E3 2012 - Impressions of a First-Timer

This blog entry is coming very late because I stayed up all night with friends discussing gaming stuff, like Starcraft II strategies, Diablo III class balance, and other nerd stuff. And yet I'm still wide awake, thanks in part to the delicious sea salt ice coffee I always get whenever I visit Irvine, CA.

However, I can't really post photos yet due to my laptop not yet having the photo processing software that I need. (Basically I need a program that will shrink my photo files from my digital SLR camera before I upload them.) So instead this entry will be a complete narrative without pictures.

Anyway, onto E3. This is the first time I have ever attended E3 (Electronics Entertainment Expo), even though it takes place in Los Angeles every year and I used to live in Southern California for seven years.

My first impression I got when I arrived at the L.A. Convention Center is that this event is probably the biggest gaming convention I have ever seen. Huge murals for upcoming games decorated the walls of the convention center and were visible to traffic all around the area.

After parking my car and waiting in line for an hour to get my badge reprinted (by mistake, I left my original badge at home), I walked into the exhibit hall. Immediately I was facing the EA (Electronic Arts) booth, and they were featuring well known games like Need for Speed, Madden, FIFA, Battlefield 3, and Star Wars: The Old Republic. But what really caught my eye was the SimCity booth. More on that later.

So I got into line for Need for Speed, but after waiting a freakin' half hour without the line moving much, I gave up. Later, I noticed that this was the norm for most of the game demos there. You have to wait like a very long time for certain popular games. Since this was my first day at E3, I decided not to waste too much time in lines so that I can explore the whole place completely.

Turned out to be a good decision, since I spent the whole day only exploring the South Hall, and there's also a Concourse and a West Hall that I need to explore in later days.

Anyway, there were so many video games and game developers exhibiting their stuff. (The notable exception was Blizzard, but they really don't need to show off their stuff at E3, plus they do their own BlizzCon anyway.) I'm just going to go down the list of game developers with memorable exhibits, in no particular order:

• EA - As I mentioned above, I was most interested in SimCity, so I waited in line to get into a demo booth where they showed off the game. And I must say, it looks like it's going to be really good, especially since it's now fully 3D, fully simulated, and multiplayer as well!
• Square Enix - They had Kingdom Hearts 3D for the Nintendo 3DS, a Final Fantasy rhythm game, and some iPad games including a Final Fantasy made exclusively for the smartphone and tablet market. But what was most interesting was an upcoming game called Sleeping Dogs, which is a Hong Kong gangster game. I got to play it a bit, and it was REALLY fun.
• Disney Interactive Studios - Makers of Where's My Water and Epic Mickey 2. For Epic Mickey, they had a professional painting duo who were dancing to music and painting a scene from the game at the same time. I got a good video of it, but I'll have to upload it later to YouTube.
• Namco - Featuring Tekken Tag Tournament 2. For you fighting game enthusiasts, 'nuff said.
• Konami - I was interested in their next major game in the Metal Gear series called Metal Gear Rising. This game features Raiden, the bad-ass uber-ninja from Metal Gear Solid 4, and it looks to be kind of a prequel to that game. I. Must. Get. This. Game. When it comes out early next year, of course.
• Gree - This is a game developer that I have never heard of, but they had quite a huge exhibit at E3. They look like a social gaming company specializing in games for mobile devices, much like Zynga for smartphones and tablets. A lot of the games they demoed look like clones of other popular games, but I hear that Gree is actually a developer of a gaming platform, not necessarily the games themselves.

There were many more games and game developers that I wanted to visit but didn't have time to. They include:

• Capcom - I wanted to play Street Fighter X Tekken, which is already out but I haven't played it yet.
• Call of Duty - Again, 'nuff said.
• Assassin's Creed - A very popular game series which I never had a chance to play.
• XCOM - Enemy Unknown - I was a huge fan of the original XCOM game from my college years, and Firaxis is doing a "reboot" of this game.
• The Elder Scrolls - Skyrim - A hugely popular RPG game, but once again I never had a chance to play.

And of course much more. But hey, I've already spent too long typing up this huge wall of text, and I didn't even get a chance to upload photos. I'll do that tomorrow. Until then, it's time for some sleep.