This past weekend, PAX East took place in Boston Massachusetts, a place where traffic laws are purely optional.  A friend and myself took it upon ourselves to buy some Saturday passes and go to our first PAX ever.

Look, I get it, PAX is a big event that everyone goes to.  I also am aware I went on the busiest day.  It would be absurd to expect to play everything I wanted, when I wanted.  I’m not stupid.  But I was not prepared for how many times I would be at an actual standstill because people had suddenly lost the ability to walk.

It was a sea of people, and rarely did they ever feel like actually moving forward.  I get that you want to stop and see stuff, that’s the point, but maybe move off to the side and don’t just hang out in the middle of the walkway doing your best cosplay of a wall.  That was the kind of shit that really irked me.

But what didn’t bother me was the pure spectacle of the entire event.  It’s kind of awe inspiring to be in a room of that many like-minded individuals, all there to celebrate games and the people involved in them.  That part was genuinely cool and kept me going for most of the day.

I didn’t really get to play much of anything thanks to ridiculously long wait times, but that was fine.  Would I have liked to actually have played Soul Calibur VI?  Yes.  But it was still cool to get to see it in action in the hands of real people.  I got to check up on Ashen, a game I talked about in another blog about games that have been radio silent, so that was nice.  One of the two demo stations kept going down constantly which was unfortunate, but I can confirm the game is real and totally exists and still looks rad.

Most of my day could be summarized by saying, “I saw a bunch of games that looked rad, but didn’t have the patience to wait and play a lot of them.”

I did manage to play a bit of Extinction, by Iron Galaxy.  It’s part Shadow of the Colossus, part hack and slash, and part what I imagine Attack on Titan is.  It looked pretty alright, but the guy who played before me bailed on a harder level and I had to go in there without any tutorialization and got my ass handed to me.  So it wasn’t the best demo, but I’d certainly try the full version which is apparently out as of yesterday.

All things considered, PAX East was a hectic spectacle that I most certainly would attend again.  Except this time I’d go on a Thursday or something and avoid the massive crowds.