PAX 07 and the Omegathon Retrospective

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Oh my, oh my. 

What an amazing time.  I traveled to PAX last weekend, partly as a guy's road trip with my brother, and partly to meet some friends for the first time.  In the meantime, I was selected by Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade to compete in the Omegathon, a multi disciplinary gaming competiton designed to test your overall gaming prowess, from FPS to puzzle games, rythym games to table top games.   For those of you who want to cut to the chase as far as the Omegathon goes, I made it to round 5, and was eliminated at Puzzle Quest by the eventual runner-up Ben (aka MNCDover), a worthy opponent if ever there was one. 

Here's my rundown of the Omegathon:

Round 1--Jenga:  So many Omeganauts have commented about how nerve-racking this round was.  I think I may have had that shakiest hands of anyone, but I managed to make it through, and make the final move before the tower fell no less!  There was a part of me that was screaming for the tower to fall every time it went around before it got to me, and the last time I went I couldn't believe it came back around to me.  Somehow I managed to find a piece, although I gave everyone a few good scares with hand spasms that hit the tower, causing it to sway violently, or having the block I was working on hit the table abruptly.  I have a video of it, and it's awesome.  I'll post it later on this week, probably on Friday.

Round 2--Calling All Cars:  Easily the most comfortable round for me.  There were more than a few Omeganauts who had never played this game before, so my practicing really paid off.  There was one person in my four who admitted that he had never played, and in the end, I ended up winning by a score of 15-6-1-0.  After the first 6-7 points, I felt comfortable that I wouldn't go out and enjoyed the rest of the round. 

Round 3--Quake III:  Nervous can't even begin to describe the vomiting of emotions that confronted me as I sat down to Quake III.  I had practiced and practiced online, but there are so many better FPS players out there.  I really wanted to catch the Penny Arcade Make a Strip panel that came directly in between rounds 2 and 3, and they had actually reserved front row seats for the Omeganauts, so there was no time to practice in between.  I sat third from the end, with Davertron (last year's runner up) and TonyB in the last two seats.  They made the time so enjoyable, and although I was still nervous, we had a good time harassing each other about our respective kills, and there was a fair amount of give and take there.  I looked up 2/3rds of the way through to find that I was sixth, but comfortably so, with 11 or 12 frags between me and seventh place, and another 10 frags between seven and eight.  Getting through Quake was a dream come true, and it would mean a spot in the most awesome of the six rounds of the Omegathon...

Round 4--ROCK BAND:  We all knew.  We ALL knew.  It was the worst kept secret at PAX, what with Tycho's hints and the Harmonix guys giving me that knowing smile.  Daverton and I ended up at the booth together both Friday and Saturday morning, and it was a blast playing with him and his +1 in the exhibition hall. 

For the actual round, we were ushered into the Main Theater and lined up in a row.  Tycho and Gabe stood in front of us and picked teams Dodgeball style.  It was hilarious.  We were told we would be singing Radiohead's Creep.  I wasn't too excited about the song choice, as I only knew the chorus well, but not the verse.  TonyB ended up playing guitar, and Accalon took up the bass.  MNCdover said that he had never played Guitar Hero before (wait...WHAT? ;) ), and didn't know the song at all, so we asked him to play drums, since the difficulty setting would be put on easy.  We also had to come up with a band name, and after a few moment's deliberation, someone said, "well, Gabe's the artist, and we're his band, so we're artists too, we should do something like that", and it came to me like a strike of lightening--the Photoshop Heroes.  I was happy that Gabe approved.  "The crowd is going to cheer so loud when you say your name," he said while laughing.

Each band went up to practice once, and we went first.  It was then that I found out that the vocal track would be completely gone, leaving me with no chance to hear how the verses went, other than going from the relative pitch bar on the top.  I did alright, but not where I wanted to be.  I listened hard to the other band's vocalist JDarksun, and picked up the phrasing on one or two lines.  At the end of practice, our team lost by a score of 350k to their 380k. 

I think we were all thinking we were going to go home, but there was always the belief that we could somehow pull it out.  We got together and discussed some new strategy about the game. 

When it came time to go out, the atmosphere was electric.  My friends managed to get my attention amidst all the craziness, and I just tried to ham it up as much as my nervousness would allow.  When I went up and nailed the high notes of the song, the crowd let out a deafening cheer that I'll never forget, and I of course responded by giving them the "metal". 

Ryan, our bass player, didn't miss a single note when we got out there, and Ben made sure to play the improv sections on the drums the second time through.  Our multipliers were insane, and in the end we improved our score by 170k to come out with a final score of 518,000! 

We couldn't believe it.  The other guys did an awesome job too, but in the end, they didn't have the same amount of multipliers that our band did, and ended up with the same score. I was really sad to see Davertron get eliminated, as some of the best times of the Omegathon were when we were hanging out and just shooting the breeze.  But I had to focus myself and get ready for Round 5.

Round 5--Puzzle Quest:  I wasn't that nervous for Puzzle Quest, but I didn't want to go out in the penultimate round, as if I could make it to round 6, I'd be guaranteed a spot at next year's Omegathon even if I lost. 

Me and Ben (MNCDover) were picked together for the first match.  I had an inkling that everyone would go Wizard for their class, so I picked Druid, as the level one skill gemberry usually can heal more damage then a Wizard's level one spell can dish out.  In the end, it came down to random chance, and a huge blunder that I made at the end of game 3.  In each of the first two matches, Dover and I didn't really have much control over who was winning.  If the board didn't lay out for you, that was that.  He crushed me pretty handily in the first match, and then ran into a serious string of bad luck in game two.  I won game two with almost full hitpoints because of all the mana I put together, and every time he made a move, it seemed like the board would drop skulls in prime position for me. 

Game three looked more in his favor again, although it was closer.  Both of us missed a critical move for a couple turns--a drop down that would have meant skull damage.  It got to my turn and I couldn't see any moves on the board.  With 5 seconds left on my turn clock, the little white arrow showed up, telling me to move a piece in the bottom right, but I couldn't see the move still.  I panicked, as time was running out and guessed the way it was supposed to move, which ended up being an illegal move, bringing me from 15 hp down to 10.  For some strange reason I thought this would end my turn, but it didn't, and two seconds later my timer ran out and incurred another 5 point deduction, bringing me to 5 hps.  It was simple for Ben to finish me off at this point. 

Round six was amazing, but I think I'll save my post for that until tomorrow.