July 24, 2008

• Comic-Con Wednesday July 23 recap

  Despite my lack of sleep (2 hours), I was able to make it to San Diego and to my hotel with no hassle at all. I was literally in "the zone" just driving down there, since there was no traffic. I was a little bit concerned about the place I'm staying at; The Town & Country Hotel at Fashion Valley, because it actually had horrible ratings online. To my surprise however, it didn't seem bad at all. I actually like the way the place is laid out, and while looking dated, it feels like staying in a cozy small town community.

  Instead of driving 7 miles to the San Diego Convention Center, I opted to try out the Trolley, since one of it's pickup/drop-off stations is exactly where I'm staying at. For a very decent roundtrip ticket, and two transfers later, I was able to make it to my destination in a little over 30 minutes. Not bad at all. The trolley was a bit crowded though, but that's to be expected from a weekend like this one.

  After getting my attendee badge, I met up with a friend of mine who was already there, and we waited and waited for the doors to open up for "preview night." We were loitering nearby one of the entrances downstairs, even though we were suppose to stand in the "official line" to get in the dealer's room / exhibit hall. A couple of times we were told to leave the area and go upstairs to where the line is at, but we just opted to move ourselves to another area of the floor. This happens every year.

  

  Once inside, I had all the intention in the world to do a run-through of all 52 aisles of the whole exhibit hall, since preview night is only open for three hours. However I was distracted by another line for some Paramount pictures SWAG t-shirt. You stand in one of these lines, and you expect to lose about 30 minutes to an hour of your time. For some reason though, that did not deter me, and I waited and waited for my free shirt. We had a choice between various different Paramount properties, so I opted for the Transformers 2 movie shirt.

  So afterwards, did I continue to do my trek through the exhibit hall? Nope. I ended up getting distracted by the video game booths nearby. First I almost almost ended up singing a song on "Singstar" at the Sony booth, but I chickened out. I then stood in line once again to get a chance to play Street Fighter IV, which was awesome. I got to try two of the four new characters, C.Viper and Abel (I liked playing as this guy). What boggles my mind is that a lot of the attendees still opted to play the standard Ryu and Ken match ups, even though they have this opportunity to try something completely new. I then went to try my hand at the new Bionic Commando game, which was kinda fun, what with all the bionic swinging and all. Next up was the Konami booth for some drum action on "Rock Revolution," which wasn't bad, but I prefer Rock Band still. I got to take a look at a demo of "Mirror's Edge," which is now one of my more anticipated games coming out later this year. Finally I played "Naruto : Ninja Storm," which looked great but had very simple game mechanics.

  "The exhibit hall is closing in 15 minutes," says the announcer. I've only walked through 10 out of 52 aisles in the almost three hours I was here, so I had to at least do something I intended to do before it closed. Buy a couple of books that I'm collecting, so that I don't have to worry about doing that in the next few days. I walked pass 30 aisles or so, to get to this one booth that I always get my books at every year from comic-con. I made it in time to purchase two of the books I was looking for, before the closed the dealer's room. This ended up to be the first year that I was not able to walk through the whole exhibit hall on preview night.

  After dealing with the even more packed Trolley, I ended up back at Fashion Valley. I decided to eat at the Terrace Cafe for a late dinner. It turns out that they only had one server, one waiter, one host, and one cook at that time. They were completely unprepared for the amount of customers they were getting past 10PM, because I guess they weren't aware about how Comic-Con was going to impact their operation? They were very courteous and apologetic though, so I give them lots of props for dealing with their situation professionally. Back at the hotel, I turned on the computer to try their wi-fi connection. Last year's hotel had terrible horrible speeds for their wi-fi internet, but to my surprise this hotel has got it going strong. I looked at the program guide to plan out the rest of the weekend, and now here I am. I'm waking up in about five hours from now, but so far it's been a good start for Comic-Con 2008.

  * click here for the photos I took at Comic-Con 2008 *

  

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