E32k10: Day 3 - Get up, get, get, get down, 911 is a joke in your town
Day 3. It's time to w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-WAKE UP! We got up around 8 and did the usual yummy breakfast routine. I got on Gogita's laptop and confirmed a HOT DATE with Jim Sterling first thing that morning. Cowface was already at the convention center when I texted him. I guess he couldn't wait to attempt to register one last time. The good news is that he was successful after a bit of smooth talking. DBG officially had one representative at E3, wooooooo! Sure would be nice if he'd scan his badge or something...
I don't know what it was about this year, but the driving situation was soooo much better than pretty much every other year. Could've been because of the reduced registration, I suppose. Regardless, it was a smooth drive and some easy, inexpensive parking that morning. Cowface said he found some free spot in a residential area nearby. Lucky jerk.
We headed into South Hall. I wasn't sure if I was meeting Jim Sterling in the Namco booth in South Hall or the meeting room in West Hall. I was about to ditch Ty and Gogita and head to the booth when I realized the floor wasn't even open, and it'd probably make a lot more sense for him to be at the meeting room. So we went to West Hall, and THEN I ditched Ty and Gogita to find the place. I walked around and around the lengthy hallways until I found one of Namco Bandai's two meeting rooms all the way back in South Hall. Awesome. Jim wasn't there yet, so I kind of sat around chatting with one of the reps there about the 3DS and who know what else. A very sweaty Mr. Sterling arrived fifteen or twenty minutes later apologizing because, as I later would find out, he thought the meeting was at the booth. Good times. Anyway, I busted out my copy of Deadly Premonition, got him to sign it, gossiped about the game a little, and then went on my way. Jim Sterling. JOURNALIST!
For those of you not familiar with Jim Sterling, he wrote a review of Deadly Premonition for Destructoid giving it a 10/10. He later wrote a hilarious article comparing DP to Heavy Rain. Having played a couple of hours of Heavy Rain, I can say without a doubt that Deadly Premonition is better. So why exactly did I have him sign it? I dunno. I just think it's funny is all.
When that was done, I hurried back over to West Hall. Ty, Gogita, and Cowface all scored a spot in the 3DS line, so I went to meet up with them. I don't know if i was a jerk for cutting in line or what, but nobody seemed to mind, so eh. I was expecting it to take a while with the way the lines had looked the past couple of days, but the line actually moved at a decent clip. They had a ton of 3DSes set up, I guess. Once we neared the front, some Nintendo booth babe came up to us with a system to demonstrate the 3D. We ended up talking to her for, I don't know, fifteen minutes. She totally wanted me, but then Cowface had to butt in and grab her attention away from me. What a jerk! As if he doesn't already have dozens of women lined up around the block to get treated poorly. Terrible. It's like, come on, woman! Can't you tell that I'm a way better guy than Cowface? I was wearing my sexy slimming Ground Kontrol shirt that day and everything! I think I even showered that morning. Well fine, if that's the way it was going to be, I wasn't interested in her anyway. A guy like me can do way better than some chick who works in marketing at Nintendo. Speaking of which, what happened to all the different Wii colors? I mean, we only recently got black. and blah blah blah
Oh yeah, the 3DS. I played Animal Crossing, Professor Layton and the Subtitle I Don't Remember, some animu hack and slash game, some flight sim type game, and Kid Icarus. Apparently I missed the nicest looking games, but I was still fairly impressed, especially with Kid Icarus. I really like how there's a slider to adjust the 3D effect, as some games looked better with it turned all the way up and others about halfway. Now if only Nintendo had given any info at all on it, like price or release date or battery life. I'm sure I'll get one eventually, but I'm assuming it's going to retail for some stupid price, so I'll wait.
I don't remember the order in which the rest of the day went very well, so if it seems like one second I'm in one hall and the next I've teleported to the other, you can go screw yourself.
Cowface gave us a hot tip that OnLive was doing a raffle of sorts and giving away a laptop and possibly other prizes, so Gogita and I headed to South Hall to collect some tickets and check out whatever else was going on over there.
OnLive: didn't seem that bad! Not that I would pay for it, and not that I have a computer that could run it even if I would pay for it, but as far as features, navigation, and issues of lag, it seemed to work pretty well. I don't know if that's the case now, but at the time I couldn't find anything particularly bad to say. I gave some racing game a try and it worked well, and then the booth babe suggested we spy on Gogita, who was playing Borderlands very poorly. You don't shoot the harmless robot, silly!
We walked around and took some pictures. Here are those pictures.
Next up, we headed over to Harmonix's or MTV's or someone's booth, where they had Rock Band 3 set up. Good lord, those guitars were heavy. I guess because they're like, those real guitars, you know? We did some totally lame song and neither Gogita nor I touched the keyboard, but whatevs, we got free t-shirts, and that's what it was all about.
Afterward, we gave Castlevania: God of War Ripoff a try. It is a God of War ripoff. I would say not a very good one, but I've never really played GoW. I assume it sucks, though. Anyway, game sucks. Hope this helps.
Did we do anything else? I don't remember playing any other games while there. Okay, let's say we didn't do anything else in South Hall at the point, and instead we went to the area outside of West Hall because the Bonestorm guys were doing their free burgers thing again, and damnit, I WAS going to get a free burger this time! And I did! The End. It wasn't bad, but they didn't have any condiments or anything set up, so it was a little lacking. Yes, I am complaining about free food. I mean, seriously, how about some ketchup?
Gogita and I went back into West Hall and decided to give the Sony Move a try, probably only because the line was really short. After a five minute wait, some dude walked out and asked if anyone was interested in playing that one game with the chair riding. WAS I?! Yes, I was, so I said I was, yes. He escorted me to the TV with Kung Fu Rider hooked up and I gave it a go. The game itself wasn't bad, but I didn't care for the controls at all. I hate you, needless waggle. Go away you are not wanted here. I couldn't find Gogita after that, so I decided to wander around by myself.
Next up was giving Sony's 3D tech a try. Boy oh boy, I can't wait to watch my friends play Racing Game X when there aren't enough 3D glasses to go around, so I'll have to look at a screen that's nothing but blurry, amorphous blobs that could possibly represent a car driving around! Also, I don't know this for sure, but without any sort of 3D slider, I could see there being some issues. 3D TVs. Meh.
I went around Sony's booth some more to see if there was anything else of interest, and there really wasn't. I'd later find out that there were a couple of games on display that were of interest that I missed, but considering I don't own a PS3, it was no big loss.
Dear Sony,
Please price the PS3 affordably. I would like to purchase one and give you and third party game developers some of my money.
Hugs and Kisses,
Alex
P.S. Write back
More West Hall searching and not a whole lot of anything, which was just as well because it was time to head back to OnLive's booth for the raffle anyway. There was a fairly large crowd there by the time I arrived, but I still managed to find Gogita. Cowface was around there somewhere, but we didn't spot him. So the drawing started, and the first name got called. It wasn't me. I was sad. But nobody came up to claim the prize, and after a few minutes, they decided to screw that guy and to draw another name. Another chance! Except this name wasn't mine either. But THAT guy didn't show up. A third name! A third no-show! A fourth name! Still nobody! A fifth name! Not me, but who cares because that guy apparently doesn't exist! A sixth name! And booooooooooo, it was finally someone who was in attendance. Oh well. It was the most fun drawing I've taken part in.
Ty was immediately spotted nearby doing an interview for someone. I walked behind him a couple of times really slowly in an attempt to mooch off his fifteen minutes of fame. Turns out it was someone from Lopez Tonight asking him a bunch of stupid questions trying to lead him to give funny or pathetic answers. We waited forever for the E3 segment on Lopez Tonight to air. When it finally did, they didn't even show any of the interviews they did. But Ty still managed to show up for all of a second in it. That is the closest any of us are going to come to being famous.
Gogita mysteriously disappeared at some point, I don't know when or why. Liberated from his presence, I wandered South Hall some more. I was drawn one last time to Sega's booth for a third and final attempt at playing Vanquish. I told you, I really want to like this game. But aaggghh regenerating health pisses me off. I think this ended up being the only game of the show I played more than once. Oh, and while in the Sega booth, Masahiro Sakurai walked by me. I wanted to yell SAKURAIIII!!!!, but before I knew it, he was gone. My camera had stopped working at that point too, which was a bummer because it meant missing out on a final few booth babe pictures. My life, it is a perpetually flushing toilet.
Another E3 was set to wrap up in less than two hours. Everything I wanted to see seen, and my camera not working, I wasn't sure what to do. To West Hall! I guess? I stopped in the corridor between the two halls to give my dogs a rest and check the E3 Show Daily in case I missed anything. That's when I found out there was actually only less than one hour left. I hurried over to Nintendo's booth to maybe give Other M a try if there wasn't anyone there, but either the line got cut off or something, because I wasn't able to play. I spotted Jonny Metts (who, again, is a fantastic guy) playing Wii Party with a couple of the other NWR guys. He didn't have anything nice to say about it at all. What a shame. I did some more aimless wandering, which is when I found a poster for a Korean (or Japanese or Chinese or...) game called Kiss My Baby! The game wasn't on display and none of the pamphlets had any information on it, but by name and poster alone I was tempted to call it my game of show. Take THAT, Ghost Trick!
There were still ten minutes or so left, but I felt like I had done all I wanted to do, so I left West Hall and sat outside texting the other guys so we could meet up for dinner and Video Games Live. They sure took their sweet time showing up, I tell you what. Cowface didn't want to hang out with us any longer for some stupid reason. How could he say no to dinner at Denny's? wtf! He probably wanted to go get drunk and beat up some more women, is my guess. Fag. Good riddance! Those of us who are cool and not gay at all headed to Denny's to get some yum yums.
Denny's! I love you and your delicious food! We had a great time talking about the show over our grub. I don't remember what I had, but I'm sure it was great, whatever it was. As if Denny's ever serves anything but the best. If I ever go there again, it won't be soon enough. Speaking of which, don't let me forget to get a free Grand Slam on my birthday.*
Food is eaten. To Video Games Live! And here is where everything fell apart. On our way to the Nokia Theatre, we noticed a bunch of people gathered around an intersection nearby. There was a cop there telling everyone that they couldn't cross the street, and instead had to go down a ways and loop around to get to the stuff that was on the other side. Oh. Okay. So we walked down the way, crossed the street, and the cops there told us we couldn't go in the direction of the theater. We'd have to go around. Oh. Okay. So we walked around the rear end of the Staples Center. More cops there telling us we had to go around. Oh. Okay. So we walked some more and ran into some more cops blocking off the path, telling us to find some other way. Okay! I don't know about the other guys, but at that point I started to worry that we either wouldn't be able to get in or the show would be canceled or something. We went down another few blocks in what was now almost a complete circle with the theater in the center. Gogita suggested we follow some people, but when it became clear those people had no idea where they were going, we went back a block to another area with a whole mess of cops just sitting around doing very little. "Can we please cross the street? There's no other way to get to the Nokia Theater. Oh, we can if we show you our tickets? Okay!" And that's how what should've been a 30-second walk turned into 30 minutes of getting jerked around by LA's worst. In case you're curious, the reason all of this was going on was because game 7 of the NBA finals was taking place at the Staples Center. Damned if I know why there needed to be so many cops around at halftime, but I have just one thing to say: fuck sports.
We did arrive with a decent amount of time to spare, thankfully. It pays to think ahead. Gogita and I sat next to each other, while Ty was several rows back. Time to Penischat! And Penischat we did, or at least we attempted to. A couple of other people had their DSes out, but we weren't able to get a good connection with them going. Guess they were too far away or something. No matter. He and I killed some time by playing Tetris. I miss multiplayer Tetris DS.
The first half of the show, they brought out a bunch of game composers to play music from their games. It was mostly American dudes, but it was still really cool to see. The second half was very similar to the second half of the show I went to see here last November. The highlight for me, though, was this chick, Laura Intravia, who rocked out on the flute with a Zelda medley. She was seriously pretty great, and scored extra bonus points with me for being dressed up as Link. So hot. Have some video!
Special thanks to my sponsor, Vincent Anderson, who helped make it all possible. Once the show was done, we talked about other things we could do afterward. There was a party going on somewhere, there were strip clubs, and there was just going back to the hotel. Guess which we did? You guessed it, back to the hotel! I don't recall what went down after we got back. More than likely we played some games, though it's possible we were too tired and went directly to bed. Doesn't matter. It couldn't have been too exciting if I can't even remember what happened.
So! I volunteered to sleep on the floor, but Gogita wasn't having any of it. Instead, he told me to sleep at the end of the bed again. Awwwww, what a sweetie.
Next Entry: Final Day - The thrilling conclusion!
*This paragraph brought to you by Denny's. Denny's: if I knew the slogan, I'd put it here.
I don't know what it was about this year, but the driving situation was soooo much better than pretty much every other year. Could've been because of the reduced registration, I suppose. Regardless, it was a smooth drive and some easy, inexpensive parking that morning. Cowface said he found some free spot in a residential area nearby. Lucky jerk.
We headed into South Hall. I wasn't sure if I was meeting Jim Sterling in the Namco booth in South Hall or the meeting room in West Hall. I was about to ditch Ty and Gogita and head to the booth when I realized the floor wasn't even open, and it'd probably make a lot more sense for him to be at the meeting room. So we went to West Hall, and THEN I ditched Ty and Gogita to find the place. I walked around and around the lengthy hallways until I found one of Namco Bandai's two meeting rooms all the way back in South Hall. Awesome. Jim wasn't there yet, so I kind of sat around chatting with one of the reps there about the 3DS and who know what else. A very sweaty Mr. Sterling arrived fifteen or twenty minutes later apologizing because, as I later would find out, he thought the meeting was at the booth. Good times. Anyway, I busted out my copy of Deadly Premonition, got him to sign it, gossiped about the game a little, and then went on my way. Jim Sterling. JOURNALIST!
For those of you not familiar with Jim Sterling, he wrote a review of Deadly Premonition for Destructoid giving it a 10/10. He later wrote a hilarious article comparing DP to Heavy Rain. Having played a couple of hours of Heavy Rain, I can say without a doubt that Deadly Premonition is better. So why exactly did I have him sign it? I dunno. I just think it's funny is all.
When that was done, I hurried back over to West Hall. Ty, Gogita, and Cowface all scored a spot in the 3DS line, so I went to meet up with them. I don't know if i was a jerk for cutting in line or what, but nobody seemed to mind, so eh. I was expecting it to take a while with the way the lines had looked the past couple of days, but the line actually moved at a decent clip. They had a ton of 3DSes set up, I guess. Once we neared the front, some Nintendo booth babe came up to us with a system to demonstrate the 3D. We ended up talking to her for, I don't know, fifteen minutes. She totally wanted me, but then Cowface had to butt in and grab her attention away from me. What a jerk! As if he doesn't already have dozens of women lined up around the block to get treated poorly. Terrible. It's like, come on, woman! Can't you tell that I'm a way better guy than Cowface? I was wearing my sexy slimming Ground Kontrol shirt that day and everything! I think I even showered that morning. Well fine, if that's the way it was going to be, I wasn't interested in her anyway. A guy like me can do way better than some chick who works in marketing at Nintendo. Speaking of which, what happened to all the different Wii colors? I mean, we only recently got black. and blah blah blah
Oh yeah, the 3DS. I played Animal Crossing, Professor Layton and the Subtitle I Don't Remember, some animu hack and slash game, some flight sim type game, and Kid Icarus. Apparently I missed the nicest looking games, but I was still fairly impressed, especially with Kid Icarus. I really like how there's a slider to adjust the 3D effect, as some games looked better with it turned all the way up and others about halfway. Now if only Nintendo had given any info at all on it, like price or release date or battery life. I'm sure I'll get one eventually, but I'm assuming it's going to retail for some stupid price, so I'll wait.
I don't remember the order in which the rest of the day went very well, so if it seems like one second I'm in one hall and the next I've teleported to the other, you can go screw yourself.
Cowface gave us a hot tip that OnLive was doing a raffle of sorts and giving away a laptop and possibly other prizes, so Gogita and I headed to South Hall to collect some tickets and check out whatever else was going on over there.
OnLive: didn't seem that bad! Not that I would pay for it, and not that I have a computer that could run it even if I would pay for it, but as far as features, navigation, and issues of lag, it seemed to work pretty well. I don't know if that's the case now, but at the time I couldn't find anything particularly bad to say. I gave some racing game a try and it worked well, and then the booth babe suggested we spy on Gogita, who was playing Borderlands very poorly. You don't shoot the harmless robot, silly!
We walked around and took some pictures. Here are those pictures.
Next up, we headed over to Harmonix's or MTV's or someone's booth, where they had Rock Band 3 set up. Good lord, those guitars were heavy. I guess because they're like, those real guitars, you know? We did some totally lame song and neither Gogita nor I touched the keyboard, but whatevs, we got free t-shirts, and that's what it was all about.
Afterward, we gave Castlevania: God of War Ripoff a try. It is a God of War ripoff. I would say not a very good one, but I've never really played GoW. I assume it sucks, though. Anyway, game sucks. Hope this helps.
Did we do anything else? I don't remember playing any other games while there. Okay, let's say we didn't do anything else in South Hall at the point, and instead we went to the area outside of West Hall because the Bonestorm guys were doing their free burgers thing again, and damnit, I WAS going to get a free burger this time! And I did! The End. It wasn't bad, but they didn't have any condiments or anything set up, so it was a little lacking. Yes, I am complaining about free food. I mean, seriously, how about some ketchup?
Gogita and I went back into West Hall and decided to give the Sony Move a try, probably only because the line was really short. After a five minute wait, some dude walked out and asked if anyone was interested in playing that one game with the chair riding. WAS I?! Yes, I was, so I said I was, yes. He escorted me to the TV with Kung Fu Rider hooked up and I gave it a go. The game itself wasn't bad, but I didn't care for the controls at all. I hate you, needless waggle. Go away you are not wanted here. I couldn't find Gogita after that, so I decided to wander around by myself.
Next up was giving Sony's 3D tech a try. Boy oh boy, I can't wait to watch my friends play Racing Game X when there aren't enough 3D glasses to go around, so I'll have to look at a screen that's nothing but blurry, amorphous blobs that could possibly represent a car driving around! Also, I don't know this for sure, but without any sort of 3D slider, I could see there being some issues. 3D TVs. Meh.
I went around Sony's booth some more to see if there was anything else of interest, and there really wasn't. I'd later find out that there were a couple of games on display that were of interest that I missed, but considering I don't own a PS3, it was no big loss.
Dear Sony,
Please price the PS3 affordably. I would like to purchase one and give you and third party game developers some of my money.
Hugs and Kisses,
Alex
P.S. Write back
More West Hall searching and not a whole lot of anything, which was just as well because it was time to head back to OnLive's booth for the raffle anyway. There was a fairly large crowd there by the time I arrived, but I still managed to find Gogita. Cowface was around there somewhere, but we didn't spot him. So the drawing started, and the first name got called. It wasn't me. I was sad. But nobody came up to claim the prize, and after a few minutes, they decided to screw that guy and to draw another name. Another chance! Except this name wasn't mine either. But THAT guy didn't show up. A third name! A third no-show! A fourth name! Still nobody! A fifth name! Not me, but who cares because that guy apparently doesn't exist! A sixth name! And booooooooooo, it was finally someone who was in attendance. Oh well. It was the most fun drawing I've taken part in.
Ty was immediately spotted nearby doing an interview for someone. I walked behind him a couple of times really slowly in an attempt to mooch off his fifteen minutes of fame. Turns out it was someone from Lopez Tonight asking him a bunch of stupid questions trying to lead him to give funny or pathetic answers. We waited forever for the E3 segment on Lopez Tonight to air. When it finally did, they didn't even show any of the interviews they did. But Ty still managed to show up for all of a second in it. That is the closest any of us are going to come to being famous.
Gogita mysteriously disappeared at some point, I don't know when or why. Liberated from his presence, I wandered South Hall some more. I was drawn one last time to Sega's booth for a third and final attempt at playing Vanquish. I told you, I really want to like this game. But aaggghh regenerating health pisses me off. I think this ended up being the only game of the show I played more than once. Oh, and while in the Sega booth, Masahiro Sakurai walked by me. I wanted to yell SAKURAIIII!!!!, but before I knew it, he was gone. My camera had stopped working at that point too, which was a bummer because it meant missing out on a final few booth babe pictures. My life, it is a perpetually flushing toilet.
Another E3 was set to wrap up in less than two hours. Everything I wanted to see seen, and my camera not working, I wasn't sure what to do. To West Hall! I guess? I stopped in the corridor between the two halls to give my dogs a rest and check the E3 Show Daily in case I missed anything. That's when I found out there was actually only less than one hour left. I hurried over to Nintendo's booth to maybe give Other M a try if there wasn't anyone there, but either the line got cut off or something, because I wasn't able to play. I spotted Jonny Metts (who, again, is a fantastic guy) playing Wii Party with a couple of the other NWR guys. He didn't have anything nice to say about it at all. What a shame. I did some more aimless wandering, which is when I found a poster for a Korean (or Japanese or Chinese or...) game called Kiss My Baby! The game wasn't on display and none of the pamphlets had any information on it, but by name and poster alone I was tempted to call it my game of show. Take THAT, Ghost Trick!
There were still ten minutes or so left, but I felt like I had done all I wanted to do, so I left West Hall and sat outside texting the other guys so we could meet up for dinner and Video Games Live. They sure took their sweet time showing up, I tell you what. Cowface didn't want to hang out with us any longer for some stupid reason. How could he say no to dinner at Denny's? wtf! He probably wanted to go get drunk and beat up some more women, is my guess. Fag. Good riddance! Those of us who are cool and not gay at all headed to Denny's to get some yum yums.
Denny's! I love you and your delicious food! We had a great time talking about the show over our grub. I don't remember what I had, but I'm sure it was great, whatever it was. As if Denny's ever serves anything but the best. If I ever go there again, it won't be soon enough. Speaking of which, don't let me forget to get a free Grand Slam on my birthday.*
Food is eaten. To Video Games Live! And here is where everything fell apart. On our way to the Nokia Theatre, we noticed a bunch of people gathered around an intersection nearby. There was a cop there telling everyone that they couldn't cross the street, and instead had to go down a ways and loop around to get to the stuff that was on the other side. Oh. Okay. So we walked down the way, crossed the street, and the cops there told us we couldn't go in the direction of the theater. We'd have to go around. Oh. Okay. So we walked around the rear end of the Staples Center. More cops there telling us we had to go around. Oh. Okay. So we walked some more and ran into some more cops blocking off the path, telling us to find some other way. Okay! I don't know about the other guys, but at that point I started to worry that we either wouldn't be able to get in or the show would be canceled or something. We went down another few blocks in what was now almost a complete circle with the theater in the center. Gogita suggested we follow some people, but when it became clear those people had no idea where they were going, we went back a block to another area with a whole mess of cops just sitting around doing very little. "Can we please cross the street? There's no other way to get to the Nokia Theater. Oh, we can if we show you our tickets? Okay!" And that's how what should've been a 30-second walk turned into 30 minutes of getting jerked around by LA's worst. In case you're curious, the reason all of this was going on was because game 7 of the NBA finals was taking place at the Staples Center. Damned if I know why there needed to be so many cops around at halftime, but I have just one thing to say: fuck sports.
We did arrive with a decent amount of time to spare, thankfully. It pays to think ahead. Gogita and I sat next to each other, while Ty was several rows back. Time to Penischat! And Penischat we did, or at least we attempted to. A couple of other people had their DSes out, but we weren't able to get a good connection with them going. Guess they were too far away or something. No matter. He and I killed some time by playing Tetris. I miss multiplayer Tetris DS.
The first half of the show, they brought out a bunch of game composers to play music from their games. It was mostly American dudes, but it was still really cool to see. The second half was very similar to the second half of the show I went to see here last November. The highlight for me, though, was this chick, Laura Intravia, who rocked out on the flute with a Zelda medley. She was seriously pretty great, and scored extra bonus points with me for being dressed up as Link. So hot. Have some video!
Click to view
Special thanks to my sponsor, Vincent Anderson, who helped make it all possible. Once the show was done, we talked about other things we could do afterward. There was a party going on somewhere, there were strip clubs, and there was just going back to the hotel. Guess which we did? You guessed it, back to the hotel! I don't recall what went down after we got back. More than likely we played some games, though it's possible we were too tired and went directly to bed. Doesn't matter. It couldn't have been too exciting if I can't even remember what happened.
So! I volunteered to sleep on the floor, but Gogita wasn't having any of it. Instead, he told me to sleep at the end of the bed again. Awwwww, what a sweetie.
Next Entry: Final Day - The thrilling conclusion!
*This paragraph brought to you by Denny's. Denny's: if I knew the slogan, I'd put it here.