Alright, when we last joined me in my epic E3 quest, I was wowing crowds of future Brendonites with my mad Guitar Hero skizzills. (Or not.)
What came after rocking some socks off was pretty much seven hours straight of non-stop talking to people, playing games, writing notes, recording interviews, and lugging around a bigass backpack, resulting in some sore shoulders. (Some guy from Nintendo offered to give me a shoulder rub – they really DO love gamers!)
My first stop of the day was Activision, where Neil from Step-3 was going to show me around and let the producers and developers of the Activision games do their thing, and let me do mine. (For the results of that, check out the latest previews.) It was a lot of fun, especially when they decided to turn on air conditioning in the hangar. I was going to sit down and play some Quake Wars, but Activision’s press conference was starting soon, so I had to head off to that.
After the conference ended, I hitched a ride back to the hangar (the shuttle was taking forever, and someone I knew happened to be driving over there) and resumed my mission. I don’t remember who I talked to next, although if my hastily scribbled notes are any indication, it was Atlus briefly, even though I have an official meeting with them tomorrow. Then again, the second page of my notes (before the Activision meeting) has info scribbled on there I thought of during my drive back to the hotel, so unless I can manipulate time that’s not a very solid reference.
I wanted to get a quick bite to eat since I wouldn’t be back to the hotel around roughly 11PM and had no time for an official dinner, but on my way to the café I got distracted by the Indiecade showcase, particularly a game called Braid.
Braid – written and developed by a guy named Jonathan Blow – is a game that really catches the eyes. Taking a lot of inspiration from the old-school Mario games, it’s essentially a 2D platformer where you jump on enemies. The catch? You can also rewind time briefly, and to finish the game you need to collect puzzle pieces on each world, complete all of the puzzles, and THEN beat the top world which unlocks upon doing so. Check it out at www.braid-game.com if you want to see more. In the next week or so look for a more in-depth preview/feature on the game, too. It’s amazing what people can do with a team of two or three.
I then bought a very overpriced Coke and snack (it was like 4 dollars for a can of Coke and a cookie!), and decided to briefly stop by D3’s area before heading off to the Age of Conan party. Having had a few issues when trying to work with or contact D3 in the past, I didn’t expect a lot to get done, but they were amazingly helpful and friendly. Without any prior notice, I got to play and watch all of their titles and talk to the people involved with them. I even got to play Dark Sector for a good 15 minutes (while the Game Informer guy watched in awe of my skills – which are almost as good in Dark Sector as they are in Guitar Hero).
I regretfully left the area, boarded the shuttle, and made my trek back to the Fairmont – sort of. Some exec guy from I think Take Two happened to be on board, and he asked the shuttle driver to let him off earlier than the normal stop. To do so, he had to pull over on the other side of the street. After he got off, he let the rest of us know (me, a guy from Nintendo [not the masseuse], and two guys from England) that to get to the Fairmont he’d have to circle a few blocks of construction zones, but if we got out it was just an 8 block walk. So we walked. It was very, very windy. (The poor Nintendo guy kept trying to hold his badge down. It was so sad.)
Just when I thought shuttles couldn’t get any worse (after the initial delay and this last event) I called Stanley over at Eidos to find out when the Conan shuttle was coming by, and found out due to some reason the shuttles to and from the Conan party were cancelled. So I walked BACK to where I parked (which was by where the guy dropped us off), drove down Lincoln for 5 minutes or so, parked, and entered the party (oh, I got Jack in the Box for dinner before that – the chicken strips, in case you cared).
And that’s all there is for this entry. Tomorrow morning I get some personal time with Fallout 3, and after that I have a couple hours of dead time before the hangar opens again. In that period, I’ll do the Fallout write up, throw up a journal or two (including the story of the hilarious Conan event), and who knows what else.
Before I go, I leave you with random quotes I overheard from people sitting in front of me on the first shuttle of E3. Picture in your mind, if you will, two men between the ages of 30 and 82, one requiring two shuttle seats with balding hair hidden in a faded baseball cap talking to one another. You’re sitting behind them, trying not to pay attention, but you have to write it down because it’s so funny; the guy next to you from CNET understands, because he does it too.
"That’s the pier where I saw DDR for the first time! It was DDR Mix 4 or something. I skipped my sister’s wedding to play it," said the balding one. He continued. "I like the water [at the beach] but I don’t like sand. It’s stupid and it tastes weird and the sun can burn you if you get sunburns."
"I don’t like Game Informer. I work at Game Crazy, and people ask if we sell it but we don’t because I don’t like it. It’s just a magazine made to sell GameStop games. I like Nintendo power," says his nearly-as-balding friend.
Adieu, readers, and stick around for Conan party goodness and Fallout impressions (and possibly other funny shuttle convos I wrote down!).
< – Remember what happened in part 1? If you don’t, go back!
