It felt in some ways as though we had just done a PAX, and I guess it's technically true; I wonder if six months is actually enough time to recuperate. I'll have an opportunity to find out if I can spring back in even less time, as we're rolling out a whole PAX in Australia as well, and PAX Prime is moving to four days, and you may feel "con"-fident (!) that we aren't finished yet.
The imagery is all balled-up with no recognizable file system, just encoded sensations; Qs neutralized by deft As, the make-a-strip panel where strip was made, an eleventh-hour rescheduling of an Omegathon round that somehow turned into an extemporaneous dance party right next to some kind of Twitter-catalyzed Johann Sebastian Joust Fight Club. I saw world class League of Legends play live in a completely electric crowd. I want to go back, either back to the show or back in time, but the show is over now and the second option is currently impossible.
I'll tell you straight up that I went to the Indie Megabooth every Goddamn day of the show and had a hard time leaving. Many people drew their personal "game of show" from that lo-fi wonderland, which was just past a very nice, very complete looking Natural Selection. I could write about this booth for months, and I might. My favorite game of PAX 2012 was Card Hunter. There is no pause between the question and the answer. Card Hunter now, Card Hunter forever.
RedLynx got their start making some (actually very cool) tactics games on the N-Gage of all things, but now they're the people who made "Trials Evolution," and they gave us a brutal Precipice themed level to test our final Omeganauts. At its best, Trials is a game where you build and build your skill level until you can defeat the level, and we wanted a hard one - maybe too hard - so that the gathered crowd could see them put the pieces together. For the first ten minutes, they had five retries from checkpoint, which increased as we went on. Valkyrion had a very linear progression of skill - I suspect he'd had some prior experience. "beyondcelery" had no experience, and anyone who's played the game knows what a beast it can be. Suddenly, she just... got it. Like, got it so fast and so clean it was terrifying. There was a spike in the graph, and she rode it all the way to the finish. But, as she'd gone first, Valkyrion had a chance to snatch it - and he beat time by just a few seconds. We had confetti cannons installed. I don't know how much that costs, but it was worth it.
A++, would install again.
(CW)TB out.
