E3 Day One

So I was a little late getting to the LA Convention Center, i.e. by the time I arrived all the parking was full and all the local shops were offering their parking lots as additional spots for a $40 flat rate. Welcome to LA. Shaking my inner fist at these crazy opportunists, trying to wrench every last penny from the videogame junkies converging on the convention center (I mean, $40 bucks, that’s a game right there), I drove around til I found a much better rate-a $5 flat rate and a free 6-block walk to LACC.

After finally getting to the registration booth and getting shot down by the registration soup nazi at West Hall, the nice people in South Hall gave me my official E3 badge! Score! Dun-dun-Dunnnn!

Walking in to the first exhibit hall I can find, South Hall, I take a deep breath and soak up all the radiation from the thousands of plasma screens scattered everywhere. Overwhelmed, I was. So I wondered around in a stupor til I hear a familiar voice-none other than Space Ghost interviewing the fabled Peter Molyneux at the GameTap booth. Much laughter and a picture later I decided to find my way back to the West Hall and Sony’s exhibit (they were my ticket in after all). This was a huge display of PSP, PS2, and PS3 games. And above it all a gargantuan screen showing trailers of the PS3 games introduced at the Playstation press conference on Monday. The best was an extended trailer of Metal Gear Solid 4. Snake gets outgunned by a bunch of hybrid metal gears and brings out his patented cardboard box to hide in, only to have the machines squash it. A flash of red goo looks like the end of Snake, until the camera pans out to show the box full of watermelons. Foiled, the hybrids leap off into the city and the camera comes back to the box-behind it snake is sitting against the wall, his body armor apparently equipped with an active camo/chameleon system. Very smooth.

I work my way back to the new PS2 games on display and see sets devoted to God of War 2, Final Fantasy 12, and Final Fantasy 7: Dirge of Cerberus. Now I don’t know about you, but if any character from an RPG deserved his own action/FPS, it is Vincent Valentine the messed up, gun-toting, monster-changing badass from the original Final Fantasy 7. And that’s exactly what FF7: DoC gives him, his own game. Forty-five minutes later and loving every minute of game play, the demo ends at a cliffhanger releasing me from its grip. 

Enough Sony, I wonder what Nintendo’s Wii is all about. Over at the Big N’s booth the Wii Exhibit is entirely enclosed in an amphitheater. The line wraps around the side and at the end: a big sign that says, “Sorry, line closed for the day.”  Check, first thing tomorrow I Wii. I did get a glimpse of two games from outside the exit-a Namco Bandai game called SD Gundam and a game from Konami called Elebits.

I’m starting to get the idea that I’m going to need a system if I want to check out all of the booths. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, I go with good ol’ Napoleon’s divide and conquer. West Hall today, South Hall Thursday, and Kentia Hall on Friday. West Hall has a bunch of small booths that I want to see quickly. The best of which were the Wizards of the Coast, which I have to give special props to for handing out free Magic the Gathering: Online games and LOTS of mouse pads. KOEI had an impressive game called Bladestorm: The 100 Years War for the PS3, as well as the expected Samurai Warriors 2 for the PS2 and Dynasty Warriors 2 for PSP. 

Overall, I was overwhelmed in a very awesome way. Tomorrow should be an even better experience now that I’ve got a system of exploration developed. The highlights of today were meeting Peter Molyneux and…Marty O’Donnel!! He was hanging out at the piano player’s booth. I was surprised no one there noticed him, even after the piano player pointed him out. I asked him for his autograph and asked him about the Halo 3 trailer music, and he was very nice and said it only took one afternoon with the hired orchestra and choir to record it.

Well, that’s enough excitement for me. I gotta go get some sleep to be ready for tomorrow. Yehaw!

-CaptainP9 Out