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Last Friday PAX 2008 started and Breego and I were there to enjoy every minute of it. Well almost every minute. I had to duck out early because of bad planning on my part. What did we see? Who did we meet?
We tried to meet and see as many people and games that we could. Got to play Gears of War 2, which was pretty sweet. Stood in line for 2 hours to play Left 4 Dead. And even tried to get my head shaved to get a free copy of Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway. But my favorite part of PAX 2008 was getting a chance to meet and hang out with all the folks from the GCN community. When PAX started on Friday I think we were all blown away by the massive amount of people that where on hand to attend this show. The official tally ended up being at about 60,000 but when you are there in the thick of it, it seemed like a lot more. After meeting up with Breego, his wife Megan, Evil One and Cypher, I got a call from the den mother of GCN (Read: Heather Paladino) and learned that the other half of our group was not to far away. We all got together and hit the show floor. Every game that you could want was playable or viewable on the show floor. If I listed all the games we saw and got some hands on time with this post would be too long. As Friday was a short day we decided just to take a look at everything and not spend any serious time waiting to play any of the games. We got a good feel for where everything was and knew what we needed to check out on Saturday. After the show floor closed on Friday we went to 2 after parties. We went to the Champions Online party and the the GamerDNA party. While the Champions Online party was fairly lame, the GamerDNA party was really fun. Played some Rock Band, and had some drinks. A good time was had.  Unfortunately when Saturday started we quickly realized that Friday was the day we should have played all the demos we wanted because the show floor was twice as packed on Saturday. Evil One and I stood in line for 2 hours to play the Left 4 Dead demo. Breego and I stood in line for an hour to get our heads shaved only to leave the line after we found out the guy cutting hair had a break coming up. Later in the day I stood behind some jerk that wouldn’t get off the kiosk and let me play Gears of War 2. If it sounds like I stood in line all day that’s because I did. When I wasn’t standing in line I was traveling to stand in line. Don’t underestimate when I say there is an ass ton of people at PAX. That night for dinner we all got together and ate at Mexico. (Not the country but the restaurant) Afterwards we went back to the Paladinos hotel lobby and had a nice chat to cap off the evening. 
Sunday was my travel day back home. My plane left at 12:10 PM so I was unable to attend the GCN podcast panel. I was sad to see it end for me but happy that I got to meet all the great people I have been playing with and messaging on the forums with for years. If I do go back next year I will bring my wife and maybe son along for the trip and make a vacation out of it. I would like to give a special thank you to Heather Paladino for acting as den mother to all of us and giving our group a little bit of organization. Keep an eye on the site this week. I am going to do a few more write ups on games I played and Breego and I are going to do a PAX wrapup show later this week. R.I.P. PAX 2008.
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