Alright so good news and bad news. Good news is that the video issue is resolved so all the shaky and somewhat blurry videos I took so far at the show are able to be uploaded to Youtube. The bad news is that this hotel is apparently massively overtaxed and uploading videos is taking an inordinate amount of time. So what I am going to do, since we only have one more day left, is upload them when I get home tomorrow night and spend my Friday writing a ton of previews with videos and pictures galore. Seriously. So tonight I will again give a summary of the day and some quick early thoughts about what went down.

So rolling in at opening time this morning it seemed like there were fewer people waiting to get in. It seemed that way but then the place was packed in record time. I started off in the South Hall again which is where Microsoft is and my first destination, the Kinect hands on booths. Microsoft had these pods set up with a glass wall so you can watch people make asses of themselves while they are playing Kinect. I waited for an hour to get in and this waiting was done behind a man who absolutely refused to advance in the line until the people in front of us were more than a full car length away. I know I mentioned this in the tweets but holy shit this guy. It should be noted that I did not have any coffee this morning.

I got in to the Kinect pod only after doing a pre-play interview with Microsoft staff for some behind the scenes material which consisted of how long have I followed the Kinect and what did I expect and what was I interested in seeing. I think I did really bad in the interview because ‘I want to see if this will actually work’ and all its tactful equivalents doesn’t really pop. The camera followed me in to the pod where I joined a few guys who were already in there.  We didn’t really have a lot of options for what to play and I was put in Joy Ride, a racing game that specializes in jumping and tricks. In order to play you extend your arms out and pretend you are steering a wheel. You get a boost by pulling your arms back and pushing forward. It handled fairly well and I was impressed by how well it read my movement even when it was just subtle changes in ‘wheel’ position.

I watched another guy play Kinectimals and while the lion cub was cute and some of the obstacle course looked interesting it didn’t seem like the game had much replay. I watched two of the other dudes play Adventure, specifically rafting, which was a lot of leaning and jumping and seemed cool and then I stepped up to play some sort of mine cart thing in Adventure. I had to hop to make it go faster and jump, duck and lean to avoid obstacles.

I was fairly impressed with how accurate the tracking was on the movements and there didn’t seem to be any lag. We didn’t run into any crashes or technical issues either. The tech seems solid. Of course, solid tech doesn’t equal interesting software and I doubt I would play any of the things I tried today all that much into the future. I will say that I felt WAY more physically worked than I ever had doing anything on the Wii. We will see what the other software is like.

After Kinect I fought one of the Capcom reps in Marvel VS Capcom 3. He shellacked me like I was a water damaged end table. I should mention that he was a Capcom rep, I haven’t played Marvel VS Capcom in a long time and we were using the 360 controllers and all that faulty D-pad has to offer. My beating notwithstanding, MvC3 played really well and adds some awesome assist combos that kick a ton of ass as well as streamlined controls. I used Ryu, Chris Redfield and Deadpool and they were all fun to fight with. And when I say fight I mean get my ass kicked with. Hard.

After that I played Castlevania: Lords of Shadow which I have some really sketchy off-screen video of right here:

Despite the fact that you are riding a horse and slashing Wargs in this clip, the majority of the demo featured gameplay very, very reminiscent of God of War but with a character rocking a whip Castlevania earns that more than a lot of the other GoW clones. The blocking and dodging mechanic are very good and the attacks and combos flow smoothly. Also the environmental effects were really nice, particularly the rain at the beginning of the demo.

Next up was Two Worlds II. I never played the first one because I heard so many bad things about it. I wasn’t very impressed. The animations weren’t great, the character moved in a very stiff way and the combat was confusing and choppy. There were a couple of people behind me watching me play commenting on how much better it looked than the first one and how this and that was better and it made me even happier that I didn’t play the first one.

The next thing was Lord of the Rings: War in the North. This was a closed doors demo like the other things WB was doing where you watch the trailer and the Devs play the game and you can’t take any video. It looks really nice and tells a story that doesn’t happen in the books or movies so they have a bit more creative license. The game is an action RPG in which you play one of three different characters, or if you have buddies with you or online you can all take one of the characters and play Co-op. If you are by yourself, the other two characters are run off of AI. It looked fairly standard for action RPGs but it also looked really solid. I am into LOTR so it is one I am looking forward to.

I didn’t get my hands on Fable III or Crackdown 2 but I watched other people play and they both looked pretty much like previous games in the series. Neither are the sort that you can really get a feel for just watching so I am going to try to get my hands on them tomorrow.

I got in line for the Move and while I wanted to try Fighting or Socom I ended up playing Ping Pong on Move Sports. While it was a bit of a letdown to not be playing what I wanted, Ping Pong was actually pretty cool and unlike the Wii equivalent, the paddle was doing exactly what my hand and wand were. If I wanted to put some english on it I was able to do that. I play Ping Pong with my dad and I beat my opponent really quickly. The Move controller felt good in hand and seemed like it did pretty much what it said it did.

Jumping ahead in the day, I went back to Move and played Shoot. It is an on-rails shooting gallery type thing. The stage I played was a western movie set where the props and cardboard cut outs are trying to kill you. You aim by pointing the controller at the screen and pulling the trigger button for the trigger. There were calibration issues initially but those were resolved in the menus and then I was off to the races. There seemed like there was a tiny bit of lag after pulling the trigger but aiming was super accurate and the whole thing was pretty fun.

Even later in the day I tried out Brunswick Bowling by Crave for the Move. This was pretty similar to Wii bowling but you have a lot more control over angles and such and I found that I was able to put spin on the ball the way I would in real bowling. It took me a minute to get myself calibrated and then I was hitting strikes and picking up spares.

I liked the Move a lot and I would like to make another play for Fighting or Socom tomorrow. If I had to pick a favorite motion control so far I think it would have to be the Move.

I got in on some Wipeout HD in 3D and I was REALLY unimpressed. Remember how blurry and dim people complain 3D movies are? This is way worse. I looked at Stardust and MLB the Show with the glasses on as well and they looked like crap too. No thanks.

Next up was Killzone 3. I played a level with a lot of jetpack action in it and after several dips in the icy cold ocean called death I got the hang of it. It felt pretty comperable to Killzone 2 with some added elements like the jet pack to change it up. I had fun even though I really suck at it. I think I will pick it up when it comes out.

After Killzone I got in on Dead Rising 2 after seeing the booth actors arrest some ‘zombie huggers’ who were passing out zombie rights propaganda and who tried to let the hot bikini zombie out of her cage. It was a fun little scene and I was impressed by how far Capcom went to make an impression.

As for the game, it seemed very similar to Dead Rising with the addition of combining weapons. That was fun and the game looked really fantastic, but it was pretty much the same gameplay as last time. That seems to be a theme in these iterations.

I played Socom 4 next and it was super tight and looked wonderful. I think it was my favorite shooter of the show so far. It is third person perspective and obviously skews a bit more realistic than Killzone 3.

I looked in on Medal of Honor and that looked kind of generic. It didn’t look bad but it didn’t look terribly special either.

Little Big Planet 2 was fun while I was racing a Sony rep to the top of a tower. He let me win and did a good job of making it look like he didn’t. It looked even better than the original and the gameplay felt more unique.

It was a long day and while I still have things I want to see tomorrow, a lot of my questions were answered today. Will have some more detail previews friday as well as fresh photos and video. Today I spent more time playing than I did filming.