Welcome to the third entry covering my experience at Seattle's Penny Arcade Expo 2009! Since Sunday is the final day of PAX, it is typically the slowest day at the expo. However, that makes it the best time to play games and gather up excess freebies since most companies will want their bags to be as light as possible on the way home. I arrived at the convention center a few minutes later than I planned. Hey, I needed my beauty sleep! The line to the exhibitor hall was actually quite tame, and stayed that way until the doors opened. Before assuming my position in line, I took a snapshot of this artist creating BioShock 2 artwork outside of the queue room. I still don't care for the game franchise, but I do know good art when I see it.

After picking up the another shirt from Tozai Games, I started to make my rounds around the exhibitor hall. After grabbing some trinkets at Hudson's booth like wrist bands and dog tags, I made sure to take a shot of the famous bee. It's still the best company logo as far as I'm concerned!

I soon sampled Deca Sports 2. I tried out two activities on the game, which were kendo and petanque, shown above. Kendo was fairly amusing against the AI. You held the remote out in front like a bokken and swung to attack. If you were under assault, you needed to hold B to block. I lost my first game, but did play a rematch and achieved victory! Petanque has you toss out a yellow ball, and then attempt to throw other balls as close to it as possible. A rep had to help me with the controls, but I lucked out and defeated the AI when I accidently bumped the yellow ball away from one of the enemy's. After that, I placed down the remote and signed up for the Deca Sports 2 tournament so that I could get a free pair of fingerless gloves.

As I approached Capcom's booth on day three, I noticed an employee giving out Tatsunoko VS Capcom towels to people who played the game. These towels basically had the same artwork as the rare shirts, so I had to have one! When my turn came up, I picked the massive Gold Lightan as my fighter. I forgot most of the moves I learned when playing at GameWorks, but still defeated my opponent. Gleefully taking my new towel, I put it in my swag bag and moved on.

I went past the Capcom store one more time. I was mainly interested in seeing if the limited edition PAX sticks had sold out. NOPE! They were still available, but the stock for each system was less than 100. I'm also surprised to see that more PS3 sticks were leftover when their initial quantity was less plentiful.

I soon wandered by the Ubisoft exhibit. Even though I never tried the original, I ended up really liking No More Heroes 2! It's not as good as my beloved Koei games, but the hacking and slashing was quite fun and  gory. If there was a way to block, I couldn't figure it out, but I still managed to beat the demo's boss. He was a guy with a killer boombox. I was going to finish him off with a swing of the remote when the game went to a TO BE CONTINUED screen. Awwww!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up was also available for play at Ubisoft's booth. I participated in a four-way rumble as my favorite Turtle, Michelangelo. I suck at Super Smash Bros. Brawl and did just as well in this game, which had a very similar feel. Sorry Mikey, I let you down and was one of the first players to get defeated! At least I got a free sweatband for my trouble.

Looking around a bit more, I noticed that the Darksiders horse appeared to be broken. You couldn't actively ride it, but you could still pose next to it for photos. A booth employee was also allowing people to hold War's mighty sword. Doing this made me feel like Cloud... therefore, I felt weaker than Squall.

Jon was unable to attend the expo on Sunday, so he requested my help in acquiring an inflatable Rappy from Sega's booth. I gathered around a group of Sega fans and answered trivia questions. Each question correctly answered earned you a Rappy and one point in a contest. I think I would have faired better if I had known that we were allowed to answer more than one question at the start, but ended up getting tied for second place. The winner is shown above, with the neat little NiGHTS figurine that was his prize. I scored a cool Sands of Destruction plastic portfolio since the guy running the tournament recognized me from yesterday. Everyone second place or higher also received a Sega shirt and a plastic purple NiGHTs bracelet.

Venturing over to the outer portion of the hall, I decided it was finally time to take a look at the Party Wagon! Inside was a small museum of artifacts from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles history. Stepping inside, the first grader within me smiled.

Wow! There were quite a few action figures from back when I collected them. There were also lots of pieces of concept art from the old comics. They even had a small collection of some of the classic TMNT video games.

I felt like having a quick snack, but didn't want to leave the convention center or buy any of the overpriced food. I remembered seeing a lounge for ECA members that seemed to have snacks on the inside. I approached the front desk, asking if I could get in if I already had an existing membership. They asked for some proof, so I logged in on a computer. OPEN SESAME! They handed me a bag of ECA swag and told me to go inside.

Chips and soda were free for the taking. Trying to not be too greedy, I took a single bag of chips and one Coke. I sat down for a bit of a break before I went back outside to meet up with Nolan.

The two of us decided to enter the last Tekken 6 tournament. A total of 136 people were signed up, so we were in a for a long wait. Of course, a bunch of people who wrote their names down didn't show up, so there were many disqualifications. I ended up becoming one of those people when the bracket had to be reorganized and I didn't hear the call asking for people to line up and check in. Oh well!

On the other hand, Nolan got a chance to become the King of Iron Fist. He was a bit hesitant to enter since he doesn't play fighting games, but I convinced him to do it for the potential swag and prizes. He used Eddy Gordo and mashed his way to victory over his first foe. Tragically, the second match crushed his hopes of winning a free 360 or PS3.

After the hour or two we spent at the tournament, we dropped by the Club Namco booth in order to participate in a raffle. I wouldn't say that the prizes were excellent since they were mainly older $20 titles, but hey, I'm all for free video games! A whole bunch of people who had their names drawn weren't present, so they didn't get the prize package. A winner was finally found, but it wasn't me, bah!

I hate most shooters, but the concept behind Darkest of Days sounded somewhat intriguing. Nolan and I headed to the booth to try the game out. Only a PC kiosk was open, so I hopped on and went first. I did an accurate reenactment of Little Bighorn since I was slaughtered by the Native Americans. Nolan took his turn, and made it quite a bit further. The game seemed to be a story-focused shooter like Legendary, so I'll probably borrow it when I'm given the opportunity.

An alarm went off on my phone, alerting me to the fact that the Deca Sports 2 tournament was almost ready to begin. Nolan and I checked in with a Hudson rep, and had to race on motorcycles in the first round. I never got used to using the Wii remote like a steering wheel, and paid the price by being eliminated with my second place finish. Nolan just barely beat his competitors, but he advanced to the next round, which was ice hockey. He lost, though I can't blame him since I do find the almost uncontrollable goalie to be a lame aspect of the game since it puts too much focus on luck over skill.

After I received my gloves for playing in the tournament, I went off to try Divinity II: Ego Draconis. The game screams Two Worlds! I know most people would consider that a bad thing, but that's a positive point in my eyes since I loved that game. I'm pretty sure that I'll purchase the Xbox 360 version as soon as it is released. Verily!

Fairytale Fights was out on the skybridge, so Nolan and I moved over there to give the game a try. Nolan didn't know the concept behind it and figured it was just another dumb game for children. He was shocked by how gruesome the game was, like when you'd hack apart enemy lumberjacks or start slipping and sliding on blood. I enjoyed the demo and would compare it to Kung Fu Chaos on the original Xbox. I'll probably buy the game when I see a good used copy or a decent price drop.

Nolan informed me about free shirts at EA's booth if you tried out Dead Space: Extraction on the Wii. They were out of shirts, but they were handing out hardcover graphic novels instead, so I stood and line in order to get one. At first, I found the game to be enjoyable as an arcade shooter. After Nolan and I started fighting the boss, we began to hate the game. We spent about 10 or 15 minutes freezing and shooting its back, but it never seemed to die. When we finally made it stop moving, it kept firing projectiles at us and wouldn't seem to take any further damage from our shots. We soon died and were happy to move on to another game. Some sort of explanation on what to do at that point in the game would have been nice!

This extremely limited Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Fortune Hunter Edition was kept in a glass case at Sony's booth. These will not be available in stores, and I believe one copy was raffled off each day. I'm not a Nathan Drake fan, but I really wanted to win this raffle so I could rub it in a coworker's face, haha. The curse of the raffle gods made sure that I didn't leave home with this prize.

The final demo I tried at PAX 2009 was Darksiders. I loved Joe Madureira's artwork. That's pretty much the only thing I truly liked about the game. The animation wasn't running at a constant 60 frames per second and the hacking and slashing was too sluggish for my liking. Keep in mind that my friend Edgar loved it when he tried the demo on Saturday, so this could just be me being picky.

The exhibitor hall soon closed, so Nolan and I went our separate ways. The building was still open for another hour for tournaments and other activities, but I definitely needed to go home and recover after such a good weekend. Thanks for another memorable year, PAX! You know I'll be back for more next time, hopefully with some old friends who missed this year's festivities. Heck, I may even attempt a trip to PAX East...