PAX AUS Wrap Up

PAX Australia is a yearly gaming convention that goes for 3 days in my home state of Melbourne. The best way to describe PAX is a video game mecca. It’s tiring, joyous & one hell of a journey all at the same time.

This was my 3rd year of PAX and I reckon it was the best one yet!! The panels were excellent as always with my highlights being the Cheez TV, Zelda: Breath of the Wild & Pub Crawl Live panels.

The Cheez TV panel was a complete nostalgia fest with the audience revisiting and discussing our favourite cartoons with two guys who were always apart of our mornings growing up, Jade & Ryan. We remembered old times, counted down our favourite cartoons and played a few video games as well, including Mario Kart 64 which I was lucky enough to be invited up on stage to play which was amazingly fun and a little bit scary because the competitive side of me wanted to do well in front of the audience in the theatre as well as the audience at home. As usual, I chose my homeboy Mario and we raced on Luigi's Raceway. I was a bit rocky out of the blocks but with the use of my trusty mushrooms I was able to cut corners and boost my way to a respectable 2nd place. It was a really fun experience and one of my highlights for this year.If you'd like to check out the panel you can do so here: https://go.twitch.tv/videos/185747432

The Zelda: Breath of the Wild panel was an intriguing look back at the newly released title with members from Zelda Universe going over things that they really enjoyed and didn't like about the game as well as where they think the franchise is heading going forward. It was a very thoughtful and interesting look back at a serious game of the year contender and was able to scratch that Zelda itch that I always seem to have come PAX time.

The last panel that I really enjoyed was Big Head Mode: Pub Crawl which saw the guys from Big Head Mode along with some of their mates drink their way around the Caribbean of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. The guys sailed from tavern to tavern, in real time, stopping at each destination to drink, both in game and in real life.

The panelists included, Ben O'Brien, Carlo Ritchie and Bardiya McKinnon from Big Head Mode, Comedian Andrew McClelland, Young Henry's Simon Kraegan and Stephanie Bendixsen and Nich Richardson from ScreenPLAY.

I love playing drinking games with my friends and I can tell you that it is hilarious watching 100% sober people turn drunk in under 2 hours. Many drinks were had, many sea shanties were sung and many silly stories told. This is definitely a panel I would want to see again next year.

If you want to check out that panel you can do so here: https://go.twitch.tv/videos/185903029

The one panel that really disappointed me this year was Jackbox Games. For those that may not know, the Jackbox Party Pack games are individual collections of five or so party games, designed for online play by multiple people, including large audiences, via streaming websites like Twitch. I had reservations going into the panel as I feared like with most cases of using the internet with a large audience there are bound to be technical issues and there were many here. To start with many people, including myself had issues even getting into the game and as time went on eventually most people got into the game but by that stage the game was half over and you couldn't enjoy it because you spent the whole time trying to get into the game. Another technical issue caused the game to continuously crash and in the hour that the panel ran for I reckon they only had about 20 or so minutes of continuous game play. I know that it would be a monumental task to try and get it all to run smoothly especially with all the other exhibitors hogging the internet connection but for me it just soured the experience. Thankfully the Jackbox crew had a set up out in the foyer which worked amazingly well.

I felt like the organisers set up the convention better than in previous years. Walking around the show floor didn't feel as cramped as in years gone by and I just loved how they moved the handheld lounge outside of the expo hall making it a much welcomed quiet retreat when needed.

The games on offer this year were very good. I had the chance to play a number of released and upcoming titles such as Assassin's Creed: Origins, Detroit: Become Human and Lenovo's Star Wars AR headset.

Assassin's Creed: Origins played really well and felt like a return to what made the series great. I will 100% be picking it up once I finish with Super Mario Odyssey.

Detroit: Become Human was easily my game of show. The demo I played was the same as the one shown when the title was announced at E3 and boy did it blow my mind. The branching choices that you can make and how they can impact on the game is so compelling and interesting and give the game an amazing level of replayability. The graphics looked stunning and the story was gripping and tense which I love. Can't wait to pick this one up next year.

I was really excited to try the Star Wars AR headset and although it was a really enjoyable experience getting to hold and ignite that lightsaber the hologram aesthetic that is used within the game and the incredible amount of hand holding was kind of a let down. And with a hefty price tag of $400 I just can't justify spending that kind of money on something that seems so linear, when I could pay $100 more for a PSVR headset and wait a few years for the eventual Star Wars VR game.

Sony and Nintendo had the best booths out of all the exhibitors. Nintendo really upped their booth game from previous years with their iconic red cascading down giant banners from the ceiling making it very visable from all corners of the expo hall. Sony had many games for people to play along with some upcoming controllers and the super cool Star Wars Battlefront 2 PS4 consoles with I really wanted to steal. But the coolest thing on display was the real life platinum tropic which was soooooo pretty to look at.

My only disappointment about the games on offer were bringing God of War but not having a playable demo on offer and just showing a video and giving everyone a poster. It felt cheap, I came to PAX to play video games, not watch videos about them. And that should have been communicated to people more clearly. I had no idea that there was no demo until after I had lined up and was seated. My other massive gripe was with EA not bringing Star Wars Battlefront 2 to the expo. That game is so highly anticipated and for it to be a no show was such a big letdown.

Generally, PAX will have a whole host of really fantastic photo opportunities and this year was no exception. This year we had a massive Pac-Man mural, a Super Mario Odyssey standee and some Pokemon card cut outs.

Another really awesome part of this years PAX was having Stephanie Bendixsen and Nich Richardson from Channel 7's ScreenPLAY set up their booth on the outside of the expo hall making it really easy to get access to and the guys were there quite a lot of the time so it allowed fans of the show to go meet and play games with them. Their whole crew are so super chill and they're all just as passionate about gaming as all the attendees. Getting to meet and have a chat with both Steph and Nich was totally awesome!!

On the last day of the convention I was lucky enough to get myself up the front and be in the audience when they were filming the show. It was really insightful and interesting to see how they go about setting up all the shots, running lines and editing them and just the filming process as a whole. So yeah check me out on ScreenPLAY this Thursday night, 7:30pm on Channel 7.

The last thing that I always do at PAX is attend the final round of the Omegathon which is a knock-out tournament where attendees of PAX are randomly selected to engage in 6 different games throughout the 3-day convention. With the final winner getting a trip to any other PAX convention in the world (Seattle, Boston, San Antonio or Philadelphia). The final round this year was Crossy Road with an amazing twist. The controller was a balance board!! The game was pure pandemonium and one of the funniest Omegathon finals I've ever seen.

The one thing that I didn't expect about this year's PAX was the great influx of new people I was going to meet. My friend Grant was lucky enough to be chosen to compete in the Omegathon (sadly he dropped out in the 2nd round :() and through this I was able to be introduced to the other people competing in the tournament over the course of the weekend. Everyone was so lovely and kind and supportive of each other even though they were all competing against each other. They were more like a team than competitors and it really reminded me of a close knitted sports team or school year level. You could see that something really special was forming and even though I myself wasn't an Omeganaut I felt extremely welcomed into the group which is such a testament to the gaming community. It always so wonderful to find like minded people to share your thoughts with!!

Andddd that was PAX AUS for 2017!! Prayer circle that I get picked to be an Omeganaut in 2018!!

#VideoGames #PAXAUS