"This is nothing like a porn convention."

This past Saturday, I went to my first video game convention, excuse me, "expo". Along with 2 friends, we thought that this would be a fun day of sights, both old and new and perhaps hours of fun. Of all the coverage that things like CES (Consumer Electronics Show) or E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) would get, our expectations were high.

Turns out, our expectations were too high.

We were expecting to see new games that were slated to be released this year or early next, a bunch of people huddled together, trying out hundreds (or at least dozens) of demos of the new games, developers endlessly hawking their wares for consoles and PC's. But that was not to be. The only new game demos were for Sega's Bayonetta and EA's God of War clone Dante's Inferno, both being released for the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. There was also a new game for the PC, Warhammer Online but that was the extent of the games coming your way this holiday season or for early 2010.

There were consoles set up at this thing, they were just kind of spread out and playing random things. The newest available game that I could see was Batman: Arkham Asylum, and that was released in August. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was recently released for the Playstation 3 and has been highly regarded as the game of the year, but I never saw it there. Maybe it was there, over by the Jedi. Oh, you heard that right; the Jedi. This group of Jedi to be specific. Why are Jedi at a video game convention, but not a Star Wars game in sight? I thought that they were all wiped out. And why did the Jedi have a table? They were not selling anything. The Army was there too, doing recruitment and had a game of Halo running in the background. It would have made more sense for the Army to be running Call of Duty 4 or even their own game since the Army has that now. I guess the Jedi were competing with the Army for recruits. Both were getting the same amount of table visits: none.

I did meet a budding artist there. He was hoping that his creation might get picked up as an animated series. Personally his art style was not for me, as it looked like a comic book that was drawn by an 8 year old. A slightly talented 8 year old, but one that knew nothing of how the human anatomy worked, or how bodies were put together. Also, the story looked to be a mix of Thundercats, Mortal Kombat and the Lion King. All of that together is not a good thing. Hell, Thundercats alone is not a good thing. But the man has his dreams and I wish him well.

There was a classic game section there, but it was run by a church, and afraid of being told I would be saved by playing Ms. Pac-Man, I stayed away from that section. The kids that were trapped there looked like they wanted to be free from that section too, but were stuck because of the parents. I bet the parents saw the big Dante's Inferno display and steered the kids to the older game section. Good thing too, as the demo on display was for the Lust level.

QVC was there, hawking a bunch of accessories for the Nintendo Wii. Whether this took place or not, one can only hope. One day people will realize that you don't need a bunch of sports accessories for the Wii's controller. Some stuff may be fun to have, but you don't have to go nuts.

All in all the day the expo was hideous. I wasn't able to find any of the old games that I was looking for, and one of my friends wondered if this is what a porn convention would have been like. The 3 of us left, dejected and feeling more than a little dirty, possibly like we would have having left that porn convention. The highlight of the entire day was being able to see my friends (one I hadn't seen in years) and eating lunch at the Brick House. Eating there makes everything better.