Waking Up is Hard to Do

This week I've been returning to real life after spending a wonderful week in Oklahoma with my girlfriend Blue. Much like a dream it seemed to last whilst it was actually happening, but once it was over it seemed that the time was way too short. Now that I'm back in London and settling into the same old routine, whilst I'm constantly wishing I was still there, I am sustained by some great memories and a general sense of well being about life.

The real joy from the week was simply being able to spend time together. Probably the cruelest part of us having to go our separate ways after PAX was that we had literally an hour together, maybe slightly more, before having to say goodbye for the first time. Just being able to sit together watching a movie, go out to eat or hang out with friends meant so much after two months apart.

The first weekend was spent celebrating Blue's birthday, including a wonderful dinner made by her grandmother on Sunday, which gave me a good chance to get to know her family. It's nice to know that it wasn't just my grandparents who refuse to let you leave without first taking several containers of food.

Of course being in Oklahoma meant we also spent a good amount of time hanging out with Sunflower, he being the reason that Blue and I even met in the first place. We went out to eat a few times and took in the film Paranormal Activity, in preparation for Halloween, which didn't really affect Blue and me, but apparently terrified Sunflower, someone I had previously thought had managed to dull his sense of fright through overexposure. We also watched WWE Raw and Smackdown together, since both Sunflower and Blue are keen followers. I haven't followed wrestling for some years now, but I have to admit it was pretty cool seeing how much has changed in that time, and how much is still the same.

Midweek we went to Tulsa zoo which was good fun, on a nice day when it wasn't too busy and we basically had the run of the place. It was actually a bit strange seeing a place like that so empty, almost as though it was supposed to be closed, and even weirder with all the Halloween decorations everywhere. My personal highlight were the huge fish in the rain forest exhibit, but I won't deny the appeal of Blue's favourites, the still very young baby piglets in the petting zoo.

Our Halloween activities began on Friday when we went to a Dave and Busters for dinner with Blue's friends Paul and Candace. After dinner we decided to use the game cards for the attached arcade to get as many prize tickets as possible and perhaps take something away with us. As chance would have it, we managed to find several machines that were being very generous with their tickets, including one that erroneously paid out the jackpot when I played it, thus allowing Blue to go home with a brand new plushie elephant and a police baseball cap. After that we drove to an attraction called Psycho Path, a sort of ghost ride through the woods featuring a variety of dioramas and set pieces which were very well done and did make us jump a few times. It was really fun, despite us having to queue in the cold for a couple of hours beforehand, which was of course just another excuse to get to know each other.

On Halloween night itself we drove to Oklahoma City to see Blue's friend Vice in order to see a production of Sweeney Todd which I had been interested to see for a while, since my brothers played me the soundtrack of the movie. I really enjoyed it, but unfortunately I don't think it was Blue's sort of thing. I get the feeling she had more fun with our costumes, exceeding all my expectations with her Nazi vampire costume and even including me in the act by applying a prosthetic bite wound to my neck. I've never really dressed up for Halloween before, but it was so much fun I'm already giving thoughts to what I'll do for next year.

It was hard to leave on Sunday, but at the very least we did finally get the chance to hang out at the airport, something that was unexpectedly denied us in September when we found that we couldn't go through security at the same time. Our time together was so precious, I'm trying to hold on to every memory I have, and new moments keep returning to me like buried treasures. I'm already looking forward to the time when Blue can come and visit me here. It seems like a long time in the future, but I know it'll be worth the wait.

PAX 09: Something Part 3

Here is the last part of my PAX '09 writeup, arriving much later than I would have liked, but I thought I should post it before I write anything about my trip to visit Blue last week. I had actually finished it last week before I left, but hadn't had time to read through it to make sure it fit together properly, and didn't have the opportunity to do so until today.

Sunday was, as usual, a sort of cleanup day for the show floor. By then we had more or less seen everything that caught our eye when we first arrived, so it was all about filling in the gaps in our experience, and maybe unearthing some hidden gems. We were not disappointed.

A few people wanted to have a closer look at Scribblenauts, the DS puzzle game that boasts the ability to conjour any object the player can write in and allow them to use it to achieve their goal. The game has now been out for a few weeks, and some of the failings in its mechanics extensively discussed, but on the show floor, in the hands of a maestro like hp1703, it was amazing. The game seems to be at its best when the player is free to experiment with the vast tool-set, and can produce some hilarious circumstances.

Whilst browsing around the Microsoft booth again whilst others tried out the free Left 4 Dead 2 machine that not many people seemed to have realised was there, I came across The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom. This is to be an XBLA release early next year, and seems to be going for the same appeal as Jonathon Blow's Braid did last year, as well as using some of its gameplay mechanics. Playing as the eponymous stuffy old gent, one must collect all the pies in the 2D environments by using a combination of platform dexterity and the assistance of a number of clones of yourself, set up by performing an action with the 'record' button held down. Clones can be used as moving stepping stones or spring-boards when swinging their umbrellas. It was an interesting little game, sporting an aesthetic similar to old silent movies, and scratched an itch that has definitely gone untreated for some time.

As the Modcast's racing game guy I decided I needed to give Need for Speed: Shift a try, despite never really getting in to any game in the series before. This is the attempt by EA to make the game appeal to a more hardcore simulator crowd, aping some of the familiar sim features of games like Forza and Gran Turismo such as extensive vehicle customisation and a stricter driving model. Unfortunately this isn't really the type of racing I enjoy, and I couldn't discern that it was doing anything to make itself stand out when the two heavy hitters are just about to stand off against each other.

Somehow I got separated from the group for a bit, and so checked out the League of Legends stand. For some reason clones of Defence of the Ancients, the venerable and much loved mod for Warcraft 3, have been gaining popularity recently. Stardock's Demigod arrived last year, and recently the closed beta for Heroes of Newerth was available. League of Legends is another of these role playing strategy games, in which the player controls a single hero unit in the midst of an RTS-like battle populated mostly by AI characters. As they were gearing up for a live match that I didn't have time to stay and watch I didn't see much of the game itself, but I did come to understand that the game does take a few steps further away from the DOTA formula than HoN, and may even allow novices a bit of an easier time by initially limiting the choice of hero and providing guidance on how to play each type.

The real hidden gem of the day came in the form of Elemental: War of Magic, which offers nothing more complicated than a very well rounded and thoughtful singleplayer 4X experience, along with the most comprehensive customisation tools I had seen in a very long time, with the promise of a robust infrastructure to allow the more creative players to share their content. The game has a very Lord of the Rings look to it, but manages to differentiate itself by morphing the world into a cloth map dotted with pewter miniatures if the player zooms out far enough. The developer promised that the game would still be compelling even in this abstracted view, reflected by the beta being cloth map only. We had high hopes for this game, and that was without even seeing any of the real-time combat.

The last official day of PAX was wrapped up with dinner at The Cheesecake Factory, one last chance to sit down together with a proper meal and just hang out for a while. As usual the food was excellent and the waiting staff very accommodating considering the size of our party. They even let me order alcohol on my UK driving license, which caused some problems last year.

As I said before in the first part of this writeup, this year we had decided to budget a bit more time around the main days of the show for just doing non-gaming things. Thursday had been the zoo, so of course with our free day on Monday we had to check out Seattle's most famous landmark, the Space Needle. And as luck would have it, it was Labour day and the last day of a Seattle music festival called Bumbershoot, meaning there was a full fair set up around the base of the Needle, and a bit further away some large crowds watching the live music. The place was bustling, but not packed, and it didn't take us long to get tickets to go up the Space Needle. It's a fascinating construction and is surprisingly spacious at the top. The view is amazing, even on the rather grey and drizzly day that we visited. I was very surprised to find a free-to-use telescope on a stand on one side, looking out at the down town area. In the UK something like that would definitely have required you put a coin in. When we came down again we explored some of the attractions at the foot, although sadly because it was raining there was very little enthusiasm to go on any of the rides. We meandered through a little knickknack shop selling various souvenirs, and Blue and I got our picture taken in front of the world's largest Lite Brite. This might have been more impressive to me if I hadn't had to ask what a Lite Brite was, but it was still nice to have a memento of the day, and I'm still wearing the free wristbands we got.

Tuesday was a shorter day since our departures were at various times, meaning some of us would have to part ways in order to get to the airport on time. Even so, we still had time to wonder around the Pike Place market one more time. The spare American dollars burning a hole in my pocket motivated me to track down one of the clay ocarinas, stamped with the Zelda Triforce symbol, that we had seen earlier in the trip, but sadly the stall selling them was not there on that day. As we walked to the bus stop, towards those hard goodbyes that even then I couldn't predict, we passed by the Maximus Minimus again, still playing The Beatles, but this time it was Something, during the song's beautifully sad guitar solo that played out as we waited to cross the road. It seemed like a fitting ending to what had been a great holiday with my friends. Little did I know that some of the worst moments, and one of the best moments, were mere moments away, ready to for me to associate them with the song forever.

I'd like to take one last, very belated opportunity, to thank everyone again for making PAX 2009 such an unforgettable trip. It really sucks that we all live so far away, but it's always comforting to know that you're just on the other side of MSN or Xbox Live. Actually spending real time together was a fantastic wakeup call that I shouldn't be taking anyone I've met through NooBTooB for granted. So until we see each other again, let's stay connected and play some games.

Hitting the Road Again

It's been a pretty good week for me so far, getting myself collected again after a rather stressful period last week where I was feeling constantly ill and unable to sleep when I wanted to. I've been sleeping and eating properly, getting back into my exercise routine and generally feeling good about life. This has been helped by my videos going up on Retroware TV and actually beginning to generate a bit of ad revenue (not enough to live on, exactly, but it's money I wouldn't have had before) and that has me more keen than ever to actually get some of the ideas I'm having for my next review down on paper. Work is a bit tedious at present but I'm staying positive about it; nothing to do with the game itself, more to do with the circumstances under which we have to test it.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to be flying to Tulsa to visit my girlfriend Blue, in order to celebrate her birthday and Halloween. I'm obviously very excited about this, not just because I get to spend time with Blue, but also because this will be my first American Halloween where, TV informs me, they take it a bit more seriously as an event. Thus I'm not going to be around much next week since I'll be offline, and I won't be on the next two episodes of the Modcast (although I will be hanging out with Sunflower for a while as well). I should be able to keep up with Shuttercal, and occasionally I might be on Twitter, but aside from that I'll be gone until November starts. See you then!

Jam Enslaver Reviews...Now on Retroware TV

As I mentioned in a recent post, my videos can now all be found at Retroware TV, a great website focused on videos about older video games. All my old stuff can be found there in one neat, easy to access page, and whenever I actually get my arse in gear and make a new one, it'll show up on the site a couple of days before YouTube.

I was completely thrilled to be asked to become part of Retroware TV's lineup, since I had already become familiar with them through the outstanding Happy Video Game Nerd show, one of the more recent influences on my videos that made me strive to put a bit more substance and back-story into my reviews. If you're interested in retro games at all, I can highly recommend taking a look, in particular at Retroware TV's own show, Video Game Take-out, which covers portable games, and of course the Happy Video Game Nerd.

Another Clever Title Explaining That This Is A Post About What I've Been Up To Recently

After all, there are only so many ways of saying "Update"...

So, what have I been doing? Well, I'm just about recovered from whatever mystery illness I had a week or so ago. It's definitely nice to not be weirdly conscious of your stomach the whole time, and it's meant I've been able to actually get back to enjoying work. I really felt like such an ass when I told people that I was having a bit of a tough time at work when I sit around playing video games all day, but the fact is that sometimes it can be pretty dull. This week was better though, in part because I was able to take charge to a limited degree and apply a bit more structure to what I was doing.

Outside of work I've been editing the videos we took at PAX where we interviewed as many NooBTooBers as possible with a set of seven questions. It was a pretty big task, since it required a lot of chopping up of videos into very small clips, but it was definitely worth the effort. Hopefully that video will be posted on one of NooBTooB's YouTube accounts soon, along with the Dominic Armato interview.

Speaking of videos, another bit of exciting news is that after almost two years my video reviews have been noticed by a website, Retroware TV, who will be featuring my videos as soon as I can get them reuploaded to a different video hosting service. It's nice to have some recognition outside of NooBTooB (which will of course still be getting my videos as well), especially from a place like Retroware TV, which I was already familiar with through the Happy Video Game Nerd reviews, probably the biggest influence I had when I decided to step up the amount of background information in my videos.

With all that going on it might be a while before I get around to writing up the last part of my account of PAX, which is a real shame because the iron has gone very cold in that respect and I'm left pretty much going off the brief notes I took whilst at the show. There are still some parts that naturally will stay with me forever, but I was very pleased with the level of incidental detail I managed to work into Part 1 that I won't be able to carry over to the conclusion.

I'll also take this opportunity to draw attention to two other new things I've started doing. These are daily, so if you're craving a bit of content from me you need only direct yourself to them. The first is that I've started playing Animal Crossing on my Gamecube again, taking a bit of creative license with the way I interpret the goings on in town, and have been providing a daily update on how things are shaping up on my Twitter page (you can also see all the updates in the sidebar to the right on this blog). The second is that I've signed up to Shuttercal, a great website that lets you upload a photograph every day for people to see, slowly creating your own calendar. It's a very convenient way of keeping track of what people get up to, and gives me motivation to actually learn to use my fancy camera now that I'm forced to manually adjust the settings myself. You can get to my Shuttercal page by clicking on the logo in the sidebar (underneath the Modcast logo).

So there we go, that's what I'm doing these days. As I said, I'm going to be busy preparing my videos for Retroware TV for the next week or so, so don't expect much activity on the blog until then.

PAX 2009: Something Part 2

Friday was of course the first day of the show proper, so we got up earlier than we probably should have to give the exhibition floor a brief explore before attending Ron Gilbert's keynote speech. Not being much of a PC gamer back in the day, the Monkey Island series has nevertheless really grown on me recently, particularly with the fantastic new Tales of Monkey Island, so it was a great pleasure to hear Gilbert talk about the development of the series and the early days of the Lucasfilm game division, later Lucasarts. For some reason hearing people talk about the time before gaming was as huge as it is now really interests me; I can't get enough of the stories they tell about the bizarre conditions they had to work in, the clever ways they overcame the technical limitations to achieve their goals, and the startlingly offhand way they mention that they created entire software frameworks in their spare time. It's very inspiring, and for someone who doesn't know the first thing about coding, more than a little scary.

For some reason this year's PAX schedule wasn't quite as full of the live on-stage demos in the main theatre that took up such a large amount of our time last year, which on the one hand was a shame because they are always awesome, but on the other meant that we had more opportunities to discover games about which we didn't know anything. As such, much of the rest of this writeup will just be an overview of the games that we saw, sprinkled as liberally as I can with special events such as the NooBTooB gatherings. The first of these, though, was almost directly after the keynote ended, when Locke and I had an appointment with Telltale Games to interview Dominic Armato, the voice of Guybrush Threepwood from Monkey Island. Even though I've now landed a job working on the development side of making games, I still get a real kick out of doing journalist stuff for NooBTooB. I think the interview went well, Dominic is such a great guy it was very easy to talk naturally to him, and I will be able to post or point people towards the video of it soon. Whilst at the Telltale booth I picked up a nice poster of a Steve Purcell painting that they all signed and I plan to have framed since it looks so good.

Friday's show floor was packed with stuff to see, so let's get down to it. First off Locke played a little Left 4 Dead 2, describing it as being analogous to the transition from Gears 1 to Gears 2; largely the same game but with some well considered improvements and better level design. The two of us then moved to the Dante's Inferno booth, complete with a giant statue of Dante himself wielding a massive bone scythe. I wasn't really sure what to make of the game since it seems to be studying the lessons taught by God of War very closely, but my brother Andrew has since told me that it looks awesome so I'll take that to mean it's doing what it needs to. Darksiders, following its tiny but very impressive showing at last year's show, managed to do a 180 for both. This year eyes were drawn by a monstrous mechanical bull replica of War's horse, Ruin, and for which there was a sizable line to ride (that's me in the picture), but the playable game at the booth was from right at the beginning of the game, and thus not showing any of the Zelda-style elements that have me so excited about the game. Even so, it was looking a lot more polished than last year, and having a button that makes you grab enemies and smash them into pieces against the floor is as satisfying as it sounds. Before meeting up with people at the line for Ubisoft's stage demonstration, we spent a little time at Nexon's booth to check out Dungeon Fighter, which they seemed to have spent a lot of money to draw attention to since all the swag-bags had its logo on them, and the hall for the queue going into the main theatre had several of their banners up. The game will be a free-to-play side-scrolling online brawler in the same fashion as Streets of Rage or, more appropriately, Castle Crashers since it also has a lot of RPG elements. What struck me was just how good the game looks, consisting entirely of 2D sprites that reminded me of an SNK fighting game, full of character and detail. It's surprisingly fun, too, and the leveling, skills and different characters give it a chance to stay fun even after several hours. I'm looking forward to playing the beta which begins next week for people who picked up codes.

The one big demonstration of the whole weekend was for Splinter Cell: Conviction and Assassin's Creed II. For some reason I still have trouble getting excited about Splinter Cell, both in its old form and now the new direction it has taken showing Sam Fisher outside of his usual agency. The demo shown was pretty much the one seen at E3 and didn't do much to improve my impressions of it. Assassin's Creed II, on the other hand, is something I am looking forward to. The general tone of the demo was that Ubisoft had listened to a lot of the complaints coming out of the first game and tried to fix them, so there will now be more variety in the side missions, more tools at main character Ezio's disposal, and some linear segments to help break up the game. These last were particularly interesting to me, since they are apparently intended to teach the player how to use all the different aspects of the game, rather than finding one way that works for them and then using it ad nauseum. At the moment I'm no longer in a position to buy every big new game that comes out, and I have already earmarked my game spending for the rest of the year on other titles, but I'm still keen to play Assassin's Creed II at some point down the line.

Friday was brought to a close by Kicklefest, the now annual tradition of all the NooBTooBers attending PAX to gather in the retro console free-play room and play through Kickle Cubicle, for the NES, as well as just hang out, play games and eat pizza. Since I had already played a few levels of the game last year I took advantage of some of the games set up to play, including Steel Battalion with its hideously complicated and expensive controller, and Darwinia+ the Xbox 360 port of Darwinia coming out later in the year.

On Saturday morning we decided that we should spend the time needed to queue for the Borderlands demo, which had been thronged with people on the previous day. Some people in our party felt that the wait wasn't really worth it, since it was very hard to judge the game's qualities by jumping into a pre-existing character and playing for only a few minutes. I however remained optimistic about the game's blend of FPS and RPG sensibilities, and am looking forward to jumping into its cartoonish-styled world with three friends fairly soon. As the Modcast's arcade racer enthusiast I made a point of trying out Split Second, the upcoming title from Black Rock studio in which car combat is performed by causing certain effects on the track itself, such as the airport control tower collapsing across the track or a jumbo jet landing as the player speeds along the runway. It was certainly an interesting concept, and certainly fun to play on the single race I did, but I was left with a few concerns regarding how replayable the game would be after all the flashy explosions had already been seen.

By then it was just about the top of an hour, meaning Bethesda would be doing a live demo of Brink at their booth. Brink was probably the biggest surprise at the show for a lot of us; previously we hadn't even heard of it, but afterwards we all agreed that it was one to watch. The game is a first person shooter that blends Mirror's Edge-style acrobatics with a fairly deep class and leveling system similar to Splash Damage's previous title, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Players can at any time pull up a radial menu of different objectives that are dynamically created as the game goes along, and can range from primary objectives like escorting a target to simply switching class in order to balance out the team. Along side this another interesting aspect of the game is how it handles multiplayer. Whilst it is possible to play entirely with bots the game is very focused on cooperative play with up to eight players in your team. But, if you like that sort of thing, it's also possible to play the scenarios against another team of people. The action looks solid and the idea of another FPS RPG appearing so close to Borderlands suggests there may well be a rivalry for our money at some point in the future.

Another live demo that impressed us on Saturday was for Ron Gilbert's Death Spank, billed as Monkey Island meets Diablo, taking the humorous dialogue and whimsical style of the former and blending it with the addictive loot-hacking of the latter. I've become a small fan of this kind of game, and I really liked the presentation, but overall it'll probably come down to whether the game has multiplayer or not for me. The last game from Saturday that I'll mention was Dark Void, one of Capcom's latest attempts to make games that appeal to a Western audience, and I have to say I was very impressed. The game has something of an old B-movie style to it, featuring a protagonist in a leather jacket fighting flying saucers whilst blasting around on a personal jetpack. I really like arcade flying games, so I was pleased to find that the aerial combat worked very well. On the ground, the combat was very Gears of War, but in a good way, and I'll be interested to see how the 'vertical cover' aspect of the game shapes up.

NooBTooB capped off Saturday with a trip to Gameworks, the SEGA operated arcade/sports bar just across the street from the convention centre. As with last year it was a little disappointing, although this time it was because a lot of the machines were simply missing, rather than just broken. The highlight for me was probably the cooperative Hummer racing game, featuring a moving seat for the players, which I got to play with Blue (see embedded video). In addition, it was a real treat to see forum member cowlauncher show off his DDR moves, there's something hypnotizing about watching someone really good play that game.

I'll wrap up this post here and save Sunday for the last one. Apologies for how long it took to write, one of the things we apparently all took away from PAX was suspected swine flu, so I've been laid up for a while but am just about recovered. Hopefully part 3 won't take this long!

PAX 2009: Something Part 1

And so, Penny Arcade Expo is over again for another year. A whole year before NooBTooB descends as a group on Seattle, to enjoy gaming together, make noise in crowded rooms and generally stand out as one of the best communities on the Internet. Just three days is not long enough to spend with such amazing people. Even adding an extra day and a half on either end of the official PAX timeframe seemed all too short when those of us going to the airport on Tuesday said goodbye to Locke, Gameshark, Veri7as and Ar7emis at the bus stop, or when Gravehound and I had to watch Sunflower, hp1703 and Blue walk through the terminal security barrier without us. hp tweeted shortly after that he didn't remember parting being so hard last year, and in that he is absolutely correct. I can't be certain as to why that is, but something was definitely different.

Ironically, the extra time we got to hang out with each other outside the show probably made things harder. Last year those of us who attended were kept occupied almost the entire time, visiting panels, walking the show floor and helping out with official NooBTooB events. This year, though, we had more time to actually bond with each other. Our trips to the Seattle zoo and the Space Needle allowed us to relax a bit and get to really know each other, rather than trying to madly dash around trying to fit everything in. Secondly, the fact that more people were able to come changed things a lot. The obvious absence last year was Sunflower, leaving us one host short of a full Modcast contingent, but him aside I was happy that our core group was larger and felt like more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle were in place, including some pieces I never realised would be so important. Even though some of us talk every day, it seems like a pale substitute to what we had over the weekend in Seattle and I miss everyone terribly.

But enough focusing on the fact that my best friends live thousands of miles away. Let's talk about the good times we had at and around PAX, which began for me at about 9.30pm on Wednesday evening when I was dropped off by the airport shuttle outside the Red Lion hotel and was greeted by cheery shouts from a party already begun, seated at a table in front of the Elephant and Castle, bizarrely enough a British pub that seems to specialize in giant deserts and beer made close to where I live in London. Aside from Gravehound who flew in from the UK the day after, I was the last to arrive, so I was able to meet those I would be sharing rooms with all at once. It was great to see Veri7as, Ar7emis, Gameshark, Locke and hp1703 again after such a long time, and to be able to put a face to wrtswoopes, and her sister Lacey who was bold enough to make the journey too. I was very nearly floored when I realised the man walking up the stairs towards me, offering to take my bag, was Sunflower, for so long just a voice without a picture, and later a series of photographs that I could never be sure of since many featured him wearing various different cosplay outfits. But it was definitely him, still the same friendly guy, grumbling about something (in this case the nasty multicoloured nachos he had ordered). Sitting next to him, understandably tired and a little reserved around so many new people, was Blue, Sunflower's friend who I had enjoyed playing many a round of Horde with in the past, and who I had wanted to get to know better for a while.

Opportunities to get acquainted (and reacquainted) came soon as we ate and then later organised ourselves into hotel rooms. As with last year we over-stacked the two rooms with people to save on the bill, and unlike last year I actually took my turn on the floor a couple of times. My night job has really messed with my sense of time, so by now I'm used to waking and sleeping at completely different hours from day to day, thus meaning my jetlag was no worse than those who hadn't come so far. As it turned out, some issue with the booking meant that one of the rooms only had one large double bed, instead of the two beds we had asked for, so even with the addition of a cot there were many places to be taken on the floor. I didn't find it too much of a bother, the Red Lion seems to use some fairly comfortable carpeting, and the hardship probably helped everyone bond a bit more (except maybe Gameshark, who cheekily managed to get the cot all to himself more times than everyone else put together).

Thursday being our first full free day, we first went for our customary piroshkis from Pike Place Market, which were of course as delicious as always as we sat in the public place overlooking the harbour, gathered in wonder around hp's giant doughnut (seriously). On our way to the market, we encountered something different from last year in the open space on the corner of Pike and Second street, a large van selling food called Maximus Minimus, done up to look like a gigantic mechanical pig. We passed it several times over the course of the weekend, and each time it was blasting out Beatles hits. I want to say it was I Want to Hold Your Hand that first time, but I might be making that up. We took the opportunity to once again visit the 'nerd store', home to comic books, board games, RPGs and all sorts of pop-culture merchandise, which left us all pondering the eternal question: Who would win in a fight? A unicorn or a narwhal?

Thursday was also our trip to the zoo (yes, we're all still children inside), something I hadn't done for at least a decade. I think the most impressive animals were the bears, kept in a large enclosure with a surprisingly low fence that had us speculating what exactly was preventing them from escaping. Another highlight was the red panda, which we spent the entire day saying we were going to next, but only actually arrived at just before we left, only to find a seemingly empty enclosure. A little patience was paid off by what has to be the most ridiculously cute animal I have ever seen. Despite the name, a red panda is actually a sort of large raccoon with reddish brown fur and a huge fuzzy tail. Something worthy of note was that all the animals were very active, with only a small number evading sight by being too still. It made for a great day out, and I can recommend the Seattle zoo to anyone with an opportunity to go. The zoo was also the first scene of the three new foods I tried whilst in America, Sunflower giving me his corndog, which it turns out tastes like toad-in-the-hole, but in a handy stick form.

Thursday night was capped off with Locke teaching us how to play one of the boardgames he brought with him. Smallworld is a very simple Risk-like game, in which the objective is to collect the most gold across eight ages (i.e. turns) of a fantasy world inhabited by various different races and species. The great thing about it is that it has almost infinite replay value due to the random nature of the races, each being randomly assigned a prefix at the start of the game. So for example, in the first game we played I drew Underground Dwarfs, able to instantly travel to any space with a cavern, and collecting double gold for each mine I controlled. The other games we managed to play throughout the holiday were Shadows Over Camelot, an amazingly fun cooperative game where you must work together to complete various quests, but always be mindful that one of your number might be a traitor, and Cosmic Encounter, which I won't comment on because I made the mistake of teaming up with Gameshark, which seemed to have the effect of everyone wanting us to lose from the very start. I'm only just getting into that untapped realm of the boardgame beyond old favourites like Monopoly and Scrabble, so I was very glad of an opportunity to sample some of its delights.

This post is already massive, so I'll draw the first part of my writeup to a close for now. Look out for part 2, coming soon.

Also from PAX, my Burrito-Cam

My full writeup of PAX is shaping up to be something of a monster, so to tide you over until I'm done with it, here is a video I only saw about a day ago. One time on the Modcast Sunflower commented that I sleep like a burrito, probably referring to this picture taken last year at PAX 2008:
This year, on the first night in the hotel, the others apparently set up a hidden camera to catch me in the act. Here is the hilarious result, please watch all the way to the end, and remember I had absolutely no idea the camera was there until I got home and saw it on YouTube: