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Whew! Today was quite a day with a packed schedule full of appointments and more time spent waiting for Dead Rising 3 than it took to fly to LA. Because Charles and I had long appointments scheduled, we didn’t have a lot of time for roaming around and doing random things but that is okay because we saw some pretty awesome things from the appointments, including a game that may be my favorite of the show so far.  Again, Charles’s comments will be italic and this is just a quick summary and previews will follow.

Our day started with a sit down with the good folks at Steel Series, a Danish peripheral company that specializes in competitive gaming equipment. Their headsets, keyboards, mice and other gear is all optimized for precision and function to give professional gamers an edge. It is also priced pretty well with high durability. And they are very cool and nice. We will have more from them in the coming months for sure.

Steel Series was incredibly impressive with the tech they have coming out, I have some detailed notes on the different models you can look forward to this year. The headphones not only looked like they could take a beating but had a great design.

After that we hit up Bethesda’s nifty free food truck where we scored a tasty grilled cheese sandwich and the goofy photo you see at the top of the article. Good of them to feed us.

We then headed into the West Hall to check out a game called Magrunner that is kind of a cross between Portal and some Cthulhu business. It was a fun game dealing with magnetizing things to solve puzzles and eventually an ancient one will show up I gather.  After that we stood in line for Dead Rising 3 again for about 35 minutes before abandoning the fight so we could make our meeting with CD Projekt Red and their presentation of the Witcher 3.

Witcher 3 looks absolutely amazing and while it was not hands on, the 45 minute presentation got into a ton of game elements and has me chomping at the bit to play it. I dug the Witcher 2 but there were some UI problems and some issues with controls in terms of the combat. This looked like those issues have been fixed and the whole thing looked pretty seamless. This is a pre-alpha build too so there is a lot of time to smooth out some collision detection issues it seemed to have. Overall, though, it looks fantastic and I want to play it now.

Going into this presentation I had never played any of the Witcher titles nor did I know that much about them. This completely changed my perception on these games. The story telling model that is shrouded in gray area decisions was awesome in action and I can only imagine enriches was it already an expansive and immerse beautifully designed world.

After the Witcher 3 meeting we went straight Square Enix booth and started our tour there. That put us right into the theater experience for Thief. This is a reconstructed experience that isn’t a sequel, prequel or continuation by the folks that brought us the latest Dues Ex game although it does feature series mainstay Garrett as the main character. Some of the hallmarks of the series return like different sort of arrows and such but it looks like a fairly new sort of experience.

Following Thief, Charles and I split off for a bit as he got hands on time with Saint’s Row 4 and I went in to see Murder Soul Suspect. Murder Soul Suspect was interesting and follows the exploits of a cop who is killed and has to solve his own murder as a ghost. There is a lot of investigation going on as one would imagine but also some interesting gameplay offered up. It is releasing on 360 and PS3 as well as PC.

Saints Row 4 is a cross between the previous games with Crackdown like superpowers thrown into the mix. Crank up your dubstep gun and you’ll believe a Saint can fly. These 10 play minutes were everything I would want out of a new Saints Row game. The particulars as to why you are in some kind of Crackdown meets the Matrix plus the 5th Element remained a bit vague, but these games have never needed to be top heavy on the story.

Next up we finally got into Dead Rising 3 but not together as Charles made the cut and I didn’t. So I waited yet another 25 minutes bringing my wait to over an hour and a half all told. I could have just let Charles watch it and said to hell with it but it was my mission. Dead Rising 3 is exclusive to Xbox One and looks like offers the same thing the first two games did but more. It is an open world and has no load times and hopefully no bullshit doomsday countdown. Not sure seeing it was worth all that waiting but whatever.

Dead Rising 3 appears to be another solid entry into the franchise, story details are quite scarce right now so we viewed a play through of a quest to make a boomcannon. Shotgun, meet grenades. A lot of the main staples of the series are back, the cityscape looks amazingly detailed and the number of zombies rendered on screen was pretty epic. Also, zombie firemen with fire axes.

The last thing we got to do for the day was our appointment with Sony Online Entertainment where we were walked through the vagaries of free to play MMO Dragon Prophet and then we got hands on time with DC Online Universe running on the PS4. The game played well enough and it was fun to play as Bizarro but the really cool thing was having the PS4 controller in hand. The rubberized grip felt pretty great and the weight was nice. It was pretty much what you would expect from a playstation controller at this point and was responsive and comfy.

Tomorrow we have our last day of the conference and have appointments with Sega and Activision and we are going to try to get some hands on with Xbox One and PS4 as well as maybe get our hands on Arkham Origins. The update might not happen until Friday morning as we are hitting up a plane to fly home right after the show but it will be up as soon as possible.