This past weekend, my work schedule changed and freed up some time. On a spur of the moment change, we pillaged the Penny Arcade Expo also known as PAX 2008 in Seattle, WA at the Convention Center. I must say that the event seemed to be well organized. With the exception of the CC staff, the PAX crew were on the ball.

This was my first time this year and it was actually pretty darn interesting. VH has been known to play a few FPS, RTS, RPG, MMORPG, and 0MFGSW33T type games. (Diceman loves games that involve pure destruction and surrounding mayhem.) We all may not get to play as much as we use to, but the gaming industry still proves to be the vital force that motivates the likes of Nvidia, ATI, and Intel to bring us faster Graphics cards which further perpetuates the creation of better video games.

If you weren't rubbing elbows with the game makers or testing out a soon to be released game title, one could walk across to the Free Play area and hop on any one of the 150 Intel sponsored PCs to play a few rounds against others in a LAN. In total, there were about 330 players present.

For this reason at PAX, you get to see just how well the newer graphic rich video games perform on regular PCs and Consoles. Some of the newer games suppress the Xbox360 in to just playable frame rates. I noticed the slower frame rendering even without any frame rates displayed on the screen. The PS3 on the other hand, doesn't seem to be burdened quite so much. Dare I say, I enjoyed the graphics on the PS3 more than the Xbox360. But, PCs games still tend to have greater graphics and AI content.

Obviously, there were more than 100 video games readily playable throughout the entire Exhibition Hall. Some were older revised classics while others were quite new. Some of the booths included new games from EA Games like Facebreaker (hilarious boxing game) available in a couple days and Crysis Warhead (futuristic version of Crysis) which also had a line to see and sample. It at least looked good and will no doubt involve a lot of time to beat. If you've been under a rock or out of the loop, Spore may prove to be one of the bigger user 3D content creator games around. There's already a huge amount of blogging and screen shots of some crazy creature creations.

Blizzard's screens were filled with World of Warcraft and one with the Diablo 3 trailer. Sweet! Of course, I asked if there were any new developments such as a an official or estimated release date, but it seems early next year is about the realistic time frame. Several systems were set up up for the new World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King. This is the latest WOW expansion and levels up to 80 if I remember correctly. Just when you thought you could stop playing...

One of the arguably more interesting game concepts coming from Sony is Little Big Planet. It's an exclusive creative video game coming only to Playstation 3. Basically, you create a mapped obstacle course that can be shared across the PS3 network which others can play as well. That makes it unique and will no doubt be a very popular game.

CDV Software demod a couple new games launching this month at their booth. You've all no doubt seen the Tamagachi toys which grow from an egg and needs taken care of, well now CDV brings My Little Baby to the DS which involves raising a baby. (My daughter is going to go nuts for this one.) Sacred 2: Fallen Angel , an action RPG, which looked pretty good on screen. Unfortunately, I haven't followed this one too much, so here you can read up on this huge world of dungeons and quests. And if you like mind challenging puzzles, check out I Heart Geeks.

Damnation, by BlueOmega (an actual mod-team with some impressive skills), have created an aggressive game set in an archaic, futuristic setting with clever weaponry. The player visuals and interaction looks great. The AI are especially aggressive in that they'll hunt you down once you've been seen. Gone are the days of predictive, robotic like AI challenges. Even though it's still undergoing testing, the graphics and mapping were pretty impressive.

Eve Online, brought to you by CCP, involves an enormous futuristic space exploration type game where mankind has spread out too fast separated from each other and almost brought to the brink of extinction. Many of the demo systems displayed the game in an impressive HD format which makes it all the more enticing. You can check it more fully here.

Another strongly anticipated game, judging by the some near 100 people standing around a silver camper in the middle of the booth, is Fallout 3 by BethSoft. The booth got to be a mad house at times. This game features some pretty awesome graphics along with the Wasteland story line where you fight to stay alive in a creepy, mutant infested environment. You get to kill and blow things up with some clever, yet archaic, weaponry. Check out the latest art work and screen shots.

Besides all forms of Sony and Microsoft consoles and games, there were some PC based vendors in attendance as well. Among them were Intel, Patriot Memory, Antec, Zalman, Triton, and Astro Gaming.

Intel naturally is everywhere in practically every desktop and laptop gaming system, including the LAN going on in the huge hall. What would we do without the Core 2 series? Well for one, EA's Crysis would still be a huge challenge and limited to much lower resolutions which would be unacceptable. We'll hopefully soon see some new CPU power which is always exciting.

Antec had their current computer Gaming and Performance enclosure lines on display along with the new Skeleton (USA), or Dragon Bones enclosure. It's an interesting concept. It looks more like a very creative tech station with controllable fans and LEDs. The huge top fan changes colors which looked pretty cool in transition between colors. It features lower pull out trays for all the components. About the only thing I personally think it's missing is a built in "work light" white LED built underneath the arches. Even better would be if there color selectable LEDs as well. *Hint Hint Antec*

Set up underneath a Yamaha theater receiver and projector, Antec's new Fusion Remote Max HTPC Enclosure was fast at work offering up a little move experience. The enclosure is a full Desktop 4U size with all the great cooling of a capable tower. The price tag is estimated to come in at around $200 which isn't bad at all if you're looking for a good quality enclosure with iMon remote and software.

Patriot Memory's booth featured Missy from PMS Clan who played anyone in a game of Quake 4 on an old school Quake 3 map remake, Q3DM17. If you scored at least 1 point against her, you got a prize. Needless to say, I wasn't aware of but a couple people who did while most had negative scores. (BOT!) The match was played on a couple laptops with the humiliation being displayed on a large HDTV.

Next to gaming were Patriot's latest top of the line USB and Memory Kits including the killer 2000 MHz DDR3 Memory Kit. Did you know that it may come in a 2 x 2GB 2000 MHz set? :p~~ There was also a 128GB SSD drive in one demo machine and a 256GB model almost ready for release. I'm hoping there is a huge technology break through for larger capacity SSD so that the prices drop across the industry. Hey, I can hope!

Zalman shared a booth with Triton Technologies. Zalman had their newest GS 1000 Enclosure on display which quietly launched with features like hot swappable drive bays via the front bezel, bottom ventilation for optional 120mm fans, and an extendable PSU storage tray that makes installing even an extended 1000 Watt Heat Pipe PSU possible with little fuss. Personally, I liked the two tone gray on black bezel. We'll see if we can't get one soon. And their newest  The and On display were in a mum PC, and CPU.

Triton is new to my Tech radar. You can find Bluetooth Stereo Headsets, USB 2.0 expandable video adapters, FTP Server units, Network Attached Storage (NAS), Multimedia Storage Players, and some pretty sweet looking 5.1 Gaming Headsets. These are a lot of the peripherals PC people can actually use, especially a gamer.

And Astro Gaming was also present offering up some sample play time using their powerful headset. I played a few rounds wearing the new A40 Gaming Headset and A40 System. The headset alone seemed amazingly crisp and filtered out a lot of the surrounding noise due to its design. The A40 System includes the external MixAmp compatible with Xbox, Xbox 360, PC, and now PS3. You can even filter out the annoying chat artist complaining about the game while he's getting pwned.

We can't forget Razer. The Razer Zone had several Call of Duty 4 tournaments with random gamers and attendees playing for prizes. Winners made off with Mice and Keyboards. The new Lycosa looked really, really sweet with its controllable key lighting. The primary movement keys can light up by default, or you can turn on the key's back lighting. There were plenty of the newest mice in the game play. We chat a little about the new Salmosa Gaming Mouse soon to release as well as how well the 1800dpi and 1000Hz Polling Rate 3G Infrared Sensors have been doing in all the new mice. The only thing better is the 4000dpi Lachesis which is a killer mouse.

Well, that's the basic purpose of the event. Show off some games, introduce some new titles, tease us with future titles, present some hardware choices to make the entire experience better, and have a good time. Of course, there's the swag which attracts the trawlers looking for free games, hats, T-shirts, and hardware. If you're ever one of these people, make sure to say Thank You. Some swag doesn't come cheap.