I just want to thank a few people for the work they've done for E3.

Firstly thanks to Lahiru for a) coming to E3 and b) putting up with me being stressed out & tired for a whole week. I'm looking foward to reading some of the articles he'll write from his hands on time with games I didn't get to see (particularly a lot of the Wii games).

Secondly thanks to all the PALGN staff who did an awesome job covering all the E3 news - not to mention writing up articles based on my crappy notes. Particular thanks go to Luke for helping arrange a lot of the E3 meetings and to David for the astounding number of articles he wrote.

Finally thanks to all the PR, developers and assorted gaming professionals who took time to chat with me at E3. The best part of E3 for me was just being able to meet a whole bunch of people I'd only ever conversed with via email as well as listening to developers demonstrate their games.

However don't stop reading yet. Over the past few days I think I've picked up enough information to last for a whole year of previews. I'm just completing a preview / interview peice on Eye of Judgement that will go up soon. Once I get back to Aus I finish typing up my E3 notes, then I'll write up a few more features based on what I saw.

All up that cost me US$271.60 (or $351 of real money).

Guitar Hero just and I mean just fits inside of my suitcase. The box was much larger than I though it was and I was getting a bit worried carrying it back to our. Luckily it worked out.

Too tired to write more tonight. Will do a big update tomorrow.

I'll keep updating once I complete writing up the notes for each game

God of War 2
The E3 demo had essentially exactly the same gameplay as the original game
The combat system appears to be an exact replica of the original
That really isn't a bad thing, considering how great it was to begin with

Still contains those morbid overtones:
- Use a corpse to hold down a switch as opposed to a crate

Violent beyond reason, grab and reaction attacks are especially brutal
Reactions (moves excecuted through single button commands):
- Tear off one of the cerberus' head with your bare hands and use it to pimp slap the other head. Comedy gold.
- Take down a cyclops by using your blades to climb your way up to its head then plunge your arm into it's eye socket and tear out its eye in a shower of blood. Ewww doesn't do that justice...
Grabs:
- grabs an enemy and impale it with your blade, and swings it around into another enemy
- slams an enemy face first into the ground and stomp down violently onto its head

Looks to continue with the mythological references:
In order to pass through a door with a medusa's face carved into it, you need to collect the 'Golden Fleece' in order to deflect the doors stoner gaze. Stoner as in it turns you into stone.

Now that Kratos is a God, his power is well represented:
- Kratos deals with an enemy that throws bombs at your from atop a massive stone pillar by tipping the pillar from side to side with his bare hands (this is done by repeatedly tapping the O button)
- Kratos upturns a enormous stone stage-like area into a bog so he can use it as a bridge to reach the Golden Fleece (also achieved by tapping the O button)
- He launches his blades in a huge tree and uproots it to use it as a bridge (circle button again)

Presentation is as epic as ever.
There's an illusion of massive enviornments, but the play area is still relatively small and very linear.
Similiar score to the original game, orchestral
Graphics are stunning, even in light of the next generation offerings a few meters away

Mass Effect
The game has huge scope
You can explore the entire universe, from the universe, galaxy, solar system and planets.
Yet there's plenty of attention to the smaller details:
The beggining of the game

Conversations have been given a more real time feel to them:
Conversation options show up during the actual dialogue so you can make you mind up on what to ask during before they finish talking
It works well, and is more realistic
Conversations are presented in a cinematic style:
Close ups, over the shoulder shots, 2 shots

That remorse mostly comes down to the fact that I've had my first taste of... wait, let me rephrase that. That mostly comes down to me having spent some quality time with the Wii. Yeah, that's slightly better...

They said at their conference that 'playing = believing'. You have no idea how true that is. It may have taken me some getting used to but once I got into the groove of things, the hype level was through the roof. The anticipation and excitement I felt when lining up for another Wii game pretty much sums it up. Even right now as I write this, I'm thinking about how much I want another round of Excite Truck, or face a couple more fast balls in Wii Sports Baseball. AAAARGH! I'm going to go insane.

There where 27 games in total, and I got to play 11 of them during my 5 hours in heaven.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - Got to love VIP access! I got bumped to the front of the 60+ minute wait queue. Thank you NOA!
Tony Hawk Downhill Jam - I didn't get much time with this, but from what I did play, it was pretty promising (and just downright pretty).
Excite Truck - I am SO buying this. It's burnout with the Wii controller. Fucking awesome. This was the one game I wanted to keep coming back to, but I needed to try as many games as possible.
Necro Nesia - Um, yeah... It was kinda... not good.
Elebits - I'm buying this too! Great twist on the FPS formula. Actually, it's not so much a first person shooter as it is a first person crazy Japanese game (FPCJG) that involves flinging stuff around the room and zapping up little pikmin looking things. Very addictive (think katamari) and incredibly clever (think katamari). I see this game doing very well.
Wario Ware: Smooth Moves - you all might be a bit wary of the series by now, but this is seriously great fun. The Wii-mote was made for this game! The actions you saw in the trailer is basically how you have to play this game. Awesome fun.
Wii Sports:
-Golf - sinking a putt from 23 feet has never been so satisfying!
-Baseball - i wasn't holding a controller in my hand, it was a baseball bat. Getting the 'Out of the park!' rating is oh so sweet.
-Airplane - bodes well for a pilotwings game.
-Tennis - I only had one game of this and had my ass handed to me. It was still quite realistic (hence the ass-handing), but I needed more time with it to get the swings right. Once this tech demo turns into a fully fleshed out game, it will become a system seller.
Red Steel - I liked it. The sword control was a tiny bit underwhelming, mainly due to the fact it wasn't freefrom and was a little delayed, but the gun play was fantastic. Don't worry though, the sword fighting is still good fun and there's still more time before this game ship out. The game looks awesome too.

I really regret not being able to play Mario Galaxy, but it was either spend my entire time in the Nintendo booth waiting to play that, or try out tonnes of other games and buy Galaxy when it's released. What would you have done?

One noticeable omission from Nintendo's lineup was 'Rayman: Raging Rabbids'. I personally think the game uses some form of augmented reality (check the trailer, Rayman shows up inside the living room, plus they were showing short 10 second trailers on the show floor showing the 'rabbids' in the real world, like in a bath and on a frying pan) so they might have held it back because they didn't want that to steal the show or something. I don't know if I'm just being a raving loon (again), but I can't think of any reason why they wouldn't show it in at least some form on the show floor. Cryptic trailers don't count.

I took a few videos of some of the games in action, but the damn things won't be live till tomorrow. Upload speeds are a bitch. I'll be writing up an article with my proper impression of every game I tried at Nintendo's booth, so keep an eye out for that soon.

Right now though, I'm pretty damn hungry. I think I'll head downstairs and get me a bowl of good old American style chille.

Stay tuned for those videos. They are a must see.

Mario Galaxy.... (drool)

EDIT: Hmm, I noticed this post is completely devoid of any pictures and looks a bit barren...

Ahhh, that's better.

EDIT (again):
Here come the vidoes;
Downhill Jam - MPEG4 (1:04 min - 8.90 MB)
Elebits - MPEG4 (0:46 min - 6.46 MB)
Excite Trucks - MPEG4 (1:05 min - 8.86 MB)
Iwata and Kaplin - MPEG4 (0:16 min - 2.50 MB)
Project Hammer - MPEG4 (4:26 min - 35.2 MB)
Super Mario Galaxy - MPEG4 (3:25 min - 27.2 MB)

Crysis - MPEG4 (6.47MB)
More Crysis - MPEG4 (11.8MB)
Even more Crysis - MPEG4 (6.66MB)
Dead Rising gameplay - MPEG4 (36.0MB)
Entering floor day 1 - MPEG4 (17.5MB)
Guitar Hero 2 gameplay - MPEG4 (4.46MB)
Line for Wii - MPEG4 (10.1MB)
Ninty Nine Nights gameplay - MPEG4 (13.7MB)
Okami gameplay - MPEG4 (16.3MB)
PS3 booth - MPEG4 (30.8MB)
Rainbow Six Vegas Demonstration - MPEG4 (61.4MB)
Turok Trailer - MPEG4 (13.9MB)
Ubisoft booth - MPEG4 (5.00MB)
Virtua Fighter 5 Trailer - MPEG4 (8.86MB)
Viva Pinata Trailer - MPEG4 (8.16MB)

Red Steel (hands on) >Ubisoft
- The screenshots from Game Informer are a good representation of in-game graphics. They’re easily above anything from last generation, but below what we saw from first generation 360 games. Having said that - graphics aren’t really the something you focus on while watching Wii games. They don’t have a wow factor, but they’re easily good enough to feel next gen. It was well above what I as expecting from first generation Wii games. It still looks good even after watching Gears of War.
- Control is an issue. Red Steel certainly won’t enthral non-gamers. You move with the analogue stick on the numchuck and aim/look around by pointing the Wiimote. Firing is with the trigger at the bottom of the remote. For the entire demo I found myself fighting the controls. While it’s relatively intuitive to use the controllers it takes a lot of concentration to get the game to do what you want. This is due to two main problems;
1) The precision of the Wiimote. A tiny movement of your hand is picked up by the controller. This makes precise aimed quick difficult. Once you aim where you want you have to put a lot of effort into keeping the controller pointing there. This is the difference between a mouse and the Wiimote. Once you move a mouse into place you can take the pressure from your hand off it. With the Wii you have to put effort into maintaining it’s position. It’s a subtle point, but it does become quite noticeable even during short play periods on the Wii.
2) When moving with the numchuck you have remember not to let your hand holding the remote move around. I often noticed the screen starting to spin around and it took a few seconds to realise I’d lost concentration on the Wiimote.
- I can imagine that with practice 2 would stop being an issue, however I’m not so sure about 1.
- The katana control needs a lot of work. There is a second-or-so delay between when you slash your hand and when the slash appears on screen. It’s not a direct control of the sword – there seems to be a limited number of directions the slash can occur, so you slash first, the machine interprets the closest one and then displays it once you complete your movement. Suffice to say this sucks. Badly. It’s no where near as much fun as it should be.
- A lot of the rest of the control is excellent though. I like how you shake the numchuck to open doors of block katana attacks.
- The Wiimote is TINY (as is the console). It’s more of a square pole than a remote. It’s also only about 20cm long which makes it easy to reach all the buttons. Using the d-pad while pointing is easy.
- Anyway I need more play time to be able to figure out if the control gets easier, but it wasn’t as easy to get into as I was expecting from Nintendo’s appeal to non-gamer spiel.

Timeshift (hands on)
- you can slow, stop or rewind time
- graphics are great. Reminiscent of doom 3 exteriors
- slowing time is great fun you can doge fireballs / bullets that enemies throw. When using the sniper & slowing time lets you see great splatter effects as the people explode.
- the level I played involved moving up the exterior of a building over a series of levels with enemies placed strategically around. At one point there was a helicopter that was difficult to kill. It was only possible by slowing time and on order to line up shots with the rocket launcher.
- when stopping time you can walk up to an enemy and steal their gun. It’s fun to watch their reaction (then blow them away)
- at the end of the level there was a glider that you have to board. It takes off when you press a switch so in order to get on I had to slow time then dash over the glider. Integrating PoP style time puzzles actually work surprisingly well in an FPS.

World in Conflict
- evolution of Ground Control
- there will be a single player campaign (being written by Larry Bond from Red Storm Rising)
- so far it’s all online
- it’s a strategy game with no resource building. Everyone is given 6000 credits initially which they can use to generate units for the field. Once units die your credits slowly regenerate.
-been in dev for 1.5 years in development and looking at spring 07 release in US
- units gain experience while fighting in the field this increases their movement ability (speed) by amour will not change.
- basically it’s a fast paced strategy game (war sim) that gets rid of a lot of boring parts usually associated with these games
- graphics are really really amazing. This one really need some images if it’s written up. The sky / clouds look fantastic. The weapon effects are also fantastic. I was totally wowed when I saw the first atom bomb hit. It looks fantastically realistic. If you move your camera into the area near the explosion the screen gets static all over it like a radiation effect.
- Resources / air strikes are all dropped by planes which you can watch flying overhead. Everything looks really realistic.

Syphon Filter (hands on)
- excellent graphics -> PS2 quality & maintains great framerate
- like many PSP shooters aiming is an issue. Movement & control is good. Move with analogue stick & look with buttons. However this doesn’t help when you’re in the middle of a fire fight. Trying to pick off each person is painfully slow. This means playing cautiously is the only real option.
-probably need a bit more playtime can’t remember much of the mechanics and didn’t have time to write much down so don’t write this one up yet

Stuff I will write up later, but I’m just waaaay to tired now;
SNAP Nokia platform
Red dragon
Tabula Rasta, Guild Wars sequel & other plaync stuff
Caesar IV

Anyway, here's what I got around to playing (or seeing) on the show floor on day 1. It's in pretty rough form, but I'll try write it up in a way that's easy to follow.

Haze
Dubbed as an FPS game with a strong emotional story
Those who just want to play without bothering with story will find a solid FPS
Those who want an engaging story can also get that

The game is set in the year 2025
Mantel Global Industries is the largest, most influential corporation on the planet
They've expanded so much that they now have control over the US military
They excel in 'exporting democracy' to other parts of the globe
Outsourcing of the military to other countries lead to the introduction of 'NECTAR'
Nectar is a performance enhancing drug that makes it's user faster, stronger, yet it is reported to have side effects
Mantel GI does not want this to get out and adamantly denies it

The game takes place in war torn South America.
The demo took place in a jungle setting
The demo was a 'live feed' of a soldier and his squad enhanced with nectar on an operation
the heavy use of bloom was distracting
The jungle was full of detail (better than far cry, yet not as good as Crysis)
the colors seemed washed out and the textures looked a little lo res, but only when you get up close
It was a very early build
Gameplay could be comaparable to Republic Commando
- Squad based, team comradarie.
- Fly into the level in a drop ship with your squad
- location of your squad mates shows up as arrows on the side of the screen when they are off screen

Game looks to have powerful moments.
During the gameplay footage, one of the enemies dropped his weapon, surrendered and begged for his life.
Suddenly, a shot is heard and he falls to the ground clutching his stomach.
The view turns and you see one of your squad mates holstering his weapon while watching the man dying on the forest floor
the view shifted back to the man as he shuddered on the ground and finally died, that's when the feed gets cut off

Nectar is bad. Addictive, and also a possible cause of aggression and insanity. Nectar is finding it's way into mainstream society.
Is becoming so popular, people are drinking nectar instead of coffee.

Dead Rising
Zombie infestation in a shopping mall.
Starts off with very little zombies and lots of civilian, but over time, more civs get infected, therefore there will be more zombies.
By the end of the game, there'll be a shit load of zombies.
You have a certain amount of time before the rescue chopper arrives.
It's up to you how you decide to use that time.
You can either continue on with the story line, or you can screw around and kill zombies
The entire mall is you battle ground

you can enter different stores to get specific 'weapons'
-Sporting goods store gets you golf clubs, baseball bats, bowling balls
-Music store gets you guitars and so on

You can also enter book stores to read books for advice or experience (more on that later), or clothes stores to change your appearance ie, novelty hats

Each weapon has a strong attack, quick attack, tap or hold attack button to perform each
eg, scythe quick attack slices low across the legs in a sweeping motion, strong attack hooks behind head and pulls down to slice off head.
All weapons can also be thrown.
Weapons are literally everywhere

you can carry up to around 7 things at once (weapons, or food for restoring health)
you can switch between these things with the shoulder buttons

Weapons range from hand guns to giant fluffy teddy bears
These can lead to some very humourous combat situations
eg, soccer ball can be kicked into a group of zombies. It will then bounce of multiple zombies, knocking them down
an electric guitar will make a power chord sound whenever you attack with it

You are a journalist with a camera
Use the camera to get pictures of certain things like zombies, or horrific events like zombies attacking civilians and you gain Priviledge Points (PP) which determains your level.
Higher levels gets you new moves plus... other stuff... probably (not sure, will have to look into it)

Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway
This was a 15 minute demo, that the dev played and narrated in realtime
This entire demo happened in first person
The level demoed was in Einhoven(sp), September 1944
The date was revealed by the player (Sergeant Matt Baker) looking at a calender on the wall
Starts off with you and a group of other soldiers taking a break inside of a shop
Idle chatter with a very relaxed atmosphere, one of the soldier mention finding a girl in town
Suddenly there is an explosion and the front of the store is blasted to peices, debris and dust is thrown everywhere
you stumble out of the store, your view looks down and you see a large shard of glass sticking out of your arm
the one of the surviving soldiers comments on that, and he pulls it out
Baker screams in pain, and the screen goes red for a second and the view shakes

One of the developers main goals is to present the ingame characters as 'virtual people'
moments like the one listed above really help sell that
Other ways this is presented:
-Animations are incredibly lifelike
--when your squad valuted over a brick fence, on of your soldiers tripped up and fell to the floor. The nearest soldier to him turned around and encouragingly helped him back up
-when you group encounters enemies for the first time and are sneaking around them, the orders you give are whispered instead of said out loud.
-whenever orders are given to your squad, Baker performs the appropriate hand signals

You really felt like you were in a war
-planes fly overhead
-mortars sound in distance

Gameplay was essentially identical to the first game. Orders given to you squad like 'go to' or 'attack'
I didn't see much in terms of actual 'play', it was mostly atmosphere and scene setting cinematics
It felt very scripted, but it was still incredibly impressive.
Scripted moment:
-you team comes across a tank which blast the building across the road from you
-you see the chiminy of the building sale through the air and land a few feet away from you
-Baker used it as cover and called in the bazooka squad, which then made quick work of the tank.
-When the bazooka soldier fired the missle, the camera tracked as it flew towards the tank
I'm not sure whether these cinematic camera movements will actually make their way into the actual game, or whether it was only for the demo

Graphical touches like heat haze from vehicle engines and HDR make everything look real purty
The demo took place in daylight, so the colors of the grass, foliage and houses in the town were very vibrant

Resistance: Fall of Man
Insomniac's return to their roots (their first game was an FPS called Distruptor)
Smoothness of analogue sticks makes aiming easier, still feels like a console shooter though
large array of alien and real world weapons
Primary and secondary firing modes
Physics can be used as a weapon:
One of the levels was in a surgery room full of objects which could be pushed and shot around. On enemy was hiding behind a closet, which I shot with my shotgun. It fell backward and crushed him.

Ok, now I'm tired and my fingers hurt. More to come later...

Mass Effect
Too Human
God of War 2
FEAR: Extraction Point

And here's a couple more pics

P.S If any of you guys had any questions about a game, give me a pm and I'll try to answer it for you. It would be easier for me to explain the games if I knew what you were after.

Crisis, Crysis and more Crysis
The entire Rainbow 6 Vegas demonstration
''Behind closed doors' Turok Trailer
Dead Rising (this game is looking good)
Guitar Hero 2
and more!

Now just take a look at these pics, and try to spot Reggie!

I don’t have time for a full run down but here’s some rough notes on what I saw today. Lahiru will provide his own with additional details when he can.

Notes RE show itself;
- Nintendo booth is crazily busy. The line to get in extended almost all the way around the booth at the start of the day. We’re too busy with meetings to wait to get inside, so no Wii for us today The other bummer is that Daniel (from vooks.net) spent half the day in the booth but still didn’t manage to play Zelda, Mario or Red Steel! If playing is believing we might be stuck in ignorance for quite a while! We’ll try to get NOA to help us jump the queue tomorrow or we’ll leave E3 without even touching a Wiimote!
- It’s not as busy as I expected. Yes it’s very busy, but not so busy you can’t move around fairly quickly (except for a few minor bottlenecks). Maybe that’s just cause I was stuck behind closed doors all day that I didn’t notice though.
- Many people take frikken ages on games. Once someone gets on a game most people seem to stay there for about 20 mins to half an hour – even more so for the really important games. Finding no queue behind a person is probably an indicator that everyone else has given up and gone away, not that you’re going to get a quick play. I’ve given up waiting many times.
- MS are very nice / helpful. Their booth is nicely setup with lots of consoles and easy media access.
- Sony hasn’t been particularly helpful so far. Still our demos with them don’t start til tomorrow, so there’s hope for them yet. It is kinda funny that you have to wait 1-2hours to play Wii, but there’s frequently a free PS3 controller (it’s normally for Sonic though, which sucks )
- It’s great being able to meet everyone – from the Aussie PR reps to your favourite game developers – everyone is here!
- Next year there will be fewer appointments! Or at least have certain people focusing on certain types of games / systems. Being able to cover everything & doing all these meetings is overwhelming and far too stressful.

And now to the games. All these games were demoed to us, unless specified.

Mass Effect [Lahiru]
- This was a ma zing. Lahiru took the notes, though so I’ll let him fill in the details. Suffice to say this would have been the game of the day if it wasn’t for Gears of War.

Gears of War (Hands-on Multiplayer) >Microsoft
- Running on Xbox 360
- Some of the best graphics I’ve seen in a video game (console or PC). Looks similar to HL2 running with full HDR. Great lighting / bloom effects and even maintains fantastic frame rate.
- The game revolves around utilising cover continuously. Very well executed. Press A to cover behind wall, corner, car or anything. Press LT to aim and you’ll move automatically the closest point where you can shoot from behind cover. The aiming receptacle is only present when you press the aim button, otherwise the centre of the screen is blank – very nice touch.
- We played a 4v4 multiplayer game set in a partly ruined street with debris and cars litter across the road. Surrounding buildings allow plenty of places to take cover.
- There’s something call an ‘active reload’. I didn’t quite get the hang of it, but it’s similar to the power meter on a golf game – hit the button at the right time and you reload fast and give extra damage with your bullets – fail and you’ll jam your gun. There isn’t any meter though, so I couldn’t figure out when to press the button – probably because I was too busy taking notes to listen fully to the introduction
- Pressing B button allows for some cool melee combat. One of the guns has a chainsaw on the bottom. You can sneak up and use it to quickly take out enemies.
- Pressing & holding the A button allows players to perform a ‘rodeo run’ (spelling ?) which is essentially running fast while bending low for cover. You lose some control when you do this as a trade-off.
- Taking cover allows you to regenerate health. When a read circle appears on the screen you know you’re about to die. Take cover for a few seconds to regenerate.

Las Vegas – Rainbow Six >Ubisoft
- Similar engine to GRAW, but slightly updated. Graphics look very good.
- For PS3/Xbox360/PC (different dev for PC)
- Release Oct/Nov for PAL
- The buildings do look authentically like they could have come from Las Vegas (I know ) although they are not modelled on any real buildings for security reasons (apparently terrorists play video games too)
- There’s a splinter-cell-esque sneak cam that allows you to look behind doors.
- You can tag enemies to direct your team mates to attack them – this can be used as a distraction while you come in from another side.

Splinter Cell Double Agent >Ubisoft
- Sam’s daughter dies in a mission (I think) so he has some time off. When he comes back his boss asks him to go undercover to ‘take it easy’ (even the ubi rep admitted this was strange) to infiltrate a terrorist cell.
- As you play you can decide if you want to complete objectives (i.e. assassinate American senator) that will sway your loyalty to one side or the other. This effects the game. If the terrorists trust you they’ll one more doors to provide easy routes. If the US government trust you they’ll give you more high tech equipment. This also leads to multiple endings.
- The initial jail images we saw in the teasers is from Sam going to jail to create a back story for himself.
- Locations all over the world (such as New York, New Orleans & Antarctica).
- sept 06 release for PAL (been in dev for a couple of years)

Dark Messiah >Ubisoft
- based on Source engine
- Sept 06 PAL release
- It’s ‘HL2 set in the world of oblivion’
- It inherits the graphic quality of HL2
- Weaponds and magic can be upgraded during the game, but there’s no real RPG aspects to it. It’s mostly run, shoot and solve puzzles.
- We watched one boss fight where the player was running around trying to avoid a huge monster. When the player took cover under a rock the monster came and actually lifted the rock away to attack the player.
- Environment can be used to attack enemies & there are plenty of physics puzzle as you’d expect from a FPS source game.

Haze [Lahiru] >Ubisoft
- Had a chat with the script writer, but had to leave early so Lahiru watched the rest of the demo. Sounds interesting - certainly a game to watch.

PSP Games (Hands on)
- Killzone – plays pretty well actually. Control isn’t too painful & graphics are nice. What metal gear acid should have been. Only problem is that the camera angle doesn’t seem to move
- Bomberman – everything you know and love now on PSP
- Gangs of London – GTA Liberty City with a graphic improvement. Looks awesome. Sounds fantastic. Will it rock? Need more play time.
- Every Extend Extra (order ?) downloaded from PSP spot a took to hotel. Plays like gradius without the steroids, although I’m not 100% sure what I’m supposed to be doing. Addictively confusing.
- Racket and clank – played for 5 mins, but seemed like a generic platformer so moved on
- Field commander – advance wars PSP – it’s a good thing
- Loco Roco – runner up to gears of war for game of show ATM (but we all knew that anyway, didn’t we )

Quick note here that it’s only just been announced the Activision are now handling Lucasarts for Australia (at least I hope it’s been announced – if not you didn’t read this), which is probably a smart move based on the quality I saw in their booth.

Traxion >Lucasarts
- Nice little PSP game that reads mp3 files off your memory stick and generates levels to go along with the sounds. There will be a whole range of levels in different styles. The one I saw was a winding 3D road with balls on it you needed to avoid. The speed of road & ball placement is based on the music.
- There will be 24 different games in the release version
- background images will be based of genres read from ID tags
- will come with it’s own music tacks (incase you don’t have any on your memory stick)
- reads directly from mp3 files (no conversion needed), but other formats not supported ATM
- Been in dev for 3 weeks, but heading for a fall release
- This is a game I’ll be watching. Could be quite a hit (geddit?)
- Seriously though, it did appeal to me.

Lego Star Wars 2 (look up name) > Lucasarts
- based on original trilogy
- uses vehicles for puzzles
- you can now build vehicles like you built objects previously
- part of puzzle solving. You need to find all the pieces of the vechicle to be able to build it, then go off an fight with it. I saw a ATAT being built that was then
- used to fight another ATAT
- you complete objectives to get upgrades
- main characters all have own abilities (i.e. chewy will rip off enemy arms)
- you can create your own character and play with them
- US sept 06 release

I saw some very cool tech demos from Indiana Jones and the next Star Wars. The engines were called Euphoria and DMM (digital molecular modelling). Together they deserve there own feature article which I’ll do once I get back to Aus. Dot pointing them here won’t really help to explain much, so you’ll just have to wait for info on these

Star Wars Galaxies > Lucasarts
- They’re working on an expansion that will allow players to actually big changes to the world environment. There will be scripted events that can only be trigged once by players completing certain tasks together (e.g. a huge explosion changing a city). Everyone online at location will be able to see the event, everyone else will find the results when they log in the next time. Sounds pretty cool.

Australian Games
- took some footage of Fury (see media post below), although as much as I tried to like it, it’s not really my kind of game. I’ve got Australian dev interviews on Fri, so expect more coverage then.

Other random stuff I saw / played;
Star Trek Legacy > Bethesda – cool space ST battles. Ship to ship & whole fleet fights
Gundam (played) – PS3 – WTF this game was weirdly crap. The robots were really slow to respond and difficult to more. Combat was difficult most because it was impossible to move the machines around. Environment was just a desert and looked very current gen. Am I missing something or do Sony enjoy shooting themselves in the foot?
Sonic (played) – PS3 controls were a bit too sensitive. Graphics weren’t particularly impressive.
Okami (played) – yay!
Destory All Humans 2 - haven’t played the original, but spent a bit of time with this one. Was fairly fun, but needs more destroyable environments.

Fin. Now I sleep.

If there’s anything you’ve seen on other sites and you like us to check out in detail leave a comment to this post (no guarantees) and I’ll check it before I leave tomorrow. Make sure you provide some background details too – if you want to make sure I look at the game / event you’ll have to get me interested in it

Also there will be no more updates from the show floor (hey you got one). Carrying the laptop for the past three days (E3 and pre-E3 events) is killing me (since I need to take around the power adaptor since the batter is shot), not to mention the slow connection speed is useless. It’s also reasonably pointless having ‘Live’ updates when most of our readers / staff are asleep

Some pictures;

Text soon!

Thanks to my meeting schedual it's going to be near impossible to update directly from the show. There's just no time. I had to skip one of my meetings to type this up.

I've lost Lahiru somewhere...

Anyway some cool stuff today includes;
o Chat / demo with developers of Mass Effect
o Hands-on multiplayer with Gears of War (yes it's frikken awesome)
o Hands-on with PS3 (sonic which unfortunately wasn't anything special)
o Lots and lots of swag

Pics will come tonight since the connection is very slow and takes ages to upload.