We arrived in Seattle, a three to four hour drive thanks to several border crossings being rebuilt, around 10:30pm only to find my hotel had "lost" my reservation. Chris and Mikel came to my rescue, finding a place nearby that had just one room left, and Ian (my husband) and I scurried over to snag the room. The lady who checked me in didn't seem all that surprised when I told her what happened, but she gave me a discount. Sweet! I checked my e-mail quickly and fell into bed going right to sleep.

Friday was an incredibly busy day. I was only going to be at the show one day, so I'd packed everything humanly possible into the one day, starting with breakfast. We arrived to meet our breakfast friend only to find out she'd had a meeting mix-up, and our 9:30am breakfast was now an 11:00am lunch. We quickly discussed our schedule change and opted to head off to the convention centre, since we had to pick up our badges anyways. We hung around for an hour or so, and I played a level of Yggdra Union PSP to pass the time. We meandered back over around 10:30 and ended up having lunch at the Cheesecake Factory right across from the convention centre. I'd never been to one before and the food was fantastic (too bad I didn't have room for any cheesecake.) By then it was time to go to the show, as press were allowed in at 12pm (2 hours before the public.)

PAX is an interesting event when it comes to how it handles the press. Unlike E3 or GDC, the event is about the fans, so they come first. For example, when retrieving our badges, there were 8 lines for the public, and only 1 for press. While we picked a quiet time to grab ours, in the hour we were just hanging out we saw several members of the media wait up to 20 minutes to get a badge while the public sailed through in 2-3. In addition, we were warned in print that there would be no line-cutting for media tolerated at the events. A lot of companies are seriously contemplating PAX as the "new" E3, but if that's going to happen, PAX is going to need to balance the needs of the press with the public; as it stands right now, it felt a little alienating.

We wandered around the show floor, grabbing some early swag (and seriously awesome Little Big Planet swag bags...so sad that it's PS3 only!) and getting acquainted with the locations of our booths for meetings. Mikel wandered off to do his own thing but Chris and I stuck together and he took lots of pictures: no surprise, he has a really nice camera. We met Matt of 1UP fame, who Chris and I happen to play World of WarCraft with. It was nice meeting him IRL and he's a very mellow guy. We both had places to go so the meet and greet was kept to a brief hug and some chitchat, then off we both flew.

At 1pm, we went to Bethesda, which had an awesomely 1950s themed booth, complete with chrome trailer and 4-unit family posing (dolls, but still very cool). We spent an hour playing the game, and my impression can be read here. As much as I chuckled over the game, in the end it's a little too disgusting for my personal tastes, but I know I'll be buying it for my husband.

We had a quick break in meetings so I dashed over to the CVS booth where I played I <3 My Geek. It's a DS title in the vein of the Incredible Machines games of old and I managed to squeeze in 5 levels before I had to go. The lady in the booth kept trying to convince me to play "My Little Baby" (it's like Nintendogs with a rugrat). I tried valiantly to politely turn her down, but finally I just told her bluntly I'd been fixed and she sputtered out something flustered and wandered away. Oh well, off to SEGA.

Next up was Valkyria Chronicles. I'd eschewed most coverage of the game because it's PS3 exclusive (though rumour has it with FFXIII making the leap, other companies might...), but I decided to give it a shot because I love tactical RPGs. My impression of the game is here. Overall, I was incredibly impressed; I never thought I'd really want a PS3 game, but this one is firmly on my radar now. Is it worth the purchase of an entire system? It actually might be.

For our 3pm meeting, we arranged to meet up with Mythic and check out Warhammer Online. Up until now, media has been barred from the beta, so this was going to be our first chance to really sink our teeth into the title. After some confusion at the EA booth (they were showing a whopping 12 games this year) we decided to bail on them and just head straight to Mythic. It was a good choice, and we were quickly introduced to Spyke Alexander, the associate producer. We'd picked a good trio to demo the game: I was familiar with the tabletop play, having owned a Skaven army as a teenager; Chris had played with the pen and paper RPG, and Mikel had almost no experience with any of the lore. Spyke discussed a bit of the background lore as he politely booted a con-go'er past his limit (I get the impression they would be doing this a lot during the weekend) and loaded up the test server for us. This is where my impression picks up. Spyke regaled us with a tale of a recent "chicken raid" where 30 players, all level twelve and up, entered in the tier one RVR lake and were turned into chickens. Despite only doing one damage and dying in one hit, the chickens managed to peck a few newbies to death in the confusion, and Chris and I are seriously contemplating our own chicken raid in the future! All in all after the 45 minutes were done, I was incredibly impressed and Warhammer Online ended up being the best game I saw at the show, though it was a tight running between the top 3.

4pm had us visiting Tritton Technologies, who make high-powered (and high-priced) headsets. I'd accidentally written down "1311" for the booth; they were at 131, which meant I dashed across the entire length of the hall twice in under 5 minutes. Phew. We got to try out their newest headset that isn't even on the market yet. Chris and I put on headsets and he played some Resistance: Fall of Man for PS3. The sound was so incredible, I actually flinched when gunfire rang out. There are two things that always bug me about headsets: the lowest sounds never sound as good as a subwoofer, and the high sounds end up being tinny. I was pleased when both of these issues were resolved. The high pitched whine of the bullets as they flew past or hit metallic objects around the room were handled fabulously, and the rumble of the machinery around us was very realistic. At one point an enemy pounced Chris from the left and I instinctively shifted to the right, almost bumping right into Chris! The headset is compatible with 360, PS3 and PC; it's available next month for a whopping $169.99 but if there's ever been a headset worth that much, this one is it. It's clearly made for serious gamers and I can't see anyone regretting the purchase.

After that, we broke off into two groups; Mikel and Chris went off to stand in line for Dragon Age: Origins and I went over to Hudson Entertainment, where they were showing three games. First I played their new Fishing Master: World Tour. I'd avoided the first Fishing Master because the controls were kinda wonky, but this one was definitely fine tuned. It took a couple tries to figure out the speed I had to reel: first I was way too fast, then I was way too slow. I managed to reel in a few fishies after that, including one that set a new game record, hooray! I found I liked it a lot more than River King, mostly because a lot of the micromanagement (certain lures for certain fish) was removed and it was all focused on the fishing.

Next I got to play DecaSports, which is out now and how did I miss this? It's got curling and Mike from Hudson agreed the game was incredibly popular in Canada -- no surprise here. I played a round and ended with a tie, then let someone else play a round of archery. When they were done, we both played figure skating. It looked easy at first but it was a lot harder than I'd expected. I managed to grab second place, but the computer beat us all by several points :( I'll have to practice my leaps and spins. I wanted to try badminton, but their final game distracted me: Bomberman Blast, an upcoming WiiWare game.

To give a bit of background, I grew up playing Bomberman hardcore. Not only did I play it at home to keep my skills honed, there were video game tournaments at a local youth group which always featured Bomberman. The prize was 10 free rentals from a nearby video store, so once every 3 months I'd skip down to the tournament, utterly waste the competition, and walk away with my 10 rentals. I did this for several years running. Later on in 2000 when I went to visit my coworker Mikel for the first time (the site had some business meetings I was taking minutes for, plus I needed a vacation), we decided to go grab a party game for the N64. Fox suggested we pick up Bomberman and I demurely agreed, saying it "sounded good." When we got back to Mikel's house, my ruse was quickly exposed as I beat the guys five or six rounds in a row before they managed to get the grasp of the game enough to all gang up on me ;) Fun memories.

The new Bomberman game feels just like an old school title; 2D gaming at its finest. We played five rounds and while I managed to win two of them (killing Mike personally in both), the computers were set to difficult and they won the other three matches. Fast, furious, and fun: Bomberman doesn't get any better. To celebrate the playing, Mike graciously placed a "flame" temporary tattoo on my hand (it's a power-up from in-game that makes bombs' explosion reach one additional space on all sides). Sadly that meant people oo'ed and aah'ed over my 'awesome heartless drawing' (sigh) but you take the bad with the good.

I spent so much time with Hudson I was almost late to my next meeting! I dashed over to play some Reset Generation, and I got to speak with Scott Foe himself! I tried not to fangirl too much (he's also the guy who made Pocket Kingdom...why can't N-Gage have good plans in Canada?!) while we went over the gameplay. Reset Generation is incredibly fun and it's available to play for free online. It's a crazy mix of genres, with heavy influences from puzzle games and RPGs. While RPGamer currently doesn't cover the title, perhaps we might in the future. I encourage anyone who hasn't to give it a try, because I know once I'm done writing this I'm going to go play a round or two; it easily made the top 3 games I saw at the show. I ended my visit posing for a picture with three of the princesses. I'll be adding the picture to my bio page as soon as it's mailed to me -- thanks for snapping the photo Meghan!

It was then 6pm and time to head to our final two meetings for the day. I waited at the Codemasters booth, and watched Mikel and Chris walk by twice without seeing or hearing me. Did I mention the hall was slightly noisy? It wasn't so bad once you got to talking with people, but the ambient level made it tough to call out to anyone. We had a shared appointment with another group of three but we had an entertaining host and he was able to hold all of our attention well. Though Chris wasn't entirely sold on the game at E3, I really liked what I saw and further details can be found in the impression right here. I'm anxiously looking forward to receiving a review copy, and it can't come soon enough! I want to suck more enemies through portals.

While we all wanted to see more, we reluctantly left Jason behind and went over to the last booth of the day and got to see the new Puzzle Quest game. I have a secret to admit: I'm not really good at puzzle games. Now some of it comes from not being able to tell some of the pieces apart, but thankfully since the E3 demo the developers have added little icons on top of the shapes so they can be quickly identified. For additional details, check here. I got to play two rounds, both of which were filled with Mikel mocking me the entire time since I'd forgotten that only skulls (which are now bombs) damage the enemies. I did persevere and my second victory was better than my first.

After that, it was time for the exhibition hall to close and for me to go home. We hugged Chris goodbye, as he was going to a concert that night. Mikel, Ian, and I hopped into the car after getting slightly lost in the parking garage. We dropped Mikel off, grabbed some Burger King, and drove home, arriving around 11:30pm. I immediately collapsed into bed and fell right asleep. It was an incredible day and one I won't forget soon. I want to give heapings and heapings of thanks to everyone I met today and everyone I wasn't able to meet who was involved with getting meetings and the like together. Hopefully you've enjoyed reading this diary and the impressions as well.