Post-E3 Therapy

While most gamers will never experience the excitement and sheer exhaustion that gaming professionals go through during the three-day gaming extravaganza known as the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), we attempted to do just that at this year's E3 by giving you the best info from the show. With hundreds of firsthand impressions of the games that will grace the PCs and consoles over the course of the year, it can be difficult at times to explain what actually happens at the show. Luckily, after fully recovering from three days of hunting down the top names in gaming and practically burning holes in my shoes after walking from the south hall to the west hall so many times that I could do it blindfolded - here's a brief overview from the eyes of GameSpot's wandering news editor.

The first thing many GameSpot editors noticed this year was that there was less going on. With all the recent company acquisitions, many companies are now part of other big companies. Thankfully, the show was arguably much quieter than last year's show in Atlanta.

Electronic Arts' booth appears to grow every year with a massive barrage of games, and Hasbro finally gave up on its little rainbow booth for a big rainbow booth with all the console, edutainment, and PC games it now has under its wing. Other companies like Infogrames, fresh from its acquisition of Accolade, showed off its lineup in a large booth with lots of space to invite gamers in to talk and grab coffee. Perhaps the company will ramp up its global presence at ECTS in London or Milia in Cannes before it returns to E3 next year.

Electronic Arts standouts for this E3 included Dungeon Keeper II, which was being shown for the first time along with an amazingly beautiful Jim Henson Studios-built Horned Reaper costume. Also, SimCity creator Will Wright showed off the latest in his long list of quirky games - The Sims. Going into the show, I personally thought the game would follow the series down the same route as SimAnt or SimLife (neither of which did well), but I found that Wright's new game may be one of his best yet. You control one character in a world as he contacts friends, builds relationships, acquires all sorts of goodies, has kids, etc. The game is simplistic on the surface but complex beneath, with all sorts of options - this unique combo helped make SimCity a runaway hit with all types of gamers. A quick look at EA's Shogun shows that EA is focusing on hard-core strategy gamers, and it's planning to serve up one really beautiful game.

Hasbro's big booth was chock-full of games - so many there that it was at times really hard to focus on any one game. The listing of classic gaming titles at Hasbro is growing with the introduction of the Next Tetris and Pong, alongside more hard-core gamers like MechWarrior 3 and Civilization: Test of Time. MechWarrior 3 looked as good as it has when we first saw it with highly detailed mechs and great level design. And with the MW3 going gold right before E3, gamers only need to wait until June 1 to play.

Activision focused on hard-core players with Quake III Arena at the center of its booth, and the series of Star Wars games, Dark Reign 2, Battlezone 2, Vampire, and Heavy Gear II at its corners. In the Activision booth, Vampire: The Masquerade grabbed the attention of passersby. All over the show there was lots of talk about Nihilistic's first dark and gloomy effort alongside id Software's next version of Quake III Arena. During the show, we caught several id employees at the mouse-spinning deathmatches against the three other stations at center stage. Dark Reign 2 got a great deal of notice with all the features the team at Pandemic is adding to the game, while Heavy Gear II appeared not to garner the interests of gamers as they walked through the booth. Activision's first series of Star Trek game is still early in its development, but the RTS game Armada looked refined, with play happening on a 2D plane with fully 3D objects. As you choose one of the races headed to war, the interface will change to notify users of their identity. There was one great multiplayer defensive technology called the nanites. The nanites let you mess up one of your opponents' interfaces. (Unfortunately, the other demo person got nailed with the nanites during a multiplayer demo; our demo person won and I congratulated him). Also, we couldn't seem to find Activision's upcoming spelunker action-adventure game Beneath anywhere at the show.

Microsoft showed off its list of new hardware and software at the show. Playable versions Digital Anvil's Starlancer felt oddly like a new version of Wing Commander. Pandora's Box - the new game from Tetris' creator - looked OK, but felt as though it would never gain the kind of widespread popularity of Tetris. On the hardware side, Microsoft showed off its new IntelliMouse Explorer with no ball and a little bright red diode. The new mouse even attracted the likes of Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, who took the mouse and tested it on a metal surface at a 90-degree angle to see if it really worked - he walked away happy. The company also showed off the SideWinder Pro with the addition of a new thumb-pad analog controller. The new Dual Strike "Zulu" controller focused on making an impact with first-person shooter games. The Zulu took a few minutes to get used to, but for those gamers still feeling burned by buying the SpaceOrb, the Dual Strike may actually not get tossed into the closet anytime soon.

Amusements on the show floor were as big as ever this year, with the standard cast of scantily clad women who tempted gaming editors into brightly lit corners for once-in-a-lifetime photo ops. Eidos Interactive showed off its new Tomb Raider model at the show with a new entourage of spandex-clad models getting attendees to check out the latest in Eidos offerings. Across the street from the Expo, in a parking lot, the Gathering of Developers showed game demos in a series of trailers, with female models in plaid-skirt school uniforms posing for photos. EA even had a "booth babe" this year for its upcoming game Nox. Rumors are that some top-level EA officials weren't happy with the model, since EA generally likes to keep it clean. Oddly, after we heard the rumor, the model disappeared. Simon & Schuster got into the action too as actress Nicole DeBoer, best known as Ezri Dax on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was on hand to sign pictures and help promote Deep Space Nine: The Fallen.

Apart from the standard game promos, Mindscape showed off its newest version of Cosmopolitan Makeover with special guest, supermodel Rebecca Romjin-Stamos.

Companies also had their parties. The yearly Eidos party got partygoers to bounce around to the tunes of Everclear. Sony plugged even more money into its Sony party this year with Beck cranking out the slacker beat. The Gathering sponsored a two day rave with Meat Beat Manifesto in nearby Santa Monica.

Psygnosis skipped the bands and went straight for editors interested with an invite-only fest at the infamous Playboy Mansion. With a few Playboy bunnies in attendance (and some real rabbits racing around on the lawn), the crew met the likes of Gillian Bonner of Riana Rogue fame and won some clothing from Diesel (who makes clothing based on G-Police), all while playing Drakan and Rollcage Extreme. The Playboy Mansion party was the talk of the show the next day, and since I was invited, several E3 attendees asked for the inside scoop on the mansion.

Editors here at GameSpot appear fully recovered and seem happy that E3 is only a yearly event. But as the gaming business grows and grows - the feeling that next year's E3 will be even bigger than this one is inevitable.