Okay because the internet is stretched super thin with everyone in the hotel here for E3 and trying to update about it, I am going to do what I did last year and throw up summaries of each day with some pictures and quick impressions of what we saw. No videos though because the show would be over before I finished the upload. So here goes.

I had wondered why the West Hall was bare yesterday since last year they had big ad for Move. I thought maybe they were just being more low key and sheepish after compromising the security of every one of their users but it was just that they hadn’t announced the name of their new handheld until the press conference yesterday. It is the PSVita and it is going to retail for $250.00, or so we were told by a dude in the elevator who worked for Sony and was dreading interviews. I can’t imagine why. Hmmmmm…

The crowd looked a little more sparse trying to get in than last year but the show floor was SUPER congested. I am not sure what the official number of attendees is this year but it has to be up there. Walking through the crowd seemed to be much more difficult this year than last. We had appointments today so we didn’t spend a huge amount of time just wandering around looking at what there was to see which worried me a little as I was afraid we would cover less but as it turns out it was just the opposite and not only did we cover a lot more games but we got to talk to programmers, creative directors and other such people we wouldn’t have had access to otherwise. We also made it into a closed doors screening of Bioshock Infinite which by our math less than 1,000 people at the show will get to see so it all worked out.

Our first stop was Atari where we were treated to five of their new games. The first we checked out was Warlords, a modern take on an old Atari 2600 game. It is a DLC game for the XBL and PSN and is sort of a mixture of Pong and Capture the Flag. In a few days we will have video of me being shellacked by an Atari rep while she was answering questions for Riyad. It was fun for what it was and could be a nice distraction for DLC. The next game we saw was Heroes of Neverwinter which is a Facebook game based around D & D using 4th edition rules and Flash to animate it. It was pretty impressive for a Facebook game and I was a little stunned at how deep it was. It is a turn based RPG with an isometric view. It should be coming out in later in the summer and is one I am interesting in playing. We will have more on this in one in the coming days. Next up was Gamma World which is a third person shooter based on a pen and paper game of the same name. It looked like it had some interesting ideas going on and is another one that is a downloadable title for 360 and PS3 (also PC via Steam) and for that sort of experience it seems pretty robust and there are some cool things going on there. It was a pretty early build so I am not sure what will happen to it as it goes on but it is one to watch. Centipede Infestation was up next for the Wii and 3DS. It had a real Smash TV/Robotron feel to it with independent moving and shooting. It was hard as fuck and the rep said before hand that there were some balancing they needed to sort out but I think that I was just having a hard time due to the fact that the last time I picked up a Wii controller was at last year’s E3 when I played Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword. I’d be lying if I said I was terribly interested in Centipede but that is more my taste and less the game. The last thing at Atari was Tera which you will have to hear from Riyad about because he had hands on and I was looking at the time because we had to move on to our next appointment.

Our first game at 2k was XCOM, a repurposing of an RTS series into a first person shooter. We’ll have more on this one later but the short of it is that it plays like mixing a Ghost Recon or Full Spectrum Warrior with Bioshock. You are fighting aliens and have to give squad commands to flank and out maneuver enemies or your shit will be stomped down with extreme prejudice. The shooting looked cool but we are skeptical about the RTS elements. I know they are trying to harken back to the game’s origins but it doesn’t strike us as a super fun addition. The XCOM demo went long so we had to reschedule the Darkness 2 for later in the day, all while drooling over Bioshock. The 2k press waiting area was pretty awesome and offered free wraps, sandwiches and water which was very nice given that I left all of the cliff bars in the hotel room.

We headed over to Gazillion games after that for a look at Fortune Online and Marvel Super Hero Squad. Fortune Online is another Flash based dungeon crawler played in your browser. This seemed a bit less interesting than Atari’s similar effort but it looked solid. The free to play/micro transaction thing worried us a bit as you can really nickle and dime yourself but what we saw was cool. Marvel Super Hero Squad is a MMO for kids featuring the Marvel license. Again it is a browser based game and offers both a monthly subscription service option and a micro transaction option. We are not really the target audience for this one but it looked really polished and fun to play, particularly if you are a parent with kids you can play with.

After Gazillion it was back over to 2K for a tentative spot in a Bioshock Infinite demo.  We got there and it was touch and go for a minute but thanks to the graciousness of a 2K rep we were allowed into the demo. Holy fucking shit. Bioshock Infinite looks incredible. the demo was maybe 10 minutes but the sheer amount of awesomeness crammed into that made it seem much, much longer. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is the game of the show but I can’t say until it is all over. That being said, I also can’t imagine anything is going to beat it. The wait for this thing to be out is going to be excruciating.

 

While waiting for our Konami appointment, we stopped by Tecmo to check out Ninja Gaiden 3. I was expecting a lot of awesome but we did not find it. As you will see from some video later in the week, the game seems to think that ‘hard’ means a ridiculous wall climbing mechanic that seems to run off of frustration. There were some cool context sensitive kills and an intuitive system for achieving them but over all it looked pretty tedious and awful. That being said, I did not get hands on time with it yet and watched someone else play so I can’t say it is terrible. I will make sure to play it tomorrow or Thursday to make sure it wasn’t just a case of that guy having a hard time with it.

First up at Konami was Never Dead a third person shooter with a protagonist who can’t be killed and can detach and reattach limbs at will. There are some good ideas here but I am not so sure about the execution. Some of the mechanics are not as intuitive as I would like and there were some nasty frame rate drops that effected the timing but I am not sure where along the development cycle that is so some of those things could be fixed or balanced before release. I thought it was interesting and ambitious but I am not sure how it will turn out. Only time will tell but the fact that the Konami rep spent Riyad’s entire play session explaining to him how to play does not bode well for how intuitive it will be on release. We will have some video and more in depth information after the show.

Next up was Silent Hill: Downpour. This is one that I have been looking forward to for awhile and I was happy to see that it looks pretty darn good so far. We spoke with the creative director for the game and will have video of that interview later on but for now, this looks like the series is back where it ought to be and I am really excited for it. Also, we learned it is going to be in 3D for the PS3 which is pretty cool for people that have that set up.

The last thing at Konami was Pro Evolution Soccer 2012. I am not a big soccer fan but the way the game is set up with the AI and reffing makes me kind of interested. The graphics looked very sharp and you could tell a lot of thought went into improving the title based on player feedback. I wish all developers would take this much time and effort into making their audience happy.

After Konami it was back over to 2K to catch up with the Darkness 2. I was a big fan of the first game and this one looks to improve on that one a lot. The ambiance and feel were just right and some of the new kills using the Darkness are really cool. The skill tree available that gives you new powers is robust and the powers themselves seemed to be really useful. The game looks super polished and it was really impressive. I am looking forward to this one a lot.

It was the end of the show after that last trip to 2K but Riyad did get some hands on time with Warhammer 40K Space Marine. I expect he will talk about it more himself and show the assets the rep gave him but he really liked it a lot and was impressed. I was pretty impressed by the huge set up they had.

That was our day. It was pretty epic for what we saw and we got a lot covered. By way of comparison, I covered nine games last year and we managed 16 this year. Tomorrow is another loaded day and there are two more hours of show time than today so it should be even better.