So, my PAX adventure actually started Thursday, not Friday since I had to fly out to Seattle, get to my hotel and try to pick up my badge. Luckily, for me the hotel I’m staying in, while not close to the airport at all, is right across the street from the Washington State Convention Center where PAX is being held. I made my way to the Grand Hyatt (after a detour to the Convention Center to learn that badges weren’t there) to pick up my badge, and settled back at the hotel preparing for the long weekend to come.

Thursday started bright and early for me, since I was able to get into the convention hall a little early, but that also meant early appointments. I started my day on the lighter side with the Hello Kitty Online at the Aeria games booth.   If you’re a fan of Hello Kitty or any of the Sanrio characters and you haven’t checked out the game, you should.  It’s currently in beta, but you can still sign-up and try it out now.  The game is set to launch soon as a free-to-play MMO with micro-transactions and a robust storyline that involves all your Sanrio favorites.  Sure, it’s aimed at the younger crowd, but it’s going to be a great addition to any casual gamers online collection of games to go to for a quick fix of fun and interactions with friends.  I really enjoyed the idea that within the games your character not only gets to interact with your fav Sanrio town characters, but you’ll get a look at Sanrio-ized versions of some popular cities in the real world like New York or Paris.

After the fun of Hello Kitty, I got to shift gears and investigate some of the new line-up of headsets at the Turtle Beach booth.  I got to try out the new Ear Force X31 and X41 headsets for the Xbox, which unfortunately, wasn’t a great experience during PAX.  With all the wireless technology around the hall, the sound on these was pretty full of static.  However, I’ve got to admit right now, that their PC Ear Force AK-R8 headset has some amazing sound.  It’s got four speakers in each ear, and 5.1 Surround Sound.  It’s expensive, but I think it might be worth it if you do a lot of PC gaming or video work and need great sound.  I also tried the Ear Force P21 for the Playstation which had some great sound, but I was also impressed with the lightness of the headset with the mesh speakers.

Then, I headed to one of the two Ignition booths at the front of the exhibit hall to check out the new DS game Nostalgia for the DS.  Nostalgia is an adorable RPG game for the DS that feels a little steampunky, and a little bit like Skies of Arcadia and Grandia and Final Fantasy all mixed together.  You play Eddie, a boy whose dad is a big adventurer that goes missing.  Eddie takes his dad’s spare airship out to try and find his father.  One of the nice things I think is that where so many DS RPG games are going the tactical route, Nostalgia is a more traditional turn-based RPG in the vein of the Final Fantasy games.  It’s got beautiful artwork, and a very expansive world where Eddie can visit some real world cities like London or Cairo.  If you’re into traditional J-RPGs you might want to check this game out this fall.

My last before lunch appointment was at the Darkest of Days booth.  I’m going to have a lot more to say about this game shortly.  It’s a time travel FPS where you get to visit five different time periods through history and participate in some of the worlds biggest wars.  The game looks amazing, and it’s going to be available soon on both the PC and the Xbox 360.

In the afternoon, I met up with Cindy Armstrong the CEO at WebWars to take a look at the new browser based game, Weblings.  In the game (which you play by installing the toolbar to either Internet Explorer or Firefox) you control Weblings that fight bugs found on any website you visit to collect pieces to unlock new Weblings, or other game pieces.  One of the great things about Weblings is that it can be played on any webpage, and in as much time as you want.  You can take five minutes to fight bugs while you wait for a page to load, or watch a video, or you can keep going and play it on every page you visit for several hours.

Later, at the Dolby booth I was able to check out the new surround sound chat application Axon.  It’s a pretty interesting application that allows users to chat in a more dynamic way.  If you’re playing with a group, you can set your location within the chat room to change how/where other users hear you.  There’s also the ability to create sub-groups within the chat system that’d be especially useful in large groups or raids.  Axon is going to be integrated with a few games in the near future, like Jumpgate Evolution (a game I’ll take about later) but even if it’s not integrated into a game, you can still use it to replace something like Ventrilio or TeamSpeak.

Once my day in the main hall was over, my evening was filled with unfortunate surprises at my hotel.  Some of my hotel highlights thus far: there’s no free wi-fi in the hotel – it’s paid per day and per computer (awesome right?  (but there’s a telephone jack!)), of the TWO elevators in the entire buildings – one of them is broken and will remain broken through the weekend, the pullout sofa has leftover nachos in it (gross!), there’s no microwave or mini-fridge in our tiny rooms, and the hotel doesn’t have a gift shop or a place to buy forgotten incidentals (that’s a three block walk).  The Roosevelt’s only saving grace right now is that it’s across the street from the convention center which makes getting around super easy.

You can see my pictures from days one and two at PAX 2009 here: