Seattle.

David Rhinehart from Geekenstein media needed someone to be the video guy because Jake Petersen was busy playing Magic Cards. I was going to a only open for the press event demo for Fantasia. I got in while not having a media badge because David needed me. Man the Xbox One builds have a far way to go to be consumer ready. John Drake, Head of PR at Harmonix was trying to present Fantasia, the Kinect mic, tried to go to the main dashboard. The Xbox One at least has a 5 second delay so you can say “Dismiss” so it doesn’t go straight to dashboard after hearing a sound. John Drake said dismiss during the presentation more than any other word. It took 15 minutes before the game could be demoed. He made some jokes about the Kinect mic being always on, and somewhere Don Mattrick is laughing right now. When the game was loading John Drake said “You are now watching next gen loading screens!” David got a interview with the creative director of for the Fantasia game.

After the event, I tagged along with Joe Garcia. He was going to eat at a burger joint Lil’ Woody’s. I was fine since I ate a Jimmy John’s #10. That was my 4th so far at PAX Prime 13. I chuckled inside when Joe said “I’d like to order a Big Woody.”

After chatting with Joe, I went to the Nerdcore Hip hop panel. Before the nerdcore hip hop panel I got to run into Phil again. He didn’t attend Saturday nights concerts. We played Cards Against Humanity. I entered in some contest to get some free swag not knowing what it was. It was who can beatbox. I had no voice, so I just made laser pew pew sounds. I manage to win the swag because, Phil and his group of 6 cheered super loud thus I got the most applause. I got a lot of special CAH Prime cards. I got to see Beefy for the first time and after the panel said I liked his work and his work with ytcracker. And he said it’s weird that ytcracker now has really long hair past his shoulders. At the nerdcore panel, the moderator said Ice-T twitter, he does mention videogames a lot which MC Frontalot replied “Why is Ice-T in my space?” It was an okay panel, but not much different from the panel I attended at East 2013 about nerdcore.

The panel right after was Awesome Videogame Data hosted by the president of EEDAR. That was a really cool presentation showing and discussing the trends of where videogames are heading. Overall the videogame industry as a whole is growing, just there has been a lot of contracting in the physical areas. Also the in game advertising displays at Gamestop has doubled in the past 3 years for blockbuster games. Due to the increase of smartphones and tablets, the average age of a person that plays videogames has fallen by 3 to 4 years. Games series that are well known, more than 80% of their mentions are in comparison to other games, than directly. Also when games are compared, the more known series is 95% certain to be compared positively. He said that games that get paid off for positive review scores happens occasionally in mobile games, and not possible for mass marketed games. Regardless what people about saying they want novel, new games, isn’t true. Also the President as a former developer said it was heartbroken inside that a game that is bad with great marketing will statistically outdo a game that is great game but poorly marketed.

I went to the Cards Against Humanity panel. The CAH panel was a 90% tribute to Ryan Davis. There was some good ideas from the crowd. Slide whistle in the middle of Nagasaki was dark. One guy didn’t find it that amazing, while another said Nagaski is underrated like the Scottie Pippen of nuke blasts. At the panel they order pizza for 500 people so 64 pizzas, 8 slices a pizza with 2 pieces leftover.

When the CAH panel was finished, Alex and I went to the concerts to check what was going on. It looked liked MC Frontalot, only up close it wasn’t. Anyway the main floor looked very empty. For the 2 minutes I was there, I saw that one Asian girl again I saw last year in the queue line and in the Blockbuster Videogame Music Composer last year. Anyway Alex and I parted ways, and I walked back to the hostel to go to bed.

Monday Morning

I ate some pineapple, bananas, and toast like the previous 3 days. I went with Kenneth to Target to buy some snacks and drinks before going into the convention center. I waited at the queueline. When it started I try to go to the Titanfall booth. It was completely packed. Already a line 200+ plus and the queue line only been open for 5 minutes. Titanfall was the game of the show. Everyone that got to play Titanfall said the controls were so “good, fluid, tight, feel, inituitave” Andy Bauman or some other person I heard at the PC Gamer meetup said “Titanfall is going to sell a lot of (Xboxses) Xbox Ones” I got to play The Crew. Man that game is huge. The controls were fine for an arcade game. I can see myself just cruising trying to drive on all the streets at least once in that game. For lunch I had a Chipotle Burrito. At PAX I had 5 feet of Jimmy John’s #10 subs and almost 3 feet of Chipotle Burritos.

After eating I headed directly to the PC Gamer panel queue line, where I ran into Andrew Edgarton the champion of the Game Show Night Jeopardy. Landon tagged along. Later Landon and Joe were in line. I saw Tyler Wilde, Anne Lewis, and some of the people from PC Gamer, GamesRadar. In line a guy said who is that 15 year old girl? I said she is 23. Tyler Wilde asked for our names for Catfantastic with a chance from being called from the audience to participate. Landon said something to Tyler to make him upset. He had -100 points. Landon was like “Is it like golf with the lowest score?” I said to Tyler “No mulligans here.” Tyler said “I like your thinking, +100 points for you.” In the swagbags everyone got a copy of Red Orchestra 2 and $70 Turtle Beach Earforce buds for free. One of the questions I got correct was name 1 of 3 games that tied with the highest review scores. I was like name all 3 or just 1. I said Half Life 2.. I got a TF2 scout plush. The final secret prize was a way to preorder Half Life 3 was a partial truth. They raffled a Steam Account that got all the Valve games in past and future for free. The question was guess the total value of 1148 games on PC Gamer steam account if you bought them today. Landon got a limited special Duck Tales lunch box by answerings Hollander Coopers question “Who wrote the Rift preview in 2011 in PC Gamer?” Everyone was stumped but Landon said “Hollander Cooper?” Landon was correct and got the lunchbox and Tyler Wilde okayed the question. Zach Beason said to Landon right after winning was dude I’ll pay you for it, I’m going to get laid. Landon replied “You have a wife.” Zach Responded “My wife is into Duck Tales.”

Monday at 4:30 PM I got Chris Antista to sign my friends copy of Golden Axe Beast Rider which he couldn’t believe why I wanted that game signed. Also I saw @theawesomecard at the Capcom booth who I saw at Gameworks Saturday night. She confused me for a different party she was at where she got super drunk. I went to Jimmy Johns and ate my 5th sub before coming back to the Capcom booth and having Elston sign my friends copy of Golden Axe Beast Rider. Capcom had great wifi which I use to download LaserTime podcasts on the show floor. Brett Elston for him considers TDar198 his most favorite podcast of the bunch. It just ended abruptly. There was no 200, nor was it good for a 199 episode. He said “TalkRadar everyone’s 3rd favorite gaming podcast” At the Capcom booth saw Casey, and Dan Amrich. Brett first thing when signing Golden Axe Beast Rider was “Why?” I told him about my friend Chris who I introduced to TDar, and has tried out just about any game that got discussed on TDar for more than 5 minutes. It could be shitty as long as it was under $9.99. When Landon talked about looking forward to next gen, I was like “DUDE WE ARE NEXT GEN ALREADY. WII-U.” Chris Antista was like yes, get with the program. I started signing the chorus to Alien Ant Farm’s Movies to Landon, which Antista was like “That song sounds familiar.” Then he backhanded insulted me with “You made it sound so good I didn’t know forgot the original for a second.” something along those lines.

I said my goodbyes to Chris Antista, and Brett Elston and started walking to back to the hostel to drop off my stuff. Joe, Landon, and I walked to the apartment Landon was staying at. When we got to the apartment, Landon had to wait 25 minutes because his friend was in a Final Fantasy dungeon. When his friend came out and said that reason, Landon was like “I understand.” When Landon went inside, Joe and I proceeded to do the first tourist thing all weekend which was go up the Space Needle.

At the Space Needle area was also the Bumbershoot music festival. Joe and I got tickets for $18 a piece, and went up the Space Needle. It was neat seeing all around Seattle. Seeing the Seattle skyline, the stadiums, docks, hills, and mountains at sunset. After the space needle, Joe and I ate at a Mexican restaurant. We were full. Afterwards we walked back to the hostel. I was like must be like midnight. 10:23 PM? After landing in the hostel I tagged along with Zach, David, and Jake to get some beer. It took them 25-30 minutes to decide on what beer to get, and that’s when I started getting really tired.  

I went back to the hostel. Joe and I were tweeting our experiences of PAX and visiting the space needle. Felt surreal since person was tweeting right next to me, and PAX is the only 3 to 4 days a year where I see them in person. I convinced Joe to look up Craigslist missed connections during PAX to see if there was some funny/sad/creepy posts. I only got the idea because of Aubrey Norris mentioned it after one PAX this year or last year.

Back in the room, Kenneth and Joe were checking up on their streetpass. Which they said they would pay $250 for a 3DS that had unlimited Streetpass functionality.

I went to bed easy. There was one guy rooming with us all the way from Perth, Australia to attend the Bumpershoot music festival. Around midnight he said he was trying to sleep, since the others were making a lot of noise.

I woke up early in the morning and went with Jake to the Westlake station for the light link rail. I said goodbye while he left to go to the airport. I waited for Landon, and rode to the airport with Landon. We are in the boat the Call of Duty is a solid FPS series. We had breakfast in the airport. Eating at the airport, the guy in front of us was the CM at Naughty Dog. That was pretty neat. Also I saw Dan Amrich and got to say goodbye to him as he boarded his flight.

I still had another 2 hours until my flight came, so I hanged out with Landon until I went to my gate. At my gate I saw a lot of people going to PAX Prime I haven’t seen since boarding the flight to Seattle. I saw Darren and his 2 friends he brought with him. I saw Matt, the guy I sat next to on the flight to Seattle. I also saw the Bit Brigade again. When I landed back in Atlanta, getting ready to walk back home I saw the gate I departed from Atlanta, and couldn’t believe that 5 and a half days flew by.

PAX Prime 2013 was an amazing experience.

My TalkRadar 5 Year anniversary Retrospective

May 19th is an important milestone. Today is the fifth year anniversary of the TalkRadar podcast. The pilot episode with Chris Antista, Brett Elston, Mikel Reparaz, Tyler Wilde, and special guest Dan Amrich created something magical that has resonated with the online community. (At least more than 1)

TalkRadar was the podcast I ever started listening to. I discovered GamesRadar.com most digged articles from this one website called digg in December of 2008. I loved their features articles due to being somewhat informative but mainly how creative their features were. I didn’t listen until March 2009. I was put off at first. Why would I want to listen to someone talk about videogames for 2 hours? Finally at TalkRadar 43, I decided to give it a shot, and my life was forever changed.

TalkRadar was a show about predominately about videogames. What stuck out the most was the shared experiences of gaming culture with some pop culture. Chris, Brett, and Mikel talked of growing up with gaming during the NES era. Then the games they played as they got older during the SEGA Genesis and Super Nintendo in their early teens. Then the PS1 and N64. Also Brett Elston’s experiences with the Atari Jaguar. When Mikel Reparaz said “Tomb Raider was created when the industry was starting to grow pubes, they were also growing pubes. They got to experience an era where the videogames were growing up with them. Also there was someone older like Dan Amrich of capturing what it was like growing up in the paleolithic era of gaming.

Never in my life have I heard someone describe all the human emotions through the word boner. Chris Antista is a Beethoven with his boners. Brett Elston timestamping his experiences, and Mikel Reparaz being a giant knowledge bank of the videogames and other strange things. Tyler Wilde with his technical prowess, and Charlie Barratt for his only experiences of point and click adventures with some Chrono Trigger.

After listening to episode 43, I fell in love and decided to go back and listen to 1 to the present episode. I didn’t listen to any music during that period. TalkRadar was with me breakfast, lunch, and shitter I vividly remember Chris Antista cutting his own shit when I was eating down scrambled eggs. It was impossible to finish my scrambled eggs because I was laughing so hard.

From then on, TalkRadar became my best way of remembering time in a weekly basis. I knew where I was and what I was doing, and could remember when I did it by episode number. Episode 50 I remember picking up my Uncle from the airport for my sister’s high school graduation. Episode 55 I was walking the dog down Crow Creek Road in Bettendorf Iowa hearing Mikel Reparaz say “Guillon Don’t get raped!”. And Episode 63 for being the last week I lived in Iowa.

TalkRadar influenced me in music and other games. Helix Nebula is forever associated with TalkRadar for me. Some of the closing songs, like In a Big Country, Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, Alex Chilton by The Replacements I discovered due to TalkRadar.  I picked up Dark Sector for $2.49 off Steam due to Brett Elston’s recommendation. For that price It’s a solid game. I got Vanquish, Ace Combat Assault Horizon, Mass Effect due to TalkRadar.

I created a twitter account, specifically to follow the TalkRadar hosts, and then the fans. Which I started to find out new TalkRadar fans, since there was a good amount of fans on twitter that didn’t post in the forums. I got to find out there was TalkRadar fans spanning 5 continents. On twitter I discovered there were fans in the Philippines, Nepal, Finland, Norway, Mexico, Costa Rica, Canada, Australia, Germany, United Kingdom, Ireland, and Switzerland.

I couldn’t get enough of TalkRadar, after I finished all the episodes, a couple months later I went back and listened to them again.

I became an active participant on the GamesRadar forums. I never had over 1,000+ posts, yet alone having over 5,000 posts on the GamesRadar forums, answering questions about TalkRadar, and commenting on my favorite parts of the show. My presence on answering TalkRadar questions was  fast. It got to the point if someone answered a question before me the users would put inb4TURbo.

My lasting contribution to TalkRadar is probably the TalkRadar Wiki. The most comprehensive online encyclopedia for a videogame podcast. Spanning 400 articles. The origins of the TalkRadar Wiki was in a forum thread about a TalkRadar Encyclopedia. Ampetent had an idea for a forum thread to have as much information of TalkRadar as possible, which is very impractical. Nighthawk205 had the idea of creating a wiki and that would be a lot more easier than having a never ending forum thread.

When the TalkRadar Wiki started, the first 2 weeks was edited heavily. Most of the edits were on the hosts and guest pages. Nighthawk205 laid down the episode template page, which I follow to this day. When the TalkRadar Wiki started, I went back and listened starting to 1 to present episode and wrote down quotes, or stories I thought were funny. Then I posted it to the Wiki. That took me a little over 2 months.

Now the TalkRadar Wiki is a place you can find out things like: How many times Brett Elston mentioned Toys R Us in what context, All the Questions of the Week, The closing songs in TalkRadar, All the questions answered on Ask a Games Jarnalist, All the TalkRadar Hotline calls aired, and how what episodes Chris Antista talked poorly about his mother.

May 2010, on the now extinct forums, there was a thread about a TalkRadar meetup. Would it ever happen?  It took a year later but PAX East 2011 was the first TalkRadar meetup I experienced. Over 40 people showed up to meet Chris, Brett, Tyler, Dan Amrich, and Lizzie, and meet other fans of the show. One thing that stuck out the most was other TDards congratulating me for my contributions to the TalkRadar Wiki. I was never thanked in person for the TalkRadar Wiki until I went to PAX.  Also that a lot of the fans knew who I was when I said TURbo, but I didn’t know who they were since they were forum lurkers. It was neat seeing the culmination of all of the fans and the hosts in having a great time together.

It was unfortunate TalkRadar had to go the way it did, but it inspired the fans to create their own podcasts and websites.

One thing that was great about TalkRadar, was the fan created content. TalkRadar inspired a police dispatcher to become one of the best photoshoppers on the TalkRadar forums.

Some of the excellent artists in my Hall of fame of TalkRadar art are Batman5273, graboids, KREATIVEassassin, 510BrotherPanda, mechamorbo, Twishart, Aeshir,Ventanger, JohnRabbit, hatebreeder, aforextreme, MrSuitMan.

Flabslapper made great edited videos. Kate Reilly wrote an excellent story with Wikiparaz and the Burger Bandit mystery. She did write 4 more stories, but it was at the low point of TalkRadar when Future US was being ruled by an iron fist.

TalkRadar inspired Zabu_San, ElPork, Gunslinger, to create the PCN Gen podcast. Before PCN Gen podcast they made Fan Radar. It inspired Travis Foster to create the short lived 4 episode run of Geekipedia, and then later created Podcast N Bullshit, with Phazon117 and tokengirlstfu.Wildfire567 created a short run podcast in the Summer of 2009, Gamechug podcast.  It also inspired Wildfire_567, Breener, Lando81, and Aeshir to create the GNA FM, which only had a few episodes to successful launch to the internet. Another fan podcast BCubed started by Jake Petersen (Onewingedantista). Also it created the TalkRadar Community Extravangza, which afterwards Alex, Mitch, Matt, Tony, Drew, Kate then spawned Random Assault. Chris Linendoll and Rock Closson, other TalkRadar fans created their own podcast KGB Radio and site Known Griefers Blog. Joe Garcia (Wons23) (PS University) created the PS Firmware Update. Jostein Hakstead from Norway created the  Rad Crew podcast. Cale McKee and his friends created the C-Cubed podcast, nothing in relation to B-Cubed. OriginalMrBibz created a podcast Make Up Your Mind which only had a 2 episode run, but nonetheless gave podcasting a shot. Akd created Refresh Reload. RossBell1984 co created the Ready Player 2 Podcast.

While TalkRadar is gone, the friendships and memories I have made through this podcast are incredible.

My PAX East 2013 Experiences

Turbo’s 2013 PAX East Experiences

Thursday

On the flight from Atlanta to Boston, I saw a classmate from high school I haven’t seen in almost 5 years. Sarah Holste was going to PAX East for her first time. It was cool since we both went to high school up in Iowa, and 5 years and 800 miles later going to PAX East. For the flight to Boston about 50% of the flight was going for PAX East.

When I arrived in Boston I didn't do much Thursday night besides, check twitter to see which people arrived for PAX East.

Friday

Waited in queue line. 7:40 AM line was more packed than last year and it was much colder this year. The line had a thousand more people compared to last year. the expo hall is larger. 30% more than last year and almost double of 2011. Tabletop and PC takes up more space. The food court on floor zero is small. Also less upcoming AAA games on the show floor. Nintendo presence much smaller than last year. 2K is just basketball and streaming. Microsoft is showing already out games of Halo 4 DLC and Gears Judgment.

I talked to 2 guys that lived in the Boston area, and one of them says he always takes sick days for PAX East, and wonders why work doesn’t catch on. I said that all PAXs, do not take place during the exact same week of the month, making the sickness seem more natural. Also the enforcer that gave pipe cleaners for in exchange for making something cool to get free stuff never came. She never came back.

In queue line inside a person knocked over a line divider in which I said this is why we can’t have nice things. Which is what happened to me in the queue room last PAX East 2012

Saw ACIV. Not presented as well as AC III. ACIII showed gameplay footage of the Battle of Bunker Hill which looked very impressive. AC IV showed 15 to 20 second gameplay snippets of different mechanics. Assassins Creed is on their 5th different creative director for the 5 last games. Still looking forward to it, but not as interested as AC IV. Some cool things AC IV will do is underwater shark combat, manta rays will be present as well as school’s of fish. The idea of having a crew for your ship and losing crewmates due to recklessness of storm traversal or boarding enemy ships is neat. While I’m not as excited for ACIV as ACIII more expections are a lot more realistic.

Twitch and Smite booth were  loud. The show floor not as razzle dazzly as previous 2 years. While the show floor is the largest that has even been, there was less new games that were being demo or on display. Everything on the Microsoft booth was already at retail, Gears of War Judgment, Halo 4 DLC, and Dance Central 3. There was more games you could play on the show floor that you could already play at home than ever before.

Saw Ted Rossi, tastiest jamb and his friend. Told Ted about ACIV and Watchdogs. ACIV not impressed which reaffirmed that Ted was done with the series when I talked about it. Excited about Saints Row IV then told about how old GTA IV is which lead to how long this console cycle lasted. Then on AC Patrice Dislets former THQ property being own by ubisoft again for a cheap $500,000.

Saw Dylan and Kayla after buying my Cards Against Humanity expansion pack at the Kickstarter arcade section.

There was no Portal 2 or Borderlands 2 equivalent line. Elder Scrolls had a large line, but lack of upcoming AAA games. The indie games were more exciting to view than ever since most of them were upcoming new releases. The one that caught the most attention for me was Drop that beat like an Ugly Baby. It is like Audiosurf and Beat Hazard as a music game in the realm of the music altering environments. Purpose is to dodge the color blocks and build up large combos. Fast pace songs result in faster moving blocks, while slower pace songs, result in slower moving blocks making it easier to chain combos.

Went to the nerdcore hip hop panel and got to talk and shake Random/Mega Ran hands. Said I first heard of him through Elijah Lucian’s youtube favorites of the songs Fly and Push.He was like wow that was a long time ago. It was a neat panel, and it was neat talking to other people who are a fan of nerdcore since I rarely run into those people in my day to day life.

At the Capcom booth I said hi to Brett Elston and Chris Antista.

At the Popcap booth I got to grab a zombie and happy mushroom plush toy. The magician David Hall was there again for Popcap doing magic tricks. While he did some cool tricks, there is still no magic trick for easily picking up cards on the floor.

Met Corey Atwood at Capcom line. chatted about what was going on with the LaserTime meetup, and amazed that I remembered, who he was, which he was probably Blackout drunk.

Bought CAH for my sister and bought 3 expansion decks. I got 2 second editions. I didn’t notice until I was at the First round of the Omegathon. I went back and the people at the CAH were very nice and it was easily exchanged.

Got to say hi to Alex, Matt, David, Jake, Willy and Mitch. Before they went their separate ways to appointments. They were busy since they were media covering games on the show floor.

4PM Merman Theater

Went to the Omegathon Round 1 where I got to meet Corey and other former Omeganauts. Talked and chatted about our Omeganaut experiences. I got to say hi to Darryl again and he told me nice haircut, even though he didn’t see me in 7 months. He said it was nice that I go out of my way to say hi to him at each PAX. Said hi to Karrisa Barrows which she hugged me. Tina was the last Omeganaut to show up for the event. The Bomberman event on zombie mode was very tense. I left midway to exchange my Second Expansion of CAH for a first which was a good idea since by Saturday night they were all sold out of Cards Against Humanity.

At 5PM I got to meet up with Zack, Chris, and Rock from the Known Griefers Blog. I tagged along with them to their hotel where we got food from Red Line since they delievered to the hotel. I finally got to eat lunch at 7PM and I order a Burrito and french fries. Every portion of food they had was huge. The fries took up the entire to go box, the Burrito was a foot long, and the quesadillas was like a large size pizza tortilla stuffed with tons of food. I ate so much fries, nachos, and a large burrito. Eating a meal after eating nothing substantial for 12 hours feels like being released out of prison.

In the hotel room, Rock recorded a brief podcast of what we experienced on the show floor on Friday. Afterwards we played some Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter. During playing those fighting games I quoted from that one Street Fighter commentary that played in TalkRadar 110. Also I saw Rock play El Shaddai which stylistically looks amazing, but bland gameplay. At 9PM I took a cab ride back to my apartment and got to sleep.

PAX East Saturday

I woke up at 6:51 AM due to the sunrise. The apartment I was staying at, the host Atindya was very hospitable and cooked me an excellent breakfast with toast, sausage, and eggs. Also he had grapes, which I loved the grapes the most.

When I saw the cab arrived, I sprinted to the door. During the sprint, my leg caught the laptop cord which sent the laptop and a dozen other things to the floor. He said to me don’t worry. Also he packed me a lunch of toasted cheese sandwiches, and a bag of grapes which lasted me through the day.

The cab driver asked me what convention was going on. Then later was surprised that many people were there just for games, but it is so much more than just games.

At the queue line the first thing I was going to go see was Saints Row IV. In the queue line there was about 7 or 8 beachballs. During the wait I talked to 2 guys that were into videogame music, and music in general. Wish I remembered their names. On electronic music, until last year we thought Deadmau5 was pronounced Dead mau 5 and and not Deadmouse. Anyway they encouraged me if I wanted to compose since I like playing some songs on the piano, spend $300 on recording equipment and software and play around. I told them about the Behind the music of Blockbuster videogames music panel which they were interested but were tied down with other obligations.

When the queue line opened up the 2 guys I waited in line with yesterday bumped my arm and said “Alabama!” since that is where I came from for PAX.”

The Saints Row IV gameplay footage was great footage. SRIV takes place in a virtual Steelport that looks like a larger city compared to SR3 version of Steelport. The game ups the wackyness even higher. Besides being the president of the United States and fighting an alien invasion, there is the Dubstep Gun. A gun that shoot out lasers and dubstep music which causes people to pop and lock until they die. Besides the dubstep gun there is the inflatagun which inflates people until they explode. Also for transportation there is mechs, monster cars, and superpowers. The protagonist can now run 100+mph, jump hundreds of feet high, glide, telekinesis, and has ice blast powers. Saints Row IV will have more customization than ever before and will be an excellent game to pick up August 20th 2012.

While on the show floor, I text messaged Mitch if he wanted to eat grapes in an erotic way, which he thought I was joking until I showed him the grapes. I hand fed him a grape while we walked hand in hand on the show floor. And then later we had fu.....n. Sometime this day I went outside and got free food from the truck Warface which served tiny hamburgers.

I went to the 2nd round of the Omegathon to chat with other Omeganauts. During that time I conversed through the power of Quad City DJ’s which made Sery wonder why Ross and I didn’t converse normally. Which I think my reply was “It’s the slam jam.” I left to go to the Videogame music panel, since I didn’t think I would have much luck getting Mass Effect signed from the lead Mass Effect panel from the Mass Effect Trilogy retrospective.

After talking to the Omeganauts, I went to the Behind the Music of Blockbuster videogames hosted by Emily Reese of the Top Score Podcast. Kevin Riepl, Greg Edmunson, Inon Zur, and Jack Wall were present. Jack Wall wanted the crowd to make some noise. It was neat hearing the thought process behind the scores. Also the 2 guys I talk to in the queue line on Friday were there. Greg was happy that 1,000+ people came to see them. Afterwards I got Inon, Kevin, and Greg to sign my badge. When I told Greg I loved Firefly he said “I do too.” When Jack Wall signed my copy of Mass Effect, he unknownigly signed over Sam Hulick’s signature, which I told him and Kevin said “Post that on the internet.” Jack replied with “Sam’s gonna kill me.” I brought Tomb Raider for Jason Graves to sign, but he went on a 10+ minute bathroom whatever break. His coat was on a chair so I got my copy of Tomb Raider and took a picture of my copy next to his coat.

I went to the FirAxis panel, only to see how full it was, I hanged out with the Known Griefers Blog guys and played Jungle Speed at the Tabletop area. It is a card game of pattern recognition and the first player to get rid of all their cards win. There is a plastic thing in the middle, in which when 2 shapes or colors are the same, the 2 players try to grab the plastic stand before the other person in which the slow person receives all the cards that was in play for the round. 2nd game I won, due to my fast speed of my right hand and the strength of grabbing it when it was contested. That’s when I realized I my fap hand, wrist, and arm was stronger and faster than theirs.

After playing 2 rounds of Jungle Speed I took a shuttle bus ride with Pat Ronk to a nearby hotel in which I would attend the Elder Scrolls MMO Party. While waiting for the shuttle, I recognized the lady from Iowa who worked with the shuttlebusses the previous 2 PAX Easts I attended. The Elder Scrolls Party I was the 400th of the 500th people in line. What made this party huge was it was open for all with no restrictions except building capacity. The guy behind me from DC, due to being an event coordinator was furious of how poorly the lines were handled. After a 20 minute wait outside, I was in. It was decorated as a giant banquet hall. People received coins in a pouch in which they redeem for food and different beers to drink. There was bard musicians. There were gambling dens, and a place where you can take your picture. Everyone of the hosts spoke in English accents like they lived in Tamriel. For the picture, a man dressed as a fine warrior shouted “Want to take a picture with the magic box?!” I drank water and ate food and only stayed for 20 minutes. On the shuttle back to the convention center, the Bus had 2 circle around it twice.

LaserTime meetup 8PM in the Sam Adams pub like last 2 PAX Easts. The attendance was a lot less. About 20-25 people compared to the 40 to 60 people plus from previous years. The 3 Jews, you know who you are, shouted LaserTime at a group at the food court only to realize it was just a group of people there. They looked stupid and felt shame. Chris and Brett didn’t arrive until after 8:30 PM. Chris and Brett was all that remained of whatever former used to work at Future US/GamesRadar/TalkRadar presence there was.

I said hi to Addison, Bilal, Tony Wilson, Jacob Wilson (not related), and saw Jeremy from Buffalo and some other guy I haven’t seen since the 2011 PAX East. I got to see Keegan and Paul for the first time at PAX. Then I realized who they were in relation to TalkRadar and when they got mentioned. Keegan for hanging out with Tyler Wilde Winter of 2009, and Paul about the Prince of Persia IMAX conversion process giving the spoiler of a CGI ostrich race. Saw Jason and Warner again, and this year got to talk to them more. Also got to talk to another Jeremy but he had shorter hair compared to the Jeremy of Buffalo.

Ted Rossi joked about how women suffrage ruin the traditional family and how those extra responsibilities hurt women in the long run. He might have been quoting his grandfather who said it very seriously around the house. I said women suffrage started at the very end of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, which other people were amazed that besides TalkRadar I knew a lot about history on the spot.

Casey was ready to fight people that stared at her for more than 3 seconds at a time. Then she would respond “Do you wanna go?” Casey and Jeremy went on to talk about growing up in Buffalo, and Casey was like “You understand me.” All of the subdivisions and cities in the Buffalo area are named after where Native American tribes were massacred. They both came to the conclusion that Orchard Tree was the highest concentration of biggest stuck up cunts There was one time where Casey felt uncomfortable being wedged in between Ted Rossi and Chris Antista which Chris responded “You don’t like Rotisserie?”  Chris Antista said Ted was a Grizzly Gay Bear that would sex other men, which Ted was not a fan of. Even if he was only pounding dudes, but never get pounded by them. Rossi stated he is 100% 180 degree angle straight.

Another conversation I heard was with Brett saying when he asked Seth Killian about time it went on for 45 minutes. Richard Colina, got to meet Chris and Brett for the first time which he talked a lot about the new Devil May Cry and Majora’s Mask. At the Sam Adams bar Brett Elston said he had a minor in philosophy, which I didn’t know. He said minors all bullshit and just show you took a lot more classes. He liked Thomas Hobbes and John Locke for how concise their viewpoints were and that Rene Descartes was full of shit.

Jeremy “TastiestJamb” had a story of going to a bar in Dorchester where the bartender pulled a knife on him. He asked him where he was there was Jeremy replied “To drink.” At the end of the day, the bartender said “Come back tomorrow and a round would be on us.” Jeremy probably didn’t go back. Tastiest Jamb was a fan of First Person Soda Drinker on the Indie show floor.

After the Sam Adams pub, we went to the Rock Band freeplay. Casey sang Misery Business by Paramore, with Elston on drums and Antista on guitar. I started jumping up and down. I even did rolls and breakdance arm spins which on carpet was a huge mistake. My elbows had carpet burn but nothing too excessive. I needed water and I was disoriented. People thought I was going to pass out, which I look more tired than I look.

There was a Saturday badge lying around the RocK Band free play. I said whoever’s badge this is it is no good because today is Sunday.

While waiting for the Rock Band Freeplay, I offered Chris Antista a grape which he was suspicious. He had his reasons.

At  the Rock Band freeplay I saw Sery and asked what happened in Round 3 of the Omegathon. The Jenga round got tense people in the front shouted “3 2 1, JUMP!”

After the Rock Band freeplay we went to the Westin City Bar and got something to drink. Tastiest Jamb bought me a Coors light, which it was the first time I drank 75% of a beer before I couldn’t drink anymore. He was about to give one to Ryan Davis, until circumstances changed. I saw Karrisa Barrows at the city bar. Was identifiable by the Omeganaut shirt.

At the City Bar, I told Casey I was going to drink a shot of Unicorn Jizz which she said it’s is not a shot, it is a glass. Also it is really sweet. The sweetest jizz she has ever tasted.

Chris talked about what was it like to live in his apartment complex in San Francisco. Which there are a lot of bears. For some of the group he views the lifestyle as being lazy, and giving up on taking care of yourself. Chris Antista is also concerned about public appearance and doesn’t want to look like he puts on Unfuckable smell pussy repellent.

During the city bar Chris Antista got to answer some questions that were very neat to know. For example Deep Silver paid 100,000 for the 20 minute video series Chris Antista and GR crew did for the Game Dead Island. Also the ship at sea scene cost 60,000+ dollars. A huge amount of money. Also Chris went to e-smoking since it cost $1 a day compared to $20 smoking 2 packs of cigarettes. Chris saves over $130 a week e-smoking. Chris Antista went to PC gamer due to forced transfer and left as soon as he could for another job. He had lots of respect for PC gamer. Chris Antista lost some game cred when he said “Did you see the midget Kratos?” Which turned out to be the psycho midget from Borderlands and we all laughed at him.

At the City Bar, I got to meet Rob Smith current Editor and Chief of Machinima. Other people were like whatever, but I said  I remember reading lots of PC Gamer when I was 13 and 14 because my school library had a subscription. It got me into PC Gaming even more, and I learned more about PC hardware. I said I enjoyed his presence on TalkRadar 29 when he talked about Rogue Leaders, and while I didn’t read the book, I repeated about most of the stuff he mentioned which he was impressed I remembered so vividly. Due to that he wanted to get in contact with me, which I wrote down my twitter handle and he’s following me.

Afterwards a group of 6 waited for a cab and I talked to Brett Elston. We talked about how Japan is different. Also about the mystery of Mike Grimm. People want the Grimm. We thought of awesome kickstarter ideas to get Mike to come to PAX.  Also Brett mentioned PAX East 2012 and 2013 fell in the same fiscal year, which from a corporate standpoint, it looked wasteful. I took a cab and went to bed at 3:17 AM. I was up for 20.5 hours doing a lot of things that day.

Sunday

I woke up at 6:51 AM due to the sunrise, despite only having 3.5 hours of sleep. I couldn’t get back to sleep, but lied in bed for the next hour. No way I was going to get to the convention at 7:40 AM like the previous days.

I got to the convention center around 9AM. On the expo show floor there was 6 to 8 beachballs. 2 of them were giant. Also someone brought an inflatable dolphin that was surfed up and down the queue line. There was also an inflatable pig that was being tossed around. In line I talked to some people that later discovered I was the person PAX East 2012 Friday where  “This is why we can’t have nice things!” was directed towards.

When the show floor opened up the first thing I went to see was Watch_Dogs. Watch Dogs is a very ambitious game and if it can deliver on its premise it would be in my Top 5 games of 2013. Depending on how reckless you are with a mission, there will be in game news reports telling how many people died on your pursuit of revenge.

After WatchDogs I went to sign up for the Beautiful Katamari tournament. From reading the sheet Richard Colina also signed up. I text messaged him and he was in the console freeplay. During the wait for the tournament we played Street Fighter 2 Turbo Edition and quoted TalkRadar or our experiences so far at PAX East.

The Beautiful Katamari tournament was the the first 32 entrants, single elimination. We played versus mode on the street level. When the round start, I was behind on collecting mushrooms by 40 to 50. I went up the waterfall, collected mushrooms to be on par with my opponent and in the last 20 seconds, I pulled ahead with the lead, since I manage to be in the area where mushrooms were spawning at the end. It was an impressive come from behind win.

The second round I faced even a better opponent. I got way behind, my opponent had 60 to 80 more mushrooms at the peak. He was laying waste to me. He was auto targeting and rolling me up. Luckily I manage to retreat up the waterfall again like the previous round and collect mushrooms. Luckily he was too big to chase me up the waterfall. When I came down, I was on par size wise with him. Soon it became a race for him to hold onto his lead. My tactics were the same like the last round. I rolled over the areas that had freshly spawned mushrooms and I won in the final second by collecting 1 more mushroom than him by a score of 223 to 222. I had so much adrenaline going through my system, and the 20 people that watched me play cheered and was amazed at my performance. Richard said to me “That was some real Daigo performance right there.” I got a cheap Made in China Winner medal for that performance. Unfortunately I lost in the round of 8, but I had 2 amazing comebacks.

After that Richard and I went to the tabletop freeplay where we played a game of Wiz War with Nate and Nate’s bro. It is a very technical game like most tabletop RPG games.

Richard and I still had time to kill before the RA meetup so we went to the Bioware Base. I wanted to get my copies of Mass Effect 1 and 2 signed by Raphael Svarge but I was 2 people late. Karissa Barrows was there. Later on facebook not to brag or anything, was friends with him and could have gotten to sign my games if I asked her then. Karissa Barrows was a recurring character through my PAX East 2013 journey.  Anyway I sat through the Thedas Unlocked panel even though I have no experiences with the Dragon Age games. Richard had an excellent question who would voice act for Bob the lonely human sculpture in the Dragon Age games which he replied Gilbert Gottfried.

After the panel Richard and I walked to the main lobby for the RA meetup. While at the main lobby I saw the Enforcer Plaidlad, which he asked if I was going to be at PAX Prime and it was going to be 4 days. Also he was going to be on the show floor until 1AM helping to pack up stuff. The meetup took place in the hallway leading to the queue room, which I understood where that was. The only people that were present were Alex, Mitch, Matt, Willy, Jake, Richard, Sonya, and I. Alex, Mitch, and Matt signed my RA notebook. I got Alex’s RA 50 notes, and concept art of Big Bob, BBQ Hut. The meetup was about 45 minutes long.

Afterwards Richard and I took a cab to the Protomen show only to buy tickets to the wrong event and to find out the Protomen performed at 11PM and not 7PM. 7PM was just when tickets were on sale. After that kerfuffle, we went back to the apartment. Big Bang Theory was playing on the TV so like any good human being I muted it. Due to being dead tired, we went to bed at 8:40 PM.

Monday

Richard and I got in a cab and headed for the airport at 8AM. At the airport I saw Sarahagain, i n which we took the same flight to and from Boston. Where we chatted about our PAX experiences, and our flight was delayed by 5 hours.

I sat at the near the wing of the Boeing 717-200. Looking out I saw that there was a piece of treated plywood held together by 2 screws. Also the screws holding in the overhead bins were loose. When there was a slight turbulence the overhead bins shooked like they were sloshed with water. I was happy that no one died.

I had an excellent time at PAX East 2013, and I look forward to PAX East 2014.