The E³ show was fantastic, LA was much better than I had feared, and on top of it all, I'm now engaged! But, that'll be saved for another post. Right now, let's get down to the skinny on E³a>:

Highs:
X-COM Alliance
Bruce Campbell
Halo
Tribes 2
Sega & Space Channel 5

Lows:
UO2 (Ultima Worlds Online: Origin)
XBox
Food
g.o.d. Midgets & Duke
Static

Misc:
Developers
PS2 Limp
Conker's Bad Fur Bar
Maze Man, Congo Adventure and other Downstairs Booths

X-COM Alliance
OMG OMG OMFG!!! This game will rule all. Throw away your Bible, Testaments old and new, and any other religious articles you hold dear; one day, this game will replace them all. If you don't know anything about XCOM Alliance, I'll give you a quick overview before I beat you bloody with a baseball bat.

Based on a heavily modified Unreal Engine (currently 40% Unreal, 60% Alliance), you are in charge of a squad of XCOM troops who have crash landed on an alien planet. True to the original "XCOM, you must find and research alien technology, and you've got to keep your team alive. Each member of your team has specific abilities, and before each mission you must choose which team members you want to take with you. However, since you can read all of this at any XCOM Alliance preview site, I'll get to what I saw specifically at E³a>.

The developer there that was demonstrating the software told about an interesting story that both demonstrated the physics of the game perfectly, and surprised the developers. The guy running the show shot a sectoid and killed it. He then commanded a team member (computer controlled) to come to him and guard him. The team member began jogging toward the player and tripped over the sectoid corpse! That's amazing. When you watch the XCOM Squadies run around and bump into each other you'll understand just how thorough the physics are. Simply amazing. Add to that the fact that multiplayer will include co-op levels on top of the obligatory deathmatch and there can be no denying that this game *will* become my new crack.

Bruce Campbell
The man, the legend, the chainsaw king, Bruce Campbell was there. The line formed just over an hour before he was set to arrive, and we were about 15th in line. When he did appear, there was much pain. The people in charge of organizing this autographing session did a nice job of not putting up a velvet rope to differentiate between the line and the crowd. The result was that when Bruce showed up, a large crowd manifested in front of him and assimilated itself into the line. Those of us who were patiently waiting over an hour to see him were very upset. Finally some crowd control was exercised (consisting of a woman yelling into peoples' ears "IF YOU'RE NOT IN LINE, GET THE HELL BACK!") and now I have an autographed DVD of Army of Darkness, and a photo of my girlfriend with Mr. Campbell.

(BTW, I'll have photos posted shortly. I'm unfortunately stuck with a parallel scanner and over 100 photos...)

Halo
There was a large black booth with the words "Halo" along the top, and I did jump in line, and lo, I did see the glory that is Halo. Now, the demo that they had running was sweet, consisting of a team of humans running a pronged attack (one group of three men on foot, another group of three men on a 6-wheeler) splitting up and converging on an alien base, infiltrating it and getting ambushed while trying to escape. The voices for it were recorded specifically for the show, but the range of animations were incredible. Luckily for us, when we entered the booth the Bungie team was trying to convince a German journalist that it was the real deal. Namely, he didn't believe that it was possible to achieve such beauty in the game engine, so Bungie fired up the game and toyed about. Pardon me while I clean up this drool.

This game will be the eye candy that games will be compared to for many years. I spoke with a member of Bungie about the lack of a first-person perspective. I'm not a journalist, so I can't quote word-for-word, but his reply was something like this: "We understand what everyone means about no first person, but we think that a third person perspective can be just as immersive. For example, when you're shot in Halo you'll see your body react, or when you taunt your opponent you'll actually see your character make the motions. There will most likely be first person perspectives for sniping and things like that." I understand where he's coming from, as it's hard in Unreal to know that you've been hit, or what you were hit by, for example, but that first person perspective makes the game *so* immersive... We'll have to see on this one.

Tribes 2
I sadly didn't see much of Tribes 2... The game looked like it was either far from optimized, or running on an unaccelerated Pentium 233. It ran like a dog, and the fool playing the game didn't have a clue as to how to pilot a Scout. Still, I'm highly looking forward to this one.

Sega & Space Channel 5
The Sega booth (area) was by far the most entertaining. Large stage with dancers emulating the Space Channel 5 dancers, breakdancers, and appearances by the developer of Shenmue. We waited 30 minutes to see a theater style production about Shenmue, Sonic Adventure 2, Phantasy Star Online, and other upcoming Sega titles.

UO2 (Ultima Worlds Online: Origin)
Ultima Online 2 is now known as "Ultima Worlds Online: Origin", and that is probably the stupidest idea I've ever heard. it's no longer a game from Origin, but the first game from EA Games (as opposed to EA Sports). It was not at E3 for general display. I was angry. I was upset. I set fire to many buildings in downtown LA to express my displeasure.

XBox
The XBox line was over 30 minutes long... oh the anticipation... We finally got into the XBox booth to watch a promo video... approximately 5 minutes long... It contained no new information that anyone on the Internet hasn't already seen. It showed the ping pong balls, it showed the butterflies, it showed the woman and robot dancing. This was not a live demonstration, just a video. Pathetic.

Food
They had us by the nuts. They knew it, and they took advantage of it. It was $2.75 for a drink and over $7.00 for a burger. Sadly, I had a massive tooth ache during the entire trip to LA, and eating was painful. However, it was interesting to note that damn near everyone in LA drinks Dr. Pepper. Ah... me public!

g.o.d. Midgets & Duke
Gathering of Developers did not have a booth inside the convention center... instead they had an empty lot outside and across the street. It was composed of trailers and tents. There were people in full KISS outfits... they were girls... they were midgets.... Let me reiterate: There were female midget KISS people running around the lot across the street from E3!!! I was scared. I got my picture taken with Duke Nuk'em and his entourage of she-warriors. I was scared. I was afraid to enter any of these booths, lest I run into a strip show or fortune teller or worse. Maybe I missed what was supposed to be special about the g.o.d. lot, but it didn't impress me at all...

Static
It's almost as if they figured the best way to make things exciting was to charge the air with electricity. Every time you walked five steps, you built up enough of a charge to run a computer. Static Electricity was the name of the game, and literally every ten steps I would reach out with my pinky finger and shock the living hell out of my girlfriend. It just doesn't get much more fun than that folks!

Developers
First of it, it was completely cool as hell be to surrounded by the industry and the makers of the industry that I love. Just as an example, when Tina and I checked into the Four Points Sheraton in Santa Monica, we stood in line behind a group of people wearing black shirts. They spoke about the fact that their job was done and that you couldn't go far into the E3 show without seeing Might and Magic. I though to myself "Holy shit, these are the men behind Heroes of Might and Magic". This was a feeling I would have to get used to. The next day, Tina and I waited for the shuttle that would take us to E3. While we waited outside the hotel another group came out... it was about eight members of the BioWare team, the people responsible for creating Baldur's Gate II. I was in absolute heaven.

PS2 Limp
The PlayStation 2 display was limp. Limp limp limp! Granted you couldn't spit without hitting one of the things, but it just didn't show anything that made me think "I must have one NOW". For the most part, it looked like a PlayStation upgraded just a hair, and looked like a pale comparison to the Dreamcast. I'm not saying that the system will suck, just that the display that Sony had a E3 was fairly uninspiring. For example, in the main display that we waited in line for, it started with about 4 minutes of lights and laser shows (about the quality of a Laser Floyd show) to end with a PS2 rising out of some rocks... it was nice, but we wanted to get to the action. Bleh.

Conker's Bad Fur Bar
How do you promote your game? Open a bar in E3, slap your logo on some beer mugs and pass out free beer by the barrels! Conker's Bad Fur Bar (as I call it) was crowded and full of demos of this quite controversial game... and beer. Lots of beer.

Maze Man, Congo Adventure and other Downstairs Booths
The funniest thing at E3 was the Kentia Hall. This large room contained the "under cards" of the show. Now, I'm not trying to dis everyone who was down there, but it's hard not to. It was like going to a Cincinnati Computer Show. Something like a yard sale thinking too highly of itself. The one booth that really makes me laugh was a company touting such games as "3D Maze Man", in which you are a yellow sphere wandering a maze and eating pellets trying to escape from ghosts... It was Pac Man. It was Pac Man with a name change. There was Congo Adventure, AKA Donkey Kong Country. They had also had TetriMania (Tetris), 3D Astro Blaster (Asteroids), 3D Cube Hopper (Q-bert), and many other blatant copies. It was truly funny... or sad.