Trip to E3

New pictures of E3!

Dana Dill — Tue, 24 May 2005 13:22:00 GMT

I have added 8 new pictures of the E3 trip. I will add more as I have time.

Thursday and Beyond

Dana Dill — Mon, 23 May 2005 04:55:00 GMT

Well, I am home now from E3. What an exhausting trip. I couldn't sleep on the Red Eye coming home so I got about 1 hour sleep in 36. I am more rested up now and ready to head back to work in the morning.

Thursday at E3 I spent most of the day on the floor of the Expo. Trying to soak in as much as I could. I finally go to go to the Midway and Atari shows. Midway was terrible but Atari was pretty good. They where giving away the best T-Shirts of the show with the “In the beginning there was PONG” saying. The Matrix game was pretty cool from Atari and the D&D MMO looked promising.

We made one last swing by the Sony vs Nintendo area. I finally go to see the new PSP Sony handheld. Now that is one sweet machine. The graphics where amazing. For $300 you can have one too. :) Sony had the best booth as voted by E3 and although it was pretty amazing my vote was for Microsoft. Both layouts where amazing. I spent the least amount of time at the Nintendo area. It was packed and I had very little interest in what Nintendo had to offer.

As for the XBox 360.. I finally go tickets to the show. I viewed the the 20 min trailer and it was very cool. The next generation gaming machines are really min computers. It seems these machines are trying to replaces many of the items you use now like CD players, DVD players and more. The new XBox 360 will have a harddrive in the box and support high resolution graphics and more.

Couple games that I really liked that are coming out later this year.

1. Kill all Humans. This game caught my eye. Maybe because it was just the opposite of all the kill the aliens titles. It is a cute little game where you as an alien go around collecting brain stems from humans you “kill”. The setting I saw was the farmers on the farm. So the farmer is shooting you with his shoot gun while Mrs Farmer is screaming to get away. You capture the humans with your anti gravity force field and proceed to terminate there life. You get their brains by blowing there heads up and out pops the brain. Yeah should kinda gross, but it is done in a light humor and cute way.

2. Chronicles of Narnia. This game is coming out in the Winter of 2005. I love the books so with the movie coming out this summer I have high hopes for the game. The graphics and game play look good. It appears to be a standard RPG game.

Flight home was pretty good. Flight from L.A. to Atlanta was packed but smooth. The flight from Atlanta to Charlotte was a bit rough.

Well that is all for now.

Oh.. I will be trying to post some pictures of my trip so check back here in the next few days. Peace!

Wednesday at E3

Dana Dill — Thu, 19 May 2005 15:26:00 GMT

Wednesday was a pretty exciting day at E3. It was the first day the expo floor was open. The biggest thing to note was all the people. They where expecting 40,000 people yesterday and I think they all showed up and more. There where TV cameras everywhere. The expo floor (there are actually 3 floors) was a sea of games and gagets that the vendors wherer begging you to come check up.

Here are my quick highlights of the expo yesterday.

First the bad:

SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) - I was upset with these guys before I came and was really aggrivated with them more when I went to their booth. They are just stuckup snops.

Blizzard - I was really looking forward to seeing Blizzards WOW and new Star Craft games. Blizzards presence there was very small. They had NO new info about WOW and they where only demoing battlegrounds. The new Star Craft was pretty cool looking though.

The Good.

NC Soft Publisher - Now these guys had the most incredible setup. They where promoting their new MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) City of Villians, Auto Assult. Both games looked promising. I sat down and played Guild Wars PvP for about 30 min which was alot of fun. Was grouped with some players who really knew what they where doing. We won every battle we fought in and I only died once.

Microsoft - Yeah the new X Box 360 looks very cool!

EA Games - The new EA sports games where amazing. The graphics are really and game play looked smooth.

BGV - Chronicles of Narnia game looked really promising. I have always liked the story and the game has real promise. It won't be released until winter 05 though.

Gas Powered Games - Dungeon Siege 2 was neat. I got to play it for a bit. This game is taking forever to hit the stores but it looks like it will be worth the wait.

TQ - Now this was a very interesting company and game. TQ develops MMO games and you can get them for free. There are no monthly fees as well. They generate revenue on sales for items you can use in game to enhance your current items. Graphics where a bit behind the others but there new games look much better.

Mass Games - I was really surprised to see a Bible game here but there was one. It was kinda lame though but it was nice to see someone trying to make one. It was a kids game.

Well, I am off to my last day here. I fly out at 11:30 tonight.

Tuesday at E3

Dana Dill — Wed, 18 May 2005 07:19:00 GMT

Wow, today was a really amazing day at E3. Today was workshop day. I spent the day going to different workshops. The first session I went to was a discussion on networked media and how it relates to gaming. I then went to a session on game development for cell phones. It was a very interesting discussion. Although I am not planning on doing anything with Mobile computing at this time the information was priceless. The third session was amazing. It was a panel discussion about game designers. The panel consisted of game designers from id software, Mystic and more. What a great session this was. I got to talk one on one with the lead designer of Sims online and Quake 4.

Tomorrow will be very exciting. The Exposition floor will be open. From what I saw today it will be an incredible experience. Couple the Expo with more sessions and I have another great day ahead of me. More later....

Monday --> Tuesday Morning

Dana Dill — Tue, 17 May 2005 15:25:00 GMT

Well Monday was a very exciting and busy day. The flight to L.A. was incredible. It was very smooth and relaxing. Ray (the guy I am travelling with) slept 3 hours on the plane. I slept about 3 min. Once we arrived in L.A. we took a trip down to Long Beach. We walked the beach to find something to bring home like a rock, shell or something along that line, but instead I found 2 bamboo sticks and a bounce ball. Humm the bounce ball I don't think is organic. Anyway my kids will like them. Ray and I went out to eat at a very cool resturant that had real WWII planes outside. Wow, my grandfather would have loved it.

Well, it is E3 day today. going to eat some breakfast and head to the L.A. convention center. More later.

It's Monday morning 4:00 am

Dana Dill — Mon, 16 May 2005 09:21:00 GMT

Well here it is ... Monday morning at 4:00 am and I am getting my final things together for the trip. I just downloaded the floor layouts and wow is this going to be cool!

Ok.. time to drive to Charlotte!

Wheee.....