I want to thank Louis Wu for front-paging this over at HBO. Please dont rape my bandwidth folks
Make sure to check out the pictures in the gallery.

First and foremost, I wouldn’t ever suggest letting anything valuable out of your sight in California. This year at MLG San Francisco we had an assload of highly valuable consoles, cameras, video cameras, games etc stolen right there during an event packed with 500+ kids. At e3 a few days ago (Los Angeles), my new buddy Chan had a G4 iBook, 20GB iPod, portable DVD player, PSP, and a ton of dvds and stuff stolen out of our locked rental car trunk We went to get our stuff out of the trunk, my stuff had been rummaged through, and they for some reason stole a usb cable and a miniDV camera charger, but left the 50 dollar mp3 player. That’s nothing compared to the $2000+ that Chan lost, but its keeping me from getting my pictures effectively and capturing video for this write up :(. All I can say is, fuck you people, you’re lame.

On the brighter side, e3 was 10x more amazing than I thought it would be. On Monday and Tuesday before leaving, I was starting to feel a little bit of regret for all the money I was going to spend on plane tickets, hotels, rental cars, and overpriced LA food. Seeing the amazing amount of coverage you can get from e3insider.com, IGN, Gamespot, and all those mass coverage sites, it almost seemed better to stay at home and just get the best of the best from the comfort of your own living room, and not have to weed through all of the crap games and ultra-dorks sweating from the 30lbs of Square swag they were lugging around. Dolbex assured me that it was 5x better in person, and it in-fact turned out to be 10x easy.

Back to the darker side, in addition to the bullshit with the stuff that was stolen I mentioned above, plane travel just about killed me this week. From 5am CST to 7:30pm PST on Wednesday, I was either in an airport or on a plane. I was supposed to arrive at noon, but because of weather, and airTran’s lack of flights, I didn’t arrive until 8, when e3.Wednesday was just about over. So fuck you too airplanes. Over the next 2 days, I found that that missed 1st day was a vital one and really cut my experience short. Dolbex and his crew picked me up at the airport and gave me a brief recap of day one, and apparently it was cool. So were they. Dolbex’s Been Mawed crew was about the coolest kids I’ve ever met. (Forgive me for not remembering real names, I’m horrible at that) Liquid, Fuzz, and Chan really knew their stuff. They reminded me of my old roommates so much, being well versed in the game culture; I knew I was among friends.

So after a good night’s sleep (for most of us, Chan unknowingly was enjoying the last days with all of his super-gadgets all night) we headed for the convention center, arriving at 9am. The place was already packed rather tight, as we started in the west hall that housed giants Sony and Nintendo. (You can check out floor plans HERE) The lines to see the PS3 and Zelda demonstrations were instantly at the 1 hour mark when the doors opened, so we decided to activate free roam mode and start taking it in.

I was rather disappointed with Nintendo’s booth. They are apparently 100% embracing the kiddie image now. I would say about 3/5 of their games were Mario off-shoots, and there were maybe 4 total actual serious games in their floor space. The rest was stuff like the ever-so cute Nintendogs. That was the only game I played in Nintenland, and it was the only one with a considerable wait. The game was for the DS, and you simply used the stylus (of which I got a free one with a marioKarter on top just for waiting in line) to play with a puppy. Seriously, it’s the new Tamagachi. I loved it. The guy and gal showing the demo declined to let me video interview them, but after asking, I found that you unfortunately could not do ANY of the following:

• Train your dog to lead blind into traffic

• Beat your dog for being a bad dog
• Rub your dog’s nose in his own feces
• Train your dog to be a ferocious pit fighting master against other nintendogs
• Spay or neuter your dog with your stylus
• Have your dog get rabies so you can put him down “Old Yeller” style

You can play jump rope with it, but that just isn’t enough for me, the hardcore animal h8tr looking for some good old animal abuse without fear of the humane society. Therefore, I have decided that Nintendogs is not going to warrant a DS purchase. I did get a neat little plush puppy which I promptly gave to Dolbex to give his new annoying little best friend, Lenny. I swear, I thought he talked to his fiancé a lot, now he makes calls just to talk to that mutt.

I’m sure there was some more draw to the Nintendo booth, but that was all the time I spent there. The Sony booth was much cooler. Honorable mentions I spent some time with included Soul Calibur 3, Phantasy Star Universe, We Love Katamari, Darkwatch, and Coded Arms (PSP FPS). Katamari is amazing, I’m sorry I missed the first one, like a lot of people that missed this sleeper hit, but I’ll make sure to check the new one out when it launches. Dolbex and I tried out We Love Katamari, and we loved the hell out of it. Check out THIS quick vid of dolbex sucking at it, and getting ragged on by some in-game prince guy with lasers shooting out of his eyes. Shadow of Colossus was also a hot item, and we caught Marty O’Donnell (Halo’s music man) playing it on more than once occasion.

The line for the PS3 demo was always super huge, so though I wanted to brave it, we simply didn’t really have time to spare, with so much action going on non-stop on the floor. We were just in the west hall, and I thought this one would be the better one with 2 of the 3 giants holding it hostage, but the truth was, the south hall was truly where the action was. The south hall’s main draw was Microsoft, but just about every major 3rd party was also there. There was just so much cooler stuff there.

The Xbox area was definitely the best of the 3 console showcases. Every 20 minutes or so, several projection screens dropped down, and showed off the hotness that is to come from Microsoft this year. DOA4 looked amazing on the screen and a shocker of FFXI on Xbox360 were the 2 standouts I caught. I haven’t kept up with the recent Xbox360 hubbub but Square putting developing for xbox is a huge step forward for MS. MS had this video booth that you could go in, and say something about xbox, then they would show the best clips of people goofing off in there on the projection screens. The whole Xbox360 marketing is very “hip” and hell, it’s actually pretty effective.

On the show floor, it was mostly regular Xbox games, with an Xbox360 “media pass only” area that due to low policing, anyone could check out. All of their displays had 2 screens, one for the player, one for the spectators, and there were developers on the showfloor that would tell you about their game while you played. The Xbox360 demonstration was so much easier to get into. Instead of waiting in line for hours, you simply went up to a ticket counter, and got tickets for a certain show time (every 30min). Pure genius that I hope all the main showcases go to next year. I think square had the same strategy, but I didn’t get a chance to check out their demo. The Xbox360 video was pretty good, showed some of the really cool customization that console will bring. There was a strange segment where a token Japanese girl talked about how she could design a shirt, and sell it in the “Xbox Live Marketplace” for people to wear on their characters in game and stuff. Don’t know how that will work out, but if I could make my own emblem for my MC, that would be hawt. Most of the trailers were alright, but the last one of Gears of War, hosted by Cliffy B himself was quite amazing. That game is going to rule the world, too bad it’s so far off (summer 2k6).

Outside on the floor, Battlefield 2 was looking and feeling much better than I expected, running on an Xbox. That game is a beast to control, especially when flying, but it was handled well (it was developed separately from the PC version) by the Xbox. Half-Life 2 also looked alright on Xbox, so despite the looming successor, the good ol` cinder block still has some life in it. There were several other notable games, I think Call of Duty 2 was in the Xbox360 area, but I waited in the line to see the exclusive demo of it running on PC. I have to say it looked nice, but didn’t hold the same boom as when the original Call of Duty demos hit the net. The action was still there, even more intense, but it wasn’t that big eye opener innovation like the original.

The Halo 2 Map Pack was just another island in the Xbox area (for some reason I expected Bungie to have a booth, but I can lend that to fanboism), but was probably one of the coolest. There were a lot of familiar Bungie faces manning the games (I spotted Chris Carney, the face in the clouds on Containment), and they played 2v2v2v2 TS on all the new maps. I only got a chance to play a couple while at e3, but later I would get a much more in-depth look at what will be consuming my time until Xbox360 launch. Adjacent to H2, was the amazing Stubbs the Zombie display. I got to play through the demo and it was a blast. There were lots of things I missed when I played, like driving the tractor around impaling farmhands, ripping your hand off and throwing it to possess humans, and more. It was just fun, and brutal to grab someone and bite their brain out to replenish your health. They also had kickass shirts they were giving out. The best one with the catchphrase “Kicking ass and taking brains” was quickly gobbled up, but I got one of the other ones that said “Be the zombie.” You’ll see other people wearing one that says “Party like its 1959” and probably a couple others.

There weren’t as many Xbox360 games as I expected, and the only one I actually played was Full Auto. I just played it because the lines were the shortest for it, and I wanted to feel the new controller. The game was actually quite awesome, like a perfect mixture of Twisted Metal and Burnout, with a Prince of Persia-esque time reversal feature. The controller felt really great holding it. It felt a tad bit smaller than an S but the grip felt much tighter. The white/black buttons are gone, and now there are 2 shoulder buttons. It’s weird getting used to, and in order to use all 4 shoulders at the same time, you would need to switch to using the bottom triggers with your middle finger. That will take some definite getting used to, but should be better in the long-run. The controller had been handled quite a lot during the day, but the sticks felt looser, but in the final product will hopefully retain the original tightness of an xbox controller. The analog sticks on a dual-shock killed PS2 FPSing.

The majority of big name 3rd party publishers like Sega, Rockstar, Square/Enix, EA, Activision, Konami, and Capcom and most PC games were also in the south hall. NCSoft’s booth really stood out, with their plethora of MMORPG’s coming out this summer. They had a stage filled with an assload of drums that some generic Jamaican band would probably take stage with later. I also noticed on a sign that Korn, some other generic big rock band, and the Frag Dolls were going to be “celebrities” coming to play at some publisher’s booth. I didn’t see any of them thank God, but I overheard some announcer talking about the Frag Dolls playing Rainbow 6 at one point, then later heard the PMS girls playing the same game. I didn’t really catch the gist of it, but I think the PMS girls set the record in that game or something and blew the Frag Dolls out of the water. Rockstar’s area was pretty large, but completely closed off to the public. It was a bunch of huge tour buses painted up all nice with their logos, looking like outside a rock concert. How creative. People lined up to get stickers and hats thrown out by the roadie looking hipster throwing them out to the hungry masses.

The most impressive 3rd party booth was definitely EA’s. You walk into it, and it has 360 degree video screens playing above you. Very gimmicky, yes, but when you saw that they actually utilized the screen to display games in 360 degrees, it blew you away. Towards the end, I stood in there, and they were showing a Godfather demo, and when you look around, you see the game environment with something going on at every angle. It was quite amazing, and hard to describe. Just check out the video HERE. Konami also had a hard to catch amazing trailer for MGS4. It had nothing to do with the game. It simply had Snake and Raiden staring at each other, with a directors chair label “MGS4 Main Character” in the middle. Then it bursts into epic mode of them racing toward the chair, and both sitting in it. They proceed to fight or something, and then Snake eventually throws Raiden into an abyss with mass audience approval. After the trailer Raiden climbs back up of course, but it was a great wacky Kojima style. The Konami booth was nice, with a huge big screen, but they didn’t really have much of a line-up it seemed.

Nvidia and ATI weren’t as good as I expected. They had great games (Nvida had Battlefield 2, ATI had Fear) but something just felt lackluster about it. I played Fear, and it felt like a much more fun Counter-Strike. ATI also had a section about their Xbox360 graphics, but I didn’t get to check it out. I wish I had checked out BF2 on the PC, I’m sure even though Xbox handled it well, it kicked much more ass on PC. Ghost Recon 3 looked amazing, and had a jacked up Army recruiter type pumping up the demo as it showed. I think it was that jock guy from G4’s Arena. Speaking of G4, I didn’t get my chance to stalk Morgan Webb as there were approximately 2 hotmazing booth babes for every square meter of show floor.

Gamespot was holding a “get a kill on a pro” thing made popular by Fatality at last year’s E3. The guy was Evenflo from Sweden or something and the game was ut2k4. It was funny watching him waste people 3 minutes at a time, just toying with them as they tried to win a $2500 fragbox. He would just sit there, stand still, and let them take off the shields he was whoring, then headshot them. What was lame was that he didn’t let me do any of that when we played. I think it was because he saw that I was the only one who knew how to double jump, and viewed me as a potential threat to his noble noob-owning. He seemed like a cool guy, but got pretty pissed when some guy killed him with a suicide rocket. Also, the announcer told me that at the end of the day, if no one had kills, they would draw names from those present to do the final face-off vs the top 2 who scored against him. No one killed him all 3 days, except that one guy who suicided, but when I returned to get in the final round, the guy told me that they decided to use the spread as judging for who got in the finals. How lame, I could have just hid like the others who got in (and I would have, I need a new computer). Over at Fatal1ty’s booth, he was doing something along the same lines, but had his own booth, and entourage making sure it was nice and flashy. Unfortunately, that kid was rusty, because I saw him miss about half of his shots, when I didn’t see Evenflo miss more than 1/10.

Downstairs in Kentia hall, it was like the cheap seats of e3. There were a lot of random booths of everything from professional beta testers to cheesy virtual reality stuff. One really cool item was a VR helmet that was hooked up to halo2 and allowed you to aim by looking around. It was way too dark, but the thing actually worked a lot better than I expected. I looked underneath and the thing was hooked up to a smartjoy. By far the coolest area in Kentia (and possibly the whole show) was the history of gaming area. There was every (and I mean EVERY) console and old game ever down there. Tons of arcade cabinets, and some machines I had never even seen before almost brought a tear to my eye.

Friday afternoon, the whole place absolutely blew up. There were more sweaty dorks filing around than you can shake a lightsaber at. As I walked around trying to get footage, it seemed that every booth was at war with each other, with almost all of them having some kind of announcer on a loudspeaker trying to convince you why their stuff was the best. If they didn’t have an announcer, they had a full set of skimpy girls dancing. Brilliant, because I always lean more towards yes when deciding whether to buy a game or not if I have a boner. We had to leave early, to catch our ride out to the annual e3 HBO LANfest, “Plasma Fiesta” hosted at awesome Deanero’s lovely home. As I frantically tried to capture as much footage as I could in the limited amount of time, I knew that missing the first day had deeply wounded my e3 experience, but for the for the great first e3 I experienced, I felt much more satisfied than most virgins do after their first time.

On a quick side note, Thursday night we went out to an amazing restaurant and saw Episode 3 with a big HBO/Bungie fancrew and some cool guys from the Bungie staff. The food and friends made up for the horrible movie.

That pretty much wraps up what I remember of e3. After we left, we headed out to Dean’s house for a supermazing time. In the ride over, I met Louis Wu for the first time, and I must say, nicest, coolest guy ever, I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but the rumors are completely true. When I get there, there’s already a sizable crew, playing on 4 projection screens. It was the ideal setup for what would be a great LAN. Lots of HBO regulars were around, I’m afraid to go through and start naming them, for fear of leaving someone out, but there were over 50 of us there at one point, and everyone was very very cool. There was an ice cream cooler full (and I mean FULL) of all kinds of that good expensive ice cream treats, and a caterer came out with fajitas, tacos, and mind changing salsa that when mixed with bean dip, instantly gives you a killamanjaro. I must say, Dean gets the #1 guy award for hosting the party, offering food and drinks, and ice cream for everyone. I love you Dean.

The games we played there were pretty far from the MLG pro gametypes I was used to. Using mainly default game settings, and a few Zombies games (we actually had a zombies tourny for prizes that Sketch generously brought out), I was weary of how much fun I would have, considering the amount of frustration SMG start matchmaking gives me. But the guys there are a completely different crew than the competitive scene you see at an MLG event. You truly realize why Bungie made the game the way they did, because those settings simply make the game more fun for a majority of people. At one point some guys from VGL brought 4 tvs and Xboxes and set them up on the lawn, and we played a few MLG gametypes. I have to admit, I got bored with it rather quick, as the atmosphere just wasn’t the same. We went inside and got back to the new map fiesta. I had a blast trying out all the new maps (oh yeah, did I mention that Sketch was amazingly cool and brought out a all the new maps for us to check out) and the people there were the perfect crew to play with. I’m not going to go into the details of the new maps, but I must say, I’m most impressed with all of them. Favorite moments include grabbing the overshield and getting hit by the train on terminal, and snipers on backwash.

Towards the end of the night, Sketch showed us one of the documentaries on the map disc done by Film Oasis (Jim McQuillan – the man behind Film Oasis was at the party too). It was in the same excellent style of the H2:LE documentary and everyone was pleased. After a few more games, people started heading out, and we caught a ride with the VGL guys to LAX at 3am, spent the night there trying to get Dolbex’s flight changed (he finally did, about 11am). And I finally arrived back in Memphis about 10pm Saturday night. So there was another 19 hours I was either in an airport or on an airplane, bringing my weekly total to about 35 hours spent in hell. As bad as that was, I would do it again in a heartbeat, and I can’t wait until next year, and hopefully I’ll make it to the next HBO LAN. Thanks a trillion to Dolbex, Fuzz, Liquid, Chan, for accommodating me at e3, Dean for accommodating us all, and going to such great lengths to ensure success of the “Plasma Fiesta”, Sketch for letting us play the new maps, and everyone who came out for being so oh mai gawd cool. See you next year.

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