Con report and little change to reviews

I realized my last two game reviews were more using the traditional 7 as an average type reviewing mechanic. While I could go back and give Punch out a 7.5 and ODST an 8 or 7.75 under the old system I realized I'm gonna keep slipping back into that. That being the case, from now on I'm gonna review games with 7 being the average like most places do. I've gone back and changed ToS:Dawn of the New World's and Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts's scores to reflect what it would be under the new system. Sorry about that but this will keep me giving scores the way that feels natural instead of constantly having to argue it in my head and I won't have to remember I'm working with a 5 as an average system. I admit the 5/10=average is more mathematically correct but I'm gonna do it the way that feels right.

Anyway, no game review today but I will talk about my trip to northern Maryland (Towson Maryland to be exact) for Tiger Con. It was put on by the college anime club and I think it was the 2nd or 3rd year they had had it. It was in Towson University's University Union (aka their Russell House and sadly their Student Union looked nicer then ours) so it was basically a Nashi Con level anime con (though it was free). It was a 2 or 3 hour drive, a bit much maybe for such a small con but I had nothing else planned and I sorta wanted to compare their con to Nashi Con. I heard about it from a webcomic I've been recently following called Erfworld that I like a lot. I actually met the guy who writes it and got a picture of him as well as an Erfworld button for a dollar.

The drive up was annoying due to heavy traffic and a multitude of roads that merged and split constantly near the Baltimore area but I finally got to Towson and once there found the con quite quickly (their campus has signs all over the place telling you where buildings are) and they had a garage next to the student union so parking wasn't a problem either. I got there around 2 or 2:30PM since the only morning thing I wanted to do was a Left 4 Dead skit and happened at 9AM, there was no way I was getting there that early (when I got there I found it had been canceled anyway) so I slept in and left at 11:30 or so. It was on all three floors of the building (though there was only one room on the third floor being used) and I spent most of the time on the second floor where the majority of the action was. They had the dealer's area in the middle of the second floor with con rooms ringing it but they had extra dealers and artists (no official artist alley as far as I saw) spread throughout the con. I liked the placement of the main dealer's room but I didn't like how they sorta flung everyone that wouldn't fit all over the place, makes me feel like I might have missed a few dealers. It was at the main dealer's area I met Rob Balder (the Erfworld guy) and they had a few other things including a guy selling all the generic comic book stuff stuff like overpriced Magic cards and dice.

Considering it was a one day con and I was only there for 5 or 6 hours I was happy to make it to 4 panels. The first one I went to was one on webcomics but it was pretty dead. There were like 4 or 5 people there to start off with though a few more came in as it went on. Some Narutard who was there for the next panel literally wasted 5 or 10 minutes talking about Red vs Blue and kept talking about it after the panel guy got it back on track, I wanted to smack him.

After that I saw the the Erfworld guy had some music concert so I went to check that out. Apparently the guy writes his own nerdy songs and sings them (one of them was apparently big on Dr. Demento). His songs "Goth Chick", "Gamer Funk", and whatever the last one he did were good, but the stuff in the middle fell a little flat (A song about nethack for example even though I'm almost positive no one in the audience had played it before). He had a song about his ex girlfriend who was a crazy furry, it was a little awkward to hear but still kinda funny.

After exploring the con area a bit I wondered back into the room where the concert had been and they had a panel that was kinda interesting. They had a group of four people that were members of the college club and the audience was supposed to give them topics and the panelists would go on and rage about it. It was pretty funny and a solid panel that Nashi Con could easily use in theory. One of the chicks doing it had to comment on everything even if she hadn't seen it or played it and she got on my nerves a little bit but it was a good panel overall.

The last panel I went to was by far the most popular, it was a Geek Stand Up Comedy thing and I was amazed that every single one of the guys I saw up there was actually funny (I got in a little late and missed the first guy). I don't think it was just random local Watarus though, they had one guy that had gone to 30 different states and some of the others had done other shows as well. Most of them talked about nerdy stuff but it wasn't shit like obscure Japanese references in some anime you've never heard of, they talked about the 360 and making fun of con goers and stuff. The people here easily outnumbered everyone in the other three panels combined.

After this there wasn't anything else I wanted to do (I would have checked out the Batman is Awesome panel, but I would have to wait til 11:00PM or so just for it to start and I didn't want to get home super late) so I took a few more pictures and left. It was raining hard and the traffic was still bad at 8PM but I managed to get home safetly.

Oh, they also had a game room (that was actually big enough to walk around in!) with Smash Melee and Brawl, Street Fighter IV, Power Stone, and a few other games but you could tell they had just gotten people to bring stuff in like at Nashi Con as many of the TVs were too small and of all different brands and quality.

Overall I enjoyed it but don't think it was worth driving 3 hours each way. I have 10-15 pictures but I'm not gonna stretch the page to post them (when only 2 or 3 people read my blog) so if you care just IM me asking for them.