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.

Prelude to E3

Time for me to restart this blog, just a day before E3 (Electronics Entertainment Expo) 2012. I'm chilling right now in my very nice hotel room at the Fairmont Newport Beach. Unfortunately, that means I have to drive 30-45 minutes each way to the L.A. Convention Center.

I'm also here in Orange County because MLG (Major League Gaming) is having their Anaheim tournament right after E3. I will be there as a spectator, watching professional gamers play various games, especially Starcraft II.

I've got my camera and my iPad ready to capture all of the details of both events. It will be tough to update this blog every night, but I'm determined to do so.

As for the blog itself, I've got a lot of subjects that I would like to catch up on, including:

• BlizzCon 2011 (this is overdue)
• Diablo III, which was released just a few weeks ago.
• Starcraft II, which used to be the game I played a lot before Diablo III.
• Bejeweled Blitz, a very addictive version of the popular puzzle game.
• Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, a PSP game.
• Plants vs. Zombies

But that can come later. Right now, I'm focused on E3 and MLG! I sure can't wait!

Blizzcon approaches, no costume for me

I haven't updated this blog in a while, but in short, I've bailed out on the costume. Too much procrastination, too much other stuff going on in my life ... and then three weeks until Blizzcon, I realize that only 20% of the costume was done.

But I don't see it as a complete waste. I still have the Pandaren Death Knight idea and the partially-done costume, and barring anyone doing the same thing this year, I could still do the costume next year.

One thing I've noticed, but I've kind of known for a long time, is that the quality of costumes at Blizzcon has been going up every year. I don't know if I really wanted to do one if my costume looked shoddy compared to the rest. I mean, take a look at this sexy costume from 2010 (a girl dressed up as a demon hunter from Diablo III):

(More from the Blizzcon site and the Blizzcon Facebook gallery.)

Might be easier to just take photos and see what all the other cosplayers are doing. I will definitely be posting photos of my Blizzcon trip on my Facebook account (http://www.facebook.com/allenkim96) as well as this blog.

So what do I have planned for Blizzcon? A lot, actually. This is the first time I'll be going with coworkers of mine from Intel Corp. (Yes, I'm a computer engineer working there.) We plan to meet up on the first day and try to coordinate what we want to do for the rest of the convention.

Also, this year is the year when Starcraft II eSports is taking off. There are some YouTube channels I subscribe to revolving around SC2, including one which has reached over 500K subscribers (http://www.youtube.com/user/HuskyStarcraft). This guy will be at Blizzcon along with several other SC2 YouTube casters and professional players. More than in previous years, this Blizzcon will be the most interactive and the most exciting in terms of eSports. All thanks to Starcraft II, which is just over a year old now.

Of course, there are the usual Blizzard presentations, like on World of Warcraft, Diablo III, the next SC2 installment called Heart of the Swarm. Then there're the usual contests, including the costume contest of course. Foo Fighters will be performing there. And so on and so forth.

Plus this will be the first time I'll be headed to a Blizzcon afterparty. This one is hosted by an SC2 gaming clan called Liquid, and it will be held at the Marriot near the site of Blizzcon (Anaheim convention center).

Talk about a very jam-packed two days. I sure can't wait.

The concept

By revealing my idea online, I run the risk of someone stealing my idea. But since I can count on one hand the number of people following this blog at the moment, I'll take that chance.

My costume idea: Pandaren Death Knight.

For those of you not familiar with World of Warcraft, a Pandaren is a race of panda-like humanoids. It's just like Kung Fu Panda (although the Warcraft universe had Pandarens well before that Dreamworks movie was first released).

Here is a Pandaren:

And here is a Death Knight:

Put them together and what do you have? This concept drawing, done by an artist that was found and commissioned at Anime Expo 2011:

This should be a good challenge for me.

I found the pro photo

And just like that, I found the photo:

Blizzcon Cosplay 2011 - Prologue

Well here we go. This is the start of my new blog where I talk about all topics related to gaming.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a big fan of Blizzard games, especially World of Warcraft and Starcraft II. Hence it's only natural that I attend Blizzcon, though for the past three years I missed the ticket selling window which is incredibly narrow. Not this year, however.

Of course, a lot of the people that attend nerd conventions like these go in costume, and I decided to make one this year. The last time I went to Blizzcon was in 2007, and I was dressed up as a Paladin:

Although I was rather proud that I was able to make this costume all my myself (with some help from my wonderful wife), I wasn't too satisfied with the quality. Specifically the armor pieces look too yellow, the chest decals look chintzy, and the gauntlets look very amateurish. Basically, my excuse is that I ran out of time and couldn't fix up these blatant mistakes.

By the way, there's a professional photo of me in this costume, taken backstage before the costume contest, but I can't seem to find that photo anymore. It used to be on the Blizzcon web site, but I guess they no longer have the photos from that long ago. If I find it, I'll post it.