Note: Each of the three parts was written at a different time and with a different state of mind. I decided to mostly preserve the original format of each part for the sake of authenticy (and laziness). Hopefully you will observe and find it interesting to see how the writing reflects the shift in mindset.

Part I - Day 1 Game Impressions (May 10, 2006)

Going into it: Really excited to play Wii, Too Human, 99 Nights, Viva Pinata, Guitar Hero 2, new Sonic, and others that i can't think of right now. Didn't expect much from PS3 after sony's conference.

Arrival: Go straight for Nintendo's booth cause Wii is at the top of my list. I get there and there is a 4 hour line to play Wii. They have it in a closed off section and you must wait on line to get in. So I say fuck that, we'll come back later. So, in short, I never made it back there in time, and Wii will have to wait till tomorrow. However, my friend who go in there early morning said it was amazing and definitely worth the wait.

After that, we hit Sony's booth since its right next to Nintendo's. Played a few PS3 games, one crashed (Sonic), the other was just a hi res PS2 game (Genji 2). I'm not kidding when i say that God of War 2 running on PS2 looks just as good as the PS3 games except for not being in Hi def. Also, the new controller is exactly teh same except for the new analog L2/R2, and it does feel lighter. Didn't get to try the game Warhawk with the tilt sensing, gotta hit that tomorrow.

Other notable events of the day:

Gears of War for 360, although not playable, looked amazing in the live demo. Kinda like a FPS crossed with RE4 style controls and viewpoint.

I didn't a chance to actually play any of the 360 games i wanted to due to the fact that MS booth has WAY too few systems set up (only like 4-8 per game), so I'll have to be returning there tomorrow and be prepared to wait a while to play.

I did get to play Sonic again, this time on 360, and it didnt crash this time. It actually has huge potential, as long as they clean up bugs and some other polish issues. Its got a new character, Silver the Hedgehog, who uses telekinetic powers to fight enemies. Meaning you can like lift up cars and crates and dead enemies and throw them at other enemies to kill them. Its kinda like the gravity gun from Half Life 2, only in a platformer. The sonic stage was just fast and pretty.

New Super Mario Bros. for DS will be amazing, as is the DS lite. Probably have to pick one of those up just based on the nicer screen and buttons.

Guitar Hero 2 - AMAZING!! They made it so much harder. Hard is like what expert was, and expert is just a whole new ridiculous beast. The 2 player co-op is amazing. (rhythm and bass guitar parts are sometimes harder than the lead guitar). SOOO excited for this game to come out. Also, I got a shitload of posters, so one will be sent and hung in the Wsoft office.

Finally, Loco Roco for PSP is surprisingly awesome. Its hard to explain, but its kinda like a 2D monkeyball meets sonic meets Gish. You only use the triggers to rotate the screen and hop this yellow blob that rolls along. As you feed it food, it gets bigger, and at any time you can split up into many smaller blobs to fit through tight spaces. And its got cool 2D blob physics like Gish does.

Part II - Rant (May 11, 2006)

Rather than discuss my impressions of invidual games, which I'll save for tomorrow when I've actually played them all (still haven't gotten in to play Wii, more on that later), I'd like to discuss and share my opinion on E3 in general.

E3 is, put simply, too crowded. Every year more people come to the show and every year it becomes more apparent. I don't want to get into whether or not this is good for the game industry (which I'd assume it is good, since more popular = more money). I just want to share my observations on how this hurts the quality of the actual show. This year is the 5th year I've gone to E3, and I have seen tangible effects that the overpopulation has had over the years.

First, and most apparent, is the lack of good swag. As more people come to the show, the companies need more shit to give away to people. The more they need to give away, the less each thing will cost individually meaning it will be lamer. This year, many companies have completely stopped giving out any sort of swag entirely. At Nintendo, who has been notable in the past for their swag (they used to give out game boys, wavebirds and tshirts in contests at their booth), you can expect to walk out with little more than a DS case. I realize that the swag isn't why you go to E3, but it has always been a fun corollary to the experience that I'm missing this year.

Second, and more importantly, more crowded means more waiting. More waiting means less playing which means less fun. Moreso than any year before it, more of the large atractions at the show are only accessible by waiting on an daunting line. The worst example of this is the line for Wii, which gets to be 4 hours long at noon, at which point they have to close down the line because they are closing the Wii area at 4 for private showings. Needless to say, I haven't gotten to see it yet (Nintendo is the only company with playable Wii, the 3rd parties with Wii games can only show video at their booths), and I'm waking up at 6 am tomorrow so I can get on the line right when the show opens so I can play the thing.

I realize that this is mostly just a rant, but this does illustrate to us how ridiculously corporate our industry has become when its own trade show is reduced to a mega marketing fest. It seems that nowadays, E3 exists soley for the marketing departments to blast the media and hardcore gamers lucky enough to snag a pass with their bullshit. I miss when it was still a little bit about game developers showing off their hard work to the community before they release.

Part III - Why E3 Sucks for Gamers (May 21, 2006)

As you can see from the date, this part was written over a week after E3 has ended. I've had time to cool off about how frustratingly crowded the show was this year. In the end, I barely even got to play Wii. Once I finished with the 4 hour outer line, I finally got to enter the insanely crowded inner sanctum of Nintendo's booth, which consisted of an additional hour+ long line for each and every TV in there. Needless to say, after trying a couple of the lesser games out, and watching others play the rest (none of the games were really mindblowing), I said fuck it and just left. Before I get to what I actually want to talk about here, I'll briefly discuss the few things that are worth mentioning that I didn't get to in Part I above.

Lost Planet - Despite the generic shooting and blowing up aliens premise, this game was surprisingly polished and fun. Definitely a 360 game to look forward to, and its made by Capcom so that makes it even cooler.

Dead Rising - Another 360 game from Capcom, which is amazingly gory and has an extremely interactible world. Pretty much everything in the game can be picked up and used as a weapon.

Too Human - This is one that I've been highly anticipating since its made by Silicon Knights. It looks similar to Devil May Cry, but has a very unconventional and possibly over simplified control scheme. All melee attacks are done with the right analog stick, and I was finding it quite easy to completely rape the enemies by just holding jump and spinning the stick. Also, the animation was much shoddier than it should be, hopefully they clean that up before release. So, I was a little disappointed with this one, but thats probably just because my expectations were so high.

Viva Pinata - It was NOT playable, instead they had a live demo. After seeing it, who knows how this one will turn out. I just really love the unique art style.

Spore - Also a live demo instead of being playable. The demo was very similar to the original Will Wright showing at GDC last year, except I imagine it was a lot less fake and actually closer to a finished game.

Thats all I can think of right now. Feel free to ask me if I saw and what I think about any specific game. Now I would like to discuss the topic of why E3 sucks for gamers. Despite what the title suggests, I will try to avoid making this a rant like Part II, and a litle more constructive.

E3 sucks for gamers because the way E3 presents videogames is not the way gamers typically like to experience them. E3 stands for Electronic Entertainment Exposition. Electronic Entertainment means videogames and Exposition is just a fancy word for show. So, as we all already knew, E3 is a videogame show. So this brings up an interesting question: what is the best way to show videogames to people? E3 represents what marketing people think is the best way, which is to focus to the "video" part of videogame. Market games the same way that other mass media is marketed, with flashy videos and high volume levels. For movies, this works perfectly. A movie trailer is really the closest you can get to showing someone a movie without them actually watching the whole movie. Unfortunately, the "game" is probably the more important part of a videogame to show off, and unfortunately, it takes a back seat at E3.

But wait, E3 is all about playable demos, right? What better way to experience the game component of a videogame than to play a demo? Well, thats true, demos are to games what trailers are to movies. Its the closest a person can get to experiencing the full game without actually playing through it. This is true for game demos in general. Like the demos you can download from Xbox Live and play in the comfort of your own home. This exposes the fundamental flaw in the way E3 shows off videogames. A major and under appreciated part of the experience of playing videogames is to be physically comfortable and relaxed and not rushed. Playing videogames is largely about learning how the game works and different players do this in different ways and at different paces. So, yes, E3 does have lots of playable demos, most of them are played standing up with a long line of eager people waiting for you to finish, and often the demos are very short ( < 10 minutes). Most of the time at E3 is spent watching other people play the game while you wait in line, or watching a trailer on a huge screen, or admiring the fanciful, amusement park-esque booth decorations and the booth babes. With no time to learn the games, many genres (RPGs to name one) are simply the opposite of fun in that environment. On top of this, many of the biggest games at the show (Gears of War, to name one) are presented in "live demo" form, which is basically watching one of the developers play through the demo, rather than actually getting to try it yourself. So, I am hardly exaggerating when I say that E3 is NOT about playing games for the average attendee.

This brings up is a larger question about the marketing of videogames and the medium in general. How important is the actual game contained within a videogame to the mass market of potential buyers that the marketing is designed to reach? Honestly, I don't know the answer to this question. I like to think that its very important and that fun gameplay is the reason the big selling games sell wha they do. But if this is the case, why does videogame marketing place such a small emphasis on it? My guess is just because its convenient - it's easier to ignore the challenge of how to use gameplay to attract potential buyers. I think the demos on Xbox Live represents a potentially amazing future of game marketing, and I really hope it continues to expand. As for E3, I don't know if its possible in that environment to focus on showcasing gameplay. Playing games is an activity usually reserved for the living room at home, so how do you turn a convention center into an ideal environment for this? Maybe we have to accept that E3 is just a videogame amusement park, and stop expecting it to be the gaming mecca that many believe it is.

Note: views and opinions expressed in this article are the author's and are not necessarily those of Wolverine Soft.