Holy crap and that's day one done. Sorry about lack of smaller updates like I was hoping to do but wireless at the convention centre was more or less not working... to many people overloading their poor servers. Rumour has it maybe it'll be fixed tomorrow?

We started the day down at the PAX Theatre, where the keynote was going on. We had no intentions of going, we just wanted Intel Badges for a chance at swag, that and a chance to see how crazy the line up was. The picture doesn't really do it justice. It went into the venue, outside, down the block, around, along that, into the plaza out back, snaked back 3 times and when we left we heard that it was heading back up the other side of the block. Madness. That being said when we got to the convention centre that line up wasn't much better.

 When entering the convention hall this year I was over come with the usual initial sensory over load of walking into a loud, dim, but with lots of flashy signs and lights, and then went into child in a candy store mode.

Well It's that time of year again and once again I find myself in Seattle for PAX Prime. I'll be trying to get as much info out over the next 3 days as possible with pictures of all the shiny new games and the trade floor (which I might add is nearly double the size this year). You can check back here or follow my misadventures on twitter @3pgPAX.

Today's adventures were more of airport/customs fun, finding hotel, food and then ending up at a board game PAX meet up where we took over the Sheraton Hotel Lobby.

Citadels is card game for 2-7 player of bluffing, building, diplomacy and accidental back stabbing, it will make more sense in a minute, I swear. The objective of the game was to build buildings for your citadel, all which cost a varying different amount of gold between 1 and 6. Each player had a role card, which grants them an extra ability or income each turn, that you also go to change at the end of every round. Starting with one player each player at the top of each round shuffled through the 8 different role cards and chose one in secret from everyone else, until there were none remaining. Each class has a different turn order, labelled from 1-8 that will always be the same, so for instance the Assassin is always the first person to go in a round, they get to choose one other role to assassinate each round and they miss that round. I say role because they aren't choose a player, they say I'm assassinating the Merchant, not really knowing who they are until it becomes the merchants turn and a corpse turns up.

All in all a lot of fun, a bit slow on the uptake but once it got rolling it was a lot more about guessing who to screw and how.

The gem of the night though was Fantasy Flight Games' Red November, a cooperative board game where 6 gnomes are on a submarine with a bunch of vodka that's breaking down. Everyone has to work together to keep themselves alive as fires break out, bulkheads get blocked, parts of the sub flood and if you're really unlucky, a kraken attack. It was much simpler and a hectic crazy of "Well do we put out the fire or try and stop the missile bay from exploding". It's also great playing a game where vodka makes you more powerful. Although sadly, just like in real life there is the consequences of the hangover.

Over all a great first day and I need to give a shout out to a few of the guys over at The Modern Day Pirates who we were board gaming with most of the night.

That about wraps up the festivities of pre-PAX. I'm off to bed to rest of for a day of gaming sensory overload.

I do ask over the next couple of days you bear with my spelling and grammar abilities, or lack thereof, as well pictures being updated later into the posts as my main goal is to get information out as fast as possible this weekend with the intent of tidiness a little bit later.

Cheers from PAX.

"We've had the idea for some time of exploring the idea of what video characters do when they're not ‘on the clock' in the games we play," explained Telltale CEO Dan Connors via the game's announcement. "We pitched the idea to friends in the industry and it really resonated. We all had a great time imagining what these guys would banter about while slinging cards – from there Poker Night at The Inventory was born."

Overview

The game is pretty straight forward, load up and pick your mode.  Arcade has 5 different maps with 3 different difficulties and modes. You can play free play, timed, defend daisy (your girl friend) and survival. To unlock the next levels you need to get atleast a bronze, getting a silver and gold medal will unlock character bios, artwork and vision filters (change the way the camera looks). The bronze isn't too horribly hard with a little practice so you can un-lock the levels pretty quickly.  Note:  To change the settings that matter you need to click the left most tomb stone when you boot the game up. The in game options only really change sound.

Controls

This is the biggest problem I have with this game. If you do not have a usb controller, this game will be a NIGHTMARE to play. Even with a controller (I use a xbox 360) you have to use the lock on function since for some reason they made it so you can't run one direction and shoot in another. Right trigger fire and left trigger brings your stick of fire out to burn zombies. You will end up holding down the lock on the entire time, its not bad but I would REALLY prefer it to be a standard shooter set up. Once I used the lock on and controller the game got about 10x more fun, a mouse is just.. a nightmare.. and you are on fire.. while drowning.. and fighting a bear.

Audio/Video

The graphics have a cartoonish feel to it but it fits really well with the game and the audio is good but will get repetitive quickly. Once you listen to the songs for each level a few times I would advise slapping on some music of your own, the sound effects though are excellent. The sound of a chain saw tearing through zombies is really satisfying.

Replay value

For a game like this it has a surprising amount of things to do, most of which take some time and know how to do. Also you can go back and just kill a shit ton of zombies if you feel like killing some time, or of you cant connect to the internet and need to blow something up.  It is a simple to pick up game and at no point have I felt like it got impossibly hard, very difficult yes but never to the point where I have said "this is just stupid". Situational awareness, having an escape route and knowing whats on the map can keep you alive through just about anything. If you have $10 to spare and like to kill zombies with shotguns, lawn mowers, chain saws, bats, or other various weapons its worth picking up. On Steam.

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