Reports from the E3 frontlines (and nearby bars)

Over the past week the net has been bogged down by E3 special reports. Here at atomic our E3 coverage has been more down to earth, with daily missives from our esteemed editor, Ben Mansill, covering the wild and wacky aspects of the biggest gaming

Over the past week the net has been bogged down by E3 special reports. Here at atomic our E3 coverage has been more down to earth, with daily missives from our esteemed editor, Ben Mansill, covering the wild and wacky aspects of the biggest gaming show on earth. Due to popular demand, here is the whole series of news from the frontlines, condensed into one single piece of news, so sit back, grab a cold drink and talk a walk on the wild side with Ben.


E3 Day 1


E3 starts in an hour and this place is already pumping like a 14 year old on his first date.

I'll try and report in as often as possible, which will likely mean a morning report of the day/night before. So far, the X-Box presence is huge. Green 'X's are everywhere. And not a Dreamcast swirl to be seen...

Naturally there's a mess of PC stuff outweighing everything, but that green X seems to be everywhere I look.

Made friends last night with about 35 American developers and swindled them out of enough beer $ to last a year at pool ('8-ball'), Aussie Aussie Aussie...

Being in reverse time-mode jet lag means nothing, feeding off the energy at this place is enough to keep me awake for a week - which I suspect will be the case.

Right, off for some acid-like 'coffee' and mingling with the other glassy-eyed attendees and it's show time. See you this time tomorrow with some real news.


E3 Day 2


You will find, in every single E3 report you read in any mag or on any web site, that the writer will mention what an exhausting sensory overload E3 is. My turn; it's truly the annual endurance event for those who work in the games biz.

The noise is like being swept up in a tornado - not that that's happened to me more than a couple of times, and chanting 'there's no place like home' doesn't work at E3 - not that you'd want to leave anyway.

The big guns - Microsoft, Activision, Sony, Nintendo, Eidos, EA, etc, all try and out-do each other for impact. There's an intersection in the middle of the main hall where 4 of the biggies have subwoofer stands pumping at max rib-rattling frequency. Stand in the middle and the out of synch, multi-directional woofing makes you feel like you're being microwaved. It's actually kinda fun.

Activision have a vert ramp and Tony Hawk, Matt Hoffman and a bunch of others put on one kick-ass show. I knew it was on when E3 suddenly seemed kinda empty and there was this massive non-stop roar, which I followed to the Activision ramp. Tony Hawk was OK, but I was totally blown away by Matt Hoffman on BMX. This guy has a deathwish and we're all grateful for it.

Incredibly, there's a bit of bad news about this year's E3, and unbelievably, it's that the booth babes are mostly all gone. Last year there were at least a hundred Warrior Princesses, Space Marines, Conan chicks, etc, this year there were maybe a dozen. This is clearly contrary to the spirit of E3 and an outrage in itself. The Everquest chick (who "likes Australians") makes up for much of this disappointment, but, really...

I spent a ton of time in the Kentia Hall, where all the funky hardware lives. I sorted 1 x shitload of gear for review in the mag and I'll say now that the endless quest for a FPS controller is over. Most peripheral companies have tried to replace the k/b + mouse combo and all have failed (while amusing using us in the process). Thrustmaster have done it the right way. You still use the mouse, but instead of the keyboard they have a custom designed job for the left hand. It's a work of art. Saitek tried something similar, but unfortunately it was complete crap. This isn't. Ther ergonomics are fantastic, you can bind multiple functions to the 42 keys, I reckon it's the shit. This is all based on a mere 10 minute play, but there's no way I'll use the k/b again once we get one, which will be in about three months. The unit on show was the one and only prototype, but the potential is as clear as the fact that they have the right concept. Thrustmaster (the lunatics who also brought you the skateboard controller) also had a motorbike handle controller. I laughed, then felt sorry for the team that spent time designing it, then felt sorrier again for anyone who buys it.

Other than many hit and run raids on smaller game publishers (one new house blew me away, but there's stuff that I have to save for the mag as part of our ongoing quest to make you all six bucks poorer every month), today I dedicated time to some of the majors. Over the following 2 days I'll cover them all.

EA, as usual, had the loudest stand. C&C Renegade was phenomenal. Running around FPS-style amongst those oh-so familiar buildings was a buzz. It felt like a proper C&C game too, but with a cute CPU chick giving the orders. Standing next to an enemy building when the friendlies opened up with an orbital Ion Cannon was exactly as you'd expect. Spectacular stuff.

Freedom Force was as cartoony as it should be - right down to the use of good old Comic Sans for the interface and dialogue.

Over at Interplay, Toby Gard (Lara Croft's daddy) played show and tell with Galleon, which is an adventure game, puzzle game, platform game and funny game all in one. I thought I'd jumped over my last lava river, but it looks like it's burnt feet time again...

Interplay's RPGs were plentiful and predictable, but maybe I'm just saying that so I can save the good stuff for the mag report, and because it's just occured to me that this post is getting seriously long and I haven't described more than 5% of what I saw today.

I saw a good dozen Star Trek games, and about as many people actually stopping to have a look. The honeymoon is well and truly over for Trek games. 'Overkill' is the word I think I'm looking for, with apologies to Hawkeye.

Easily the highlight of the day was Republic from Elixir. 'Epic' does not do justice to the scale of this game. In a nutshell, you, the player, are a citizen in a fictional central European country with many cities and towns. You must become President, which means getting on the good side of the 1 million unique citizens, using hundreds of methods to do so. This is a 'life sim', big call I know, but true. Remarkable stuff and lightyears ahead of the primitive tech demo it was last year. This is no simple 'happiness meter' hold a festival for the peasants and keep the taxes low game, it's a world, a huge world and the developer boy-genius Demis Hassabis is on a mission to make it as complete as possible.

The other major standout was the fact that Microsoft's stand was at least 4-5 times bigger than any previous Microsoft stand and at least twice as large as any other stand at E3. And it was 80% Xbox and totally jam-packed all through the day. The games were as good as I expected; which is not amazing but better than anything on PS/2. And if I see one more green X I'm going to urinate on it.

Which is not a good mindset, as tonight's the massive Xbox party. I expect to see a sizable chunk of Microsoft's $500 million Xbox promotional budget spent on this party. Incoherent report with many typos on that tomorrow.

See you then.


E3 Day 3


The bitching PC here at the hotel crashed the second I hit 'post' after writing an epic report. Unhappy.

I have to run now, late for an appointment (party). I'll make up for it tomorrow, sorry.

Short version:

Unreal II kicks-ass, Master of Orion 2 ki