the epic adventures of team awesome, vol. III: a test of endurance
Because I missed a day yesterday, today's post will be Day III. Day IV will come tomorrow. Hope I didn't leave you hanging for too long...
We left our gallant heroes after Day 1 of the convention, tired from their journey into Seattle and from the sheer overwhelming presence of the maddening throng at PAX. They went to sleep with the sound of the NESkimos ringing in their ears; what will the second day of this weekend crusade hold for them?
We headed to Denny's first, a block away from the Meydenbauer - over an Interstate. However playing Frogger with highway on and off-ramps is a heck of a way to wake oneself up in the morning. After we ate we headed to the Meydenbauer. The exposition hall had a line that went out of the door of the center - another new feature of PAX 2006 because of overpopulation. We decided instead to begin working on our Guild Wars: Live! quest.
It worked like this - each person got a goody bag on the first day. In that goody bag was either a blue or a red ribbon. This was your "faction". On Saturday and Sunday, there would be challenge stations where you would complete some task related to the classes you can be in the game. On Sunday, whichever faction had won the most challenges would win the game, and people from that faction had a chance of winning prizes. Even if you were on the losing side, you were promised some sort of prize upon completion of all eight challenges and the successful completion of a secret "final challenge". Sure, it sounded kind of corny, but in actuality, it was really pretty cool. We picked four classes from the eight possible - I was a Necromancer, Kristin was a Mesmer, Edward a Monk and Kelly a Ranger. Each station had a class associated with it; if you were of the class of that station, the "victory conditions" were easier as a result. Only one member of your party had to be victorious to get credit for that station, so it rewarded traveling in groups.
As luck would have it, the first station was the Warrior's station. Here, a Guild Wars representative would shoot a dart from a "blow gun" at a player, like so:
and the player would have to block the dart with a shield. The player also got eye goggles for protection's sake. Which player took on the challenge? Why, that would be:
Me, putting on my best Warrior face. There would be five darts, and a player had to block four darts with the shield unless they were a warrior, which meant only three would need to be blocked. I guess all these years of game playing paid off in terms of hand-eye coordination, because I blocked all five. Boo-yah! We got a punch on our ribbon, symbolizing that we had completed the station and we headed to a competition of another kind - the trivia contest hosted by Alon of the Chatterbox Video Game Radio Show
Held in the satellite theatre (a new addition for this year, and a good idea), the show's format was like "Jeopardy!" - three contestants, categories from 100 to 500 points. The difference was that the audience could answer any question that the contestants missed as well as bonus questions attached to certain questions. Team Awesome took their seats and proceeded to watch one of the most embarrassing things we've ever seen. It was a complete blow-out - two of the contestants seemed to know absolutely nothing. The one guy who did seem to know something wasn't really that awesome, but he creamed the other guys, one of who got all of two questions right and the other who got just one. The audience would have been rioting except that we won a ton of prizes as a result. The one guy missed a 100 point easy question about Final Fantasy, which, if you read the article, is only the third best-selling video game franchise ever. This is not obscure, especially if you're at PAX, a video game convention. It got ugly at that point; one member of the audience yelled, "It's Jack Thompson! Get him!", for which he was given a prize.
But as I said, two men's humiliation turned out to be our profit. As a result of their epic ineptitude, three questions came out to the audience that landed in our laps. By the time all was said and done, three members of Team Awesome had taken home prizes.
Kelly won herself Red vs. Blue Season Three on DVD, Ed won a PSP case, which since he doesn't own a PSP might get modded into a DS Lite case and I won Project Gotham Racing 3 for the Xbox 360, which is a system I do not (yet) own. So perhaps the prizes weren't as excellent as one might have hoped, but what mattered was we won, thus establishing Team Awesome as the dominant trivia force at PAX 2006. w00t, indeed.
Kelly then hit her Tetris DS tournament while the rest of Team Awesome went to wait for some Console Freeplay to practice for the Guitar Hero tournament. While in line, we spotted Tycho/Jerry, one of the two great minds behind penny-arcade.com and half of the reason the entire convention happens in the first place. He was playing some Guitar Hero himself - let me assure you, he is good. Real good. Kristin introduced herself and Kelly (it took that long to get to the front of the Freeplay line) as librarians-in-training and suggested themselves as doing the much-needed tagging on the PA archives. They gave their e-mails to him, and the next day they made sure he remembered (more on that next post), so Team Awesome might become an adjunct part of PA. How cool is that? Even cooler? Kristin and Kelly met Tycho's mom!
Check out the Zelda t-shirt and the ball cap. "Penny-Arcade Mom?" Undeniably awesome.
We tried Guitar Hero on hard. We got creamed. We decided perhaps we weren't tournament ready...this year. If we get that PS2 and Guitar Hero, we might train the whole way for next year. Instead we went to the expo hall, which rocked and will be discussed in further depth tomorrow. Other quests were completed for Guild Wars, such as the Assassin's quest where Kristin showed her skillz at plugging cardboard standees in the head with Nerf guns, a Ritualist challenge where Sabe put together pieces of an plastic animal found in a tub of black beans and Kristin's impressive memory skills playing "Elementalist Simon".
Dinner happened and we then took our place for the Omegathon "Embarrass Yourself" round, which featured...Guitar Hero II. Tycho and Robert Khoo, the PA business manager, faced off on Stone Temple Pilots' "Trippin' On A Hole In A Paper Heart," complete with a Pete Townshendesque guitar smashing finale. I cannot believe how fast the game moves and how complex it gets on expert, which is the level they played on. The Omeganauts played on medium (the fans booed that decision) and featured such awesomeness as Motley Crue's classic "Shout At The Devil" and KISS's "Strutter," which means that when (not if) Kristin and I pick up Guitar Hero II it might be the first PS2 game my father ever plays. They even got the guitarists from that night's concerts, MC Frontalot and the Minibosses to play against each other on the Black Sabbath song "War Pigs"...which is a friggin' loooooooong song. For first timers, they did pretty good, which proves that if you're a good guitarist, you've got an advantage in playing the game.
We decided to skip Front's set to get a crack on Dead Rising, a game so similar in concept to Dawn of the Dead that there's a disclaimer on the front of the box that tells you that this game isn't authorized by George A. Romero. The concept? You have to survived 72 hours in a mall overrun by zombies. If you so desire, you can remain on the rooftop that you begin the game on for the entire 72 hours (which is 15-20 hours real-time), but most likely because this is a video game and not real life you'll enter the mall. Me? I'd stay on the friggin' roof, thank you very much. But our intrepid hero goes for it, and soon enough you're wading through screens with literally hundreds of zombies (the 360 power put to work there), trying to thwack a path through the undead. You can pick up just about anything to use as a weapon, which is something that I have actually been begging for in a video game since the Super Nintendo and something I often brought up in reference to the punishing ammo system in the Resident Evil series. It's just realistic, if you're out of bullets, to pick up something like a fireplace poker and whack the shit out of the slavering corpse trying to eat you. Until this game, this wasn't possible. Now, I can go to the sporting goods store, pick up a Louisville Slugger and make like a juiced-up Mark McGuire and swing for the fences. Hell, I could do that for 15 hours and not get bored!
The rest of the group went down to check out the Minibosses while I played about three minutes of Project Gotham Racing, returned the game and controllers and rejoined them. Kristin and I were just about passed out even as the Minibosses played some eardrum-melting NES adaptations. We finally decided to just head back to the hotel, where we promptly passed out. Sabe and Kelly joined us not too much later and we fell deep into dreamland after nearly 3/4ths a day of pure gaming.
Will our dashing heroes have enough gas in their collective tank to survive another day of geek overload? Or will they be crushed under the sheer tonnage of awesome to be found? Our heroes must complete their Guild Wars quest, avoid a filmic failure and pick up mass amounts of swag to bring home...and still find their way home. Tune in tomorrow!
We left our gallant heroes after Day 1 of the convention, tired from their journey into Seattle and from the sheer overwhelming presence of the maddening throng at PAX. They went to sleep with the sound of the NESkimos ringing in their ears; what will the second day of this weekend crusade hold for them?
We headed to Denny's first, a block away from the Meydenbauer - over an Interstate. However playing Frogger with highway on and off-ramps is a heck of a way to wake oneself up in the morning. After we ate we headed to the Meydenbauer. The exposition hall had a line that went out of the door of the center - another new feature of PAX 2006 because of overpopulation. We decided instead to begin working on our Guild Wars: Live! quest.
It worked like this - each person got a goody bag on the first day. In that goody bag was either a blue or a red ribbon. This was your "faction". On Saturday and Sunday, there would be challenge stations where you would complete some task related to the classes you can be in the game. On Sunday, whichever faction had won the most challenges would win the game, and people from that faction had a chance of winning prizes. Even if you were on the losing side, you were promised some sort of prize upon completion of all eight challenges and the successful completion of a secret "final challenge". Sure, it sounded kind of corny, but in actuality, it was really pretty cool. We picked four classes from the eight possible - I was a Necromancer, Kristin was a Mesmer, Edward a Monk and Kelly a Ranger. Each station had a class associated with it; if you were of the class of that station, the "victory conditions" were easier as a result. Only one member of your party had to be victorious to get credit for that station, so it rewarded traveling in groups.
As luck would have it, the first station was the Warrior's station. Here, a Guild Wars representative would shoot a dart from a "blow gun" at a player, like so:
and the player would have to block the dart with a shield. The player also got eye goggles for protection's sake. Which player took on the challenge? Why, that would be:
Me, putting on my best Warrior face. There would be five darts, and a player had to block four darts with the shield unless they were a warrior, which meant only three would need to be blocked. I guess all these years of game playing paid off in terms of hand-eye coordination, because I blocked all five. Boo-yah! We got a punch on our ribbon, symbolizing that we had completed the station and we headed to a competition of another kind - the trivia contest hosted by Alon of the Chatterbox Video Game Radio Show
Held in the satellite theatre (a new addition for this year, and a good idea), the show's format was like "Jeopardy!" - three contestants, categories from 100 to 500 points. The difference was that the audience could answer any question that the contestants missed as well as bonus questions attached to certain questions. Team Awesome took their seats and proceeded to watch one of the most embarrassing things we've ever seen. It was a complete blow-out - two of the contestants seemed to know absolutely nothing. The one guy who did seem to know something wasn't really that awesome, but he creamed the other guys, one of who got all of two questions right and the other who got just one. The audience would have been rioting except that we won a ton of prizes as a result. The one guy missed a 100 point easy question about Final Fantasy, which, if you read the article, is only the third best-selling video game franchise ever. This is not obscure, especially if you're at PAX, a video game convention. It got ugly at that point; one member of the audience yelled, "It's Jack Thompson! Get him!", for which he was given a prize.
But as I said, two men's humiliation turned out to be our profit. As a result of their epic ineptitude, three questions came out to the audience that landed in our laps. By the time all was said and done, three members of Team Awesome had taken home prizes.
Kelly won herself Red vs. Blue Season Three on DVD, Ed won a PSP case, which since he doesn't own a PSP might get modded into a DS Lite case and I won Project Gotham Racing 3 for the Xbox 360, which is a system I do not (yet) own. So perhaps the prizes weren't as excellent as one might have hoped, but what mattered was we won, thus establishing Team Awesome as the dominant trivia force at PAX 2006. w00t, indeed.
Kelly then hit her Tetris DS tournament while the rest of Team Awesome went to wait for some Console Freeplay to practice for the Guitar Hero tournament. While in line, we spotted Tycho/Jerry, one of the two great minds behind penny-arcade.com and half of the reason the entire convention happens in the first place. He was playing some Guitar Hero himself - let me assure you, he is good. Real good. Kristin introduced herself and Kelly (it took that long to get to the front of the Freeplay line) as librarians-in-training and suggested themselves as doing the much-needed tagging on the PA archives. They gave their e-mails to him, and the next day they made sure he remembered (more on that next post), so Team Awesome might become an adjunct part of PA. How cool is that? Even cooler? Kristin and Kelly met Tycho's mom!
Check out the Zelda t-shirt and the ball cap. "Penny-Arcade Mom?" Undeniably awesome.
We tried Guitar Hero on hard. We got creamed. We decided perhaps we weren't tournament ready...this year. If we get that PS2 and Guitar Hero, we might train the whole way for next year. Instead we went to the expo hall, which rocked and will be discussed in further depth tomorrow. Other quests were completed for Guild Wars, such as the Assassin's quest where Kristin showed her skillz at plugging cardboard standees in the head with Nerf guns, a Ritualist challenge where Sabe put together pieces of an plastic animal found in a tub of black beans and Kristin's impressive memory skills playing "Elementalist Simon".
Dinner happened and we then took our place for the Omegathon "Embarrass Yourself" round, which featured...Guitar Hero II. Tycho and Robert Khoo, the PA business manager, faced off on Stone Temple Pilots' "Trippin' On A Hole In A Paper Heart," complete with a Pete Townshendesque guitar smashing finale. I cannot believe how fast the game moves and how complex it gets on expert, which is the level they played on. The Omeganauts played on medium (the fans booed that decision) and featured such awesomeness as Motley Crue's classic "Shout At The Devil" and KISS's "Strutter," which means that when (not if) Kristin and I pick up Guitar Hero II it might be the first PS2 game my father ever plays. They even got the guitarists from that night's concerts, MC Frontalot and the Minibosses to play against each other on the Black Sabbath song "War Pigs"...which is a friggin' loooooooong song. For first timers, they did pretty good, which proves that if you're a good guitarist, you've got an advantage in playing the game.
We decided to skip Front's set to get a crack on Dead Rising, a game so similar in concept to Dawn of the Dead that there's a disclaimer on the front of the box that tells you that this game isn't authorized by George A. Romero. The concept? You have to survived 72 hours in a mall overrun by zombies. If you so desire, you can remain on the rooftop that you begin the game on for the entire 72 hours (which is 15-20 hours real-time), but most likely because this is a video game and not real life you'll enter the mall. Me? I'd stay on the friggin' roof, thank you very much. But our intrepid hero goes for it, and soon enough you're wading through screens with literally hundreds of zombies (the 360 power put to work there), trying to thwack a path through the undead. You can pick up just about anything to use as a weapon, which is something that I have actually been begging for in a video game since the Super Nintendo and something I often brought up in reference to the punishing ammo system in the Resident Evil series. It's just realistic, if you're out of bullets, to pick up something like a fireplace poker and whack the shit out of the slavering corpse trying to eat you. Until this game, this wasn't possible. Now, I can go to the sporting goods store, pick up a Louisville Slugger and make like a juiced-up Mark McGuire and swing for the fences. Hell, I could do that for 15 hours and not get bored!
The rest of the group went down to check out the Minibosses while I played about three minutes of Project Gotham Racing, returned the game and controllers and rejoined them. Kristin and I were just about passed out even as the Minibosses played some eardrum-melting NES adaptations. We finally decided to just head back to the hotel, where we promptly passed out. Sabe and Kelly joined us not too much later and we fell deep into dreamland after nearly 3/4ths a day of pure gaming.
Will our dashing heroes have enough gas in their collective tank to survive another day of geek overload? Or will they be crushed under the sheer tonnage of awesome to be found? Our heroes must complete their Guild Wars quest, avoid a filmic failure and pick up mass amounts of swag to bring home...and still find their way home. Tune in tomorrow!