Ah PAX 2011, I hardly knew ye and now you are gone… so sad.

We had a pretty short PAX day today, to be honest. The only panel we were really interested in was at 3 PM, but we had to be back home in time to pick up Lola from the Puppy Hotel by 6 and I was worried about cutting it so close (one good traffic snarl and she’d be stuck there for another night).

So we just wandered around the exhibit hall one last time. Angela made it a game to snag as much swag as possible today, so that was fun. I finally found Guild Wars 2 and watched some of that being played.

Overall seeing the “big games” at PAX wasn’t a huge deal for me. These games get so much coverage online, and I know I’m going to wind up playing them all anyway, so it’s nice to see them, get an idea of what they’re like, but I don’t hover much (plus those booths are always mega crowded).

I enjoy looking at all the rest. For instance I’m a huge hack & slash action-rpg fan so I’m stoked about LOTR: War in the North (developed by Snowblind Studios who are great at this kind of game, and published by WB) and Hunted: The Demon’s Forge by Brian Fargo’s inXile Entertainment (published by Bethesda).

FireFall still looks awesome but it’s a team-based shooter and sadly I don’t really do those. Unless they add bots. 🙂

Orcs Must Die from Robot Entertainment…think I mentioned this already…is a day 1 purchase. Oh and both Child of Eden and The Michael Jackson Experience may threaten us with actually using the Kinect. (CoE for both of us, MJE for Angela).

Anyway, we were pretty tired (hey PAX, next year don’t have the show on Daylight Savings Time weekend!) and anxious to get home so we left early. By the time I was unloading the car I was kinda wishing we were still there. 🙂 Now I have post-PAX melancholy. It didn’t help that I opened the mailbox to find claim forms for my mother’s life insurance policy and emails in my inbox from family members about how we’re going to settle her estate.

Yeah, back to real life. In my head I was anxious to leave so I could come home and play games, but in practice I just came back to catching up. Oh well.

I did, in a moment of temporary insanity, buy a $250 set of headphones for my PS3. Set those up and wow do they sound great but..what was I thinking? They’re wireless RF for audio and bluetooth for voice, very comfortable and all that. But I tell you, a few days living in a conference environment and money starts to lose it’s value. (Two nights in the Westin Hotel, at their $179/night rate, managed to cost just about $500 once they added parking, internet, and a skillion taxes, and there’s nowhere near the center with cheap food, really.)

Oh well it’s once a year and now the “Pax credit card” goes in a drawer until next year, though I’ll be paying off the hotel and those silly headphones well into the summer!!

I’m already looking forward to next year, but between now and then I’m really looking forward to keeping in contact with all the folks I met via twitter and hopefully in-game.

PAX East 2011 gets a big thumbs up from us!