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E3
Well, we have just finished E3 for this year, Nick is working his ass off to get the content up there for you guys. I am just sorting some mails and follow up information. However, I thought I would take a break and let you know the highs and lows of the trip, and what excited me and what dissapointed me.
Firstly - we left my place at around 7am to get to the airport for our flight which left at 11:30 - since it was a US flight we wanted to check in a couple of hours before hand. This turned out to be a nightmare, with the M4 being solid and us only making it by the skin of our teeth. Of course, when the tannoy called us - we were concerned, but the first thing to go right that day happened - we go bumped flights, to one 10 minutes later with an upgrade.
So we had our extremely exciting 11 hour flight to LA - not much fun, but not much choice. We got to LA - got to the hotel and sorted ourselves out. We got in the day before the registration in order to attend the breifings by the big guys, not much to say here - Nick has covered most of it.
We have had over 40 meetings and played well over 200 games, 20 or so screenings, and of course attended a mass of 7 parties. Its been fun, loads of fun.
The first thing I played on was PS3 - which, whilst was only on development hardware I was pretty let down by the whole thing, yes it could improve but why wait so long and pay so much for something which wasn't anywhere near what I hoped it would be?
What I liked? Wii - it was great, we managed to play a fair few games - I have to say I got to get one, this and my 360 will do it for me. I loved playing the Tennis, and Baseball - both good fun. Whilst it isn't "true" next gen in terms of hardware, the gaming experience is about nextgen * 2 - the interaction is great, and the games are fun - this is what the casual gamer wants, a pick up and play. Its also small enough that you can easily take it away and for someone who is travelling on biz as much as me this is pretty damn appealing. This is going to be my next console.
One of the games which I am most looking forward to coming out is World in Conflict from Vivendi it looks great, how command and conquer should be.
The most impressive engine which I saw, has to be without doubt Crysis from Crytek - full total distruction and whilst it is a while off being release it really does kick ass
The game which I was pleased to play was Guitar Hero II and who wouldn't be - these guys are so cool; they just got picked up by Activision and are some of the nicest people in the gaming industry. I appologize to Harris when we appeared to blank him.... ;) We will have a load more stuff from our buddies at Red Octane real soon.
The award for the most violent, swearing filled game has to be Scarface - wow, how far can they push the boat? Blood spraying, kicking people in, great physics, oh and the fact Tony Montana is "da man."
All in all good fun, hard work, and loads more to do - but the gaming arena is getting more exciting - and hopefully we will have an update on all we have seen when we hit Leipzig.
Until then - I want my Wii - I want it now!
:)
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E3 was great this year. I've been watching the live coverage elsewhere.... Maybe it's something you guys should look into for next year. It would be nice to watch Brits instead ;) Glad you had fun.
Edit: Did you see anything on Alan Wake? I know that it's been made Windows and 360 exclusive but there was only a trailer for it :confused: Maybe I missed something :(
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We have thought about the live feeds and stuff - and may well do it; either that our a podcast which you can take with you about our views each day.
All takes time - we are good at getting words online, we would have to work even more to do anything else :)
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a lot of the publications with constant live updates do it through sheer weight of numbers - e.g. kotaku had some great coverage, but that relied on having ten people there, so they could spread the load an awful lot
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Oh - I am not doubting it can be done; but we want to be different. We took 9 people to CeBIT this year - and we have 5 people going to Computex; so things are possible...
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That's all good to hear! I can't wait to see and play on the wii for real!
Do you need some little dog's body for next year? Or any other fun business outings? :P
Ian
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Of course if you can get yourself there... ;)