PAX West! As a First timer o.o

 

That’s right, I got to go to PAX! On a 4-day pass no less! I honestly wasn’t sure if I would be able to as the tickets were too expensive for me to want to spring for at this time. BUT, I got a guy. A family member got two 4-day passes with the intention of bringing their significant other but some other vague stuff and long story short, I got to use their second pass! 

So here’s what PAX was like for me as a lifetime girl gamer, recently new city liver, and first ever video game based conference/expo goer! 

PAX isn’t just a gamer’s expo either, it is one of the largest game expos in the world and takes  over two whole buildings of the Seattle convention center for the 4-day Labor Day weekend. Expo hall hours are from 10am to 6pm each day but gaming areas are open till midnight with some of them even being 24hrs apparently! I didn’t stay there for that much of it though. I am still responsibly pet sitting this weekend so I could only do a few hour bursts at a time and try to take in as much as I could within my limitations. So I was maybe speed running this event, which isn’t ideal for a first time, but I still managed to play some games, enter some raffles, and spend way too much money!

I guess before I go further I should point out that I am not sponsored by anyone, no paid advertising or anything like that, I am just a gamer girl and a fan of some things or not of others. It should be obvious, given the nature of this blog, that all opinions are my own and not representative of anyone other than myself. 

Upon entering the expo hall I was met with this astounding multi-screen display at Bandai! Immediately I was overwhelmed and thought to myself “oh… this is a whole thing” I honestly don’t know what I was expecting but it wasn’t this! There were so many screens and computer set ups and displays and play testing and statues and cosplayers and the list goes on and on. I have been to some smaller conventions and a lot of educational conferences, but nothing like this! I am realizing, after the fact, that I did not get nearly enough pictures to really convey what it was like! The sheer scale and complexity of some of the displays was just next level! 

Needless to say, I was entirely overwhelmed! I wandered fairly aimlessly for a while, simply gawking at everything and forgetting that there was actually stuff to do too! Out of a desperate need for familiarity, I retreated to the skyway where a few vendors were set up selling various nerdy items.

(Ok, so I started writing this the weekend of the event, but then I got really sick with a nasty sinus infection and am only just starting to feel better -2 weeks later- so I am trying to pull together my fuzzy memories to finish off this post!)

SO MANY SHINY MATH ROCKS!

While I am definitely a dice hoarder, the dice were actually not even the most exciting thing here. The mimics were! Mimics and displacer beasts (and their copyright safe knock offs) are some of my favorite Dungeons and Dragons creatures! So I was getting very excited by the mimic stuff and particularly the pride mimics 😀 This was the sort of icebreaker I needed to start getting my head in the game for the rest of the event! 

With a few new mimics in my life and a new found focus I went back into the expo hall with more of a mission! I was going to make note of what different games were where and what little side questies I wanted to do to try and win free stuff, then I would return the following day to act! 

It was at this point I discovered the Borderlands 4 display. I have never played Borderlands and it’s not really my kind of game but they definitely had the best marketing, hands down, of the event. They brought a freaking rage room!

They continuously refilled it with glass and ceramic stuff to break and let people go in and just break everything, over and over again.What a fucking winner of an advertisement idea! I didn’t end up waiting in line for this but I enjoyed watching it and I think it was just perfect in every way for the game it was for. 

After stalking the place for a while I called it quits on the first day and made a plan for the following days. I mostly wanted to focus on a few of the opportunities to win laptops or computers, may as well right? Well, don’t get excited, I didn’t win anything. But because of the attempts I did get to try out a few things I probably wouldn’t have otherwise! Path of Exile 2 had a very large display with a computer give away so I took a shot at that one and was rather impressed with the Diablo-esque game. The demo they had set up was basically a boss challenge run so I can’t speak to any sort of story line but the game play was exciting and the fights were very challenging- I only made it through two bosses in the 20 minutes I had allotted. 

Having spent most of the weekend in the expo hall, I only had the last day to check out the whole other building! This is where most of the vendors and table top games were. I was short on time the last day so I didn’t really test any new games but I did check out some awesome vendors and was definitely taken with the minis made by Lethal Shadows.

Unfortunately, I am going to wrap up this post rather unceremoniously as the illness that hit me after this event has really taken all the fun out of everything!! PAX really was an amazing experience and I wish I had finished writing on it BEFORE I got sick!!

One last thing from that weekend though, I  did actually try out some new food too! There was a nice English sports bar right near the convention center so I checked that out one evening. I am a big fan of meat pies so I was delighted to see that this place had a mini pie flight! A set of four little delicious savory pies. They also poutine which was decent but not really anything super exciting to write about. 

Finally! A proper shepherd’s pie! I had been searching for one of these since I got here, with all the different cuisine options I was very hopeful to find one but every shepherd’s pie I tried other places had weird little twists to them, they weren’t necessarily bad, but not what I was after. But  this was exactly what I wanted and what I recall as a traditional shepherd’s pie in England. Minced meat, peas, carrots and whatever gravy stuff, topped with a nice spoonful of mashed potato- It was perfect! The steak and mushroom pie was a close second with its hearty deliciousness that paired really beautifully with the flaky pie crust. Both the other two pies were equally tasty and while I was certainly more familiar with chicken pot pie, that didn’t hurt the merit of the potato and leek pie in the least! I was actually fairly impressed since it was a type I had never tried before, and had no meat in it! Would definitely eat any and all of those pies again though, and I probably will!