PAX East 2012: Hanging at the Gunnars Booth – Mobbed!

Shoulder to shoulder at the Gunnars booth

Since Pax East 2012 wrapped up a few days ago people have been asking me, “what was your favorite bit about the weekend?” That hasn’t been easy to answer. From amazing cosplayers to board games to the independent developers to the major players in console gaming to informative and fun panels, the exhibition was once again jam packed with awesomeness. Did I mention the concerts? Did I mention all the awesome giveaways at the Gunnars booth?

At the Gunnars booth all weekend we were showing off some of the great new styles and market testing some new styles aimed at the feminine demographic. Folks were flowing through the booth and stopping to jam on some Halo & Call of Duty while they tested out the glasses. Hell, even I sold a couple pairs of frames and I’m no where near as pretty as the rest of the crew. The bottom line is the booth was mobbed all weekend, plenty of gamers & industry folks picking up the best gift they could ever get their eyes.

So back to my favorite bits from the weekend. Well, there were many. So instead of bullet listing a bunch of random moments, I’ve focused on a couple things from each day with some pictures, because everyone needs pictures.

FRIDAY

Arriving Friday after waking up at 4am to drive to the airport I was fueled by adrenaline and caffeine. Skipping the keynote, I headed straight to the Gunnars booth to check out the digs. After grabbing some new nose pieces I headed over to Ubisoft to check out their display for Far Cry 3, Assassins Creed 3 and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. At the Far Cry 3 booth they were tattooing willing fans with tribal designs based on the game. You’d have to have some serious balls to get a tattoo in the middle of hundreds of thousands of people. For those without the stones, they could come back on Saturday or Sunday & get a mohawk.

Would you get a convention center tattoo?

I missed my appointment with the development team over at Firefall but grabbed a pair of Gunnars for any other developers or gamers I ran into to try on. Then I waited in line for Borderlands 2. This game is going to kick some serious ass. Some of the weapons they have invented for this second go-round of RPG FPS action are simply out there. I really can’t wait to get blasting on this one.

I was also very impressed with the free–play PC gaming area that NVIDIA had set up. This area was brand new to PAX and very overwhelming. They had hundreds of PC’s lined up for gaming, taking up a good chunk of the convention center, the other half of that section dominated by a massive League of Legends display.

That's a lot of power.

SATURDAY

This day was all about checking out two of the best PC based online games that will be hitting the market this year. The first is Novus Aeterno from TAITÁLE Studios. A persistent real time MMORTS, Novus Aeterno is going to be simply epic. The game puts you in the position of space captain, and you have to build your legions of ships, all the while maneuvering resources, politics and enemies. The developers are a young multi-talented bunch and have implemented a beautiful and deeply detailed universe. Look for the beta version of this game to be available soon.

The other online game that I was most impressed with is Firefall. This highly stylized MMO will offer a full online campaign in which the player is encouraged to participate in community missions in order to further along the story and basically, make it easier to survive. The game also offers an intense and supremely entertaining PvP game, with a ton of customizations and constant stimulation in those centers of the brain that make us all happy.

I’ll be doing full write ups of both of these games in the coming weeks.

Additionally, I watched pro gamer Justin Saboo rock out on some Halo back at the Gunnars booth. I probably could have beaten him. I mean, I would have had to knock him out first, but still. Also: dancing Han Solo.

Break it down Han!

SUNDAY

Didn’t do much Sunday. Sorry to disappoint. That cold Boston air was wreaking havoc on my sinuses and I was simply out of it. I played some board games with some random folks and just hung out in the free-play tabletop area, letting random people try on my spare pair of Gunnars. I know this doesn’t sound like I did that much over three days, but it’s still quite a blur and I’m fighting off some serious sinus congestion from the cold air in Boston.

Final note, if you stopped by the Gunnars booth to get hooked up with some Gunnars, let us know how much you love your new Gunnars in the comments or on Twitter! You can also check out my full picture galleries here and here.

Images: C. Silver