E3 09 was my first trip to the Electronic Entertainment Expo, and the three days I spent on the show floor are kind of a blur. I got a chance to play, or at least see, dozens of unreleased games, as well as meet a bunch of awesome developers, publishers, and industry people. It was a fantastic experience, and one I can’t wait to have again. However, because of time constraints, I didn’t get to give every game I played enough time to warrant a full article of impressions. Instead, I’m wrapping up everything I haven’t written about E3 right here, with some quick impressions and my personal favorite moments.


My Three Favorite Moments of E3



Getting to play The Beatles: Rock Band with Harmonix. Any time I happened to be in the South Hall with a few spare minutes between appointments, I somehow found myself back at the MTV booth, rocking out to “I Want to Hold Your Hand” or “I Saw Her Standing There”. As I made clear in my hands-on impressions, I absolutely loved The Beatles: Rock Band. I also got a chance to hang out with some of the awesome people at Harmonix after hours, where we played—shockingly enough—more Beatles: Rock Band! It was a blast, and those were some of my favorites time of my time spent in Los Angeles last week.

Finally Getting My Hands On Brütal Legend. My appointment with EA wasn’t until 5:00 on Thursday, the last day of E3, and the floor closed at six. As soon as I got there and was asked what games I wanted to see, I replied “I need to play Brütal Legend.” Coop and I split up at the EA booth, and I spent most of my last hour of E3 playing Tim Schafer’s heavy metal rock opera. It was a great way to close out the show.

Valve’s Meeting Room and Playing Left 4 Dead 2. No to dismiss anyone else’s E3 showing, but meeting up with Valve was one of the highlights of last week for me. First of all, they had coffee and food in their meeting room, which is always a plus. They also had a bunch of PCs and Xbox 360s set up with L4D2, which I was excited to play after its surprise announcement at the Microsoft Press Conference. I know there’s this whole protest thing going on right now against the game, but I think that’s all pretty silly. Left 4 Dead 2 was awesome to play, and I can’t wait to hear more about the new gameplay modes and special infected. During a busy week, most of which was spent on a crowded convention floor, it was just really nice to take a few minutes to sit down, relax, and shoot some motherfucking zombies.

Quick Impressions



These were the games that I played, but didn’t feel that I spent quite enough time with to write up full impressions. Still, they deserved to be mentioned.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days: I didn’t play this for very long, mostly because I really didn’t enjoy it. I spent the rest of the show trying to put my finger on why; something about this DS spinoff of a beloved series just felt wrong. Maybe it’s because I started playing in a random area, and not at the beginning of the game, but nothing about this game screamed, “play me more!”. I didn’t give it enough of a chance, and would have to play it again before making any real judgments, but so far I’m not too excited about it.

World Championship Athletics: This track-and-field game from Crave seems to be a decent game in the genre for the Wii. It’s balance board compatible, and features events like hurdles, high jumps, and archery. I only played a few events, but it’s already more fun than Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, I can tell you that much. This should be a fun game for the family-friendly crowd, and if you like track and field games, this might be your best bet on the Wii.

The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn’s Quest: I played this for a bit on the Wii while I was waiting to get my hands on Batman: Arkham Asylum. I’m not a huge Lord of the Rings fan—I certainly have nothing against it, but I’ve never been interested enough to play any of the video games based on the franchise. From what I can tell, this one seems to focus more on all-ages gameplay than your usual LOTR title, and also features two-player co-op, which is interesting. The main player takes the role of Aragorn, hence the title, but a second player can jump in and play as Gandolf if he or she desires. The sword and shield are motion-controlled and feel similar to Twilight Princess’s controls. I had some issues with the camera, but overall it wasn’t a bad game.

Need for Speed Shift: I played almost a full race before I walked away. It may be because I had just seen Split Second, but nothing about Need for Speed Shift really impressed me. It also seems like they took out the time-slowing mechanism that I really enjoyed in Undercover, so I was a bit disappointed. Again, the time I played isn’t even close to enough to openly dismiss this game, but as far as first impressions go, Shift didn’t make a very good one.

Rogue Warrior: I got a brief eyes-on of Bethesda’s first-person shooter that has been in development for years, supposedly because they kept changing the gameplay mechanics until they were satisfied. Though the game is primarily first-person, it changes to third-person whenever the player hides behind cover. It seems very much like an 80s action movie, over the top, full of guns and explosions; this is exactly what Bethesda was going for.

E3 2009 may be over, but be sure to check later, when Coop and I announce the Best of E3 winners. In the meantime, be sure to check out the nominees, and everything else we covered, over at the E3 09 page.