Another year, another E3....

So, here we are again; another year and another E3. Over the next couple of days the Los Angeles Convention Centre will open it's doors to draws tens of thousands of professionals to experience the future of interactive entertainment. The most influential people leading the most innovative companies in the business attend E3 Expo to see groundbreaking new technologies and never-before-seen products for consoles, handhelds and the Internet. Over the 6th-9th June LA's gonna be swamped with leading game companies, business partners, media darlings and industry swots from over 80 countries.

Now the introduction's out of the way lets talk about the meat and veg of the show - the Keynote speeches and of course ALL OF THE NEW YUMMY GAMES that are coming the world's way over the next 12 months. As it's the first day of E3, this is more of a run-up to the big event with no real reveals...yet!

From Monday through to Thursday this week i'll pop back on here and give a daily round-up of all the best news, trailers and showstopping moments from this years BIGGEST game expo.

Have a look at this years mental line-up i've grabbed from a close source.

Monday, June 6th

• Microsoft Press Conference | 9:30am
• Electronic Arts Press Conference | 12:30pm
• Ubisoft Press Conference | 2:20pm
• Sony Press Conference | 5:00pm

Tuesday, June 7th

• Nintendo Press Conference | 9:00am
• Mass Effect 3 | 1:00pm
• Battlefield 3 | 1:30pm
• Batman: Arkham City | 2:00pm
• Resistance 3 | 3:00pm
• Starhawk | 3:20pm
• Twisted Metal | 3:40pm
• NGP Demos | 4:00pm
• Journey | 4:20pm
• Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception | 4:40pm
• Gears of War 3 (Campaign) | 5:00pm
• Forza Motorsports 4 | 5:20pm
• Super Secret Remake | 5:40pm
• Ms. 'Splosion Man | 6:00pm
• Modern Warfare 3 | 6:30pm

Wednesday, June 8th

• Spider-Man: Edge of Time | 11:00am
• Dead Island | 11:20am
• Gears of War 3 (Horde Mode) | 11:40am
• Rage | Noon
• Prey 2 | 12:20pm
• Shinobi | 12:40pm
• Saints Row III | 1:00pm
• Lord of the Rings: War in the North | 1:30pm
• Ninja Gaiden III | 2:00pm
• The Darkness II | 3:00pm
• Street Fighter X Tekken | 3:20pm
• Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City | 3:40pm
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution | 4:00pm
• Tomb Raider | 4:20pm
• Super Secret Sequel #1 | 4:40pm
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim | 5:00pm
• WWE 12 | 5:20pm
• Super Secret Sequel #2 | 5:40pm
• Prototype 2 | 6:00pm
• BioShock Infinite | 6:30pm

Thursday, June 9th

• Star Wars: The Old Republic | 11:00am
• Dark Souls | 11:20am
• Inversion | 11:40am
• Warhammer 40k: Space Marine | Noon
• X-Men: Destiny | 12:20pm
• Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning | 12:40pm
• Jurassic Park: The Game | 1:00pm
• Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 | 1:30pm
• Bastion | 2:20pm
• Assassin's Creed: Revelations | 3:00pm
• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier | 3:20pm
• Rayman Origins | 3:40pm
• Sonic Generations | 4:00pm
• Catherine | 4:20pm
• Need For Speed: The Run | 4:40pm
• SSX | 5:00pm
• Madden 12 | 5:20pm
• FIFA 12 | 5:40pm

Pretty decent line-up, quite a few goodies on that list. Hope this puts you in good spirit for this years Expo. I'll be back in 24 hrs with more juice from E3

All my love, Dr Sanchez

E3 2010: Three Dee Eee Three

I've recently been on holiday. The beer was good, the scenery was nice and the weather was warm. But as we all know, holidays are a time of cutting off. From home, from stress and from our beloved consoles. So what do we do when we're on holiday? We boot up the handhelds, of course.

After a brief flirtation with the PSP, my DS has time and time again shown just how good the little blighter has become. What was once a platform that was pissed all over by Nintendogs, quality and off-beat releases has ensured that the DS appeals to a wide fanbase, with games for everyone. I was sucked into Pokemon on my holiday, and fell in love with the little critters all over again.

Pokemon. Straight-up science shit.

So, when we were dividing up what to tackle after this years E3, I thought I would chat about my suprising and sudden anticipation for the Nintendo 3DS...

Now, before we start getting the knives out as 'serious' gamers, I know exactly what you're thinking, because I was thinking it too. Surely, this isn't it? They've added an analogue nub, and some shitty gimmick in the form of a '3-D' screen. Surely, this can't be Nintendo's next leap. The same console, but with a few shit add-ons? The next DS XL. Trojan Horse. Nintendo up to it's new old tricks.

But I honestly don't think this is the case. From my feverous Twitter following, all of the games journalists have gone absolute BONKERS for this. Apparently the 3D isn't a gimmick, but an actual, factual revelation of gameplay, offering a staggering 3D display, without any glasses or aids. The console also has a slider on the side, to adjust the level of 3D to your eyes, and also to turn it off entirely if you wish. The fears of this 'gimmick' have been all but quashed.

Kid Icarus. Nintendo Fanboy Wetdream.

And Nintendo have finally starting listening to the hardcore. Resident Evil, Kid Icarus, Starfox, Paper Mario and that Ocarina of Time remake. This is like a gamer's wet dream, and all being announced to be released on the 3DS, all at one E3. Nintendo came with a game plan: to assure and excite the hardcore gamers. And I for one am excited.

So in a year when Microsoft and Sony focused on the families and casual gamers, Nintendo was the platform that emerged to be thrusting it's focus right at the hardcore fans. And I didn't think I'd be saying THAT this time last month.

E3 2010: 'Silent Hill 8'? Yes please (but only if it’s good)!

This years E3 was awesome and wet my appetite for enough new games to keep me scraping around for many pennies for the next few months and then some. Yet after so many announcements I found myself not so bothered about new franchises and IP’s as normal, but more intrigued to see 2011 as the year of the older franchises comeback. As they reclaim their former glory, charging to the forefront of their genres an showing the new kids on the block how its done, after suffering not so good sequels in their lineage that people tend to forget about on purpose.

The alternate reality prison sequences have the potential to be pant wettingly terrifying

Silent Hill is probably the one franchise that single handedly got me into survival horror games, yet still the latest announcement left me with a feeling of doubt yet hopefulness that it could recrown itself as one of the leading survival horror franchises after suffering a few unworthy treatments (which in my honest opinion is Silent Hill 4 onwards).

Vatra Studios new trailer for Silent Hill 8 (planned to arrive sometime in 2011) looks promising indeed, ditching the dated characters looking for relatives who’ve oddly run off and/or disappeared in Silent Hill based storyline, and instead putting you in the proverbial shoes of a prison escapee Murphy Pendleton, who escapes a prison transport crash only to end up in Silent Hill (gutted much?). Cue all the nasty psychological horror traits of the series where Silent Hill goes all Hellraiser, transforming into a disturbing reflection of the prison Murphy’s just escaped, hopefully cueing some interesting terrors stemmed from the choices he was confronted with serving time behind bars.

SH:8 promises to blend the flash light exploration and crap yourself scares, mind boggling puzzles mixed with the new use of certain everyday objects such as chairs and bookcases into the combat to prolong your imminent death at the jaws of some grotesque abomination.

If all this is done well and scary enough then Vatra might be onto something, finally rekindling the franchise that Silent Hill: Homecoming failed to do next gen justice.

E3 2010: I'm making a note here, HUGE SUCCESS.

So e3 is gone, and after a chat with the other fine chaps here at Gainboy, we're going to do a little series of articles covering our own personal favourites from the conferences and floor shows of the biggest trade show in the US (maybe the world, but Gamescom in Germany gets bigger and better every year).


Gabe Newell suprised just about everyone this year. We all knew we would get some info on Portal 2, but I don't think anyone would have guessed he would walk out to present it as part of Sony's conference. Valve have had a history of saying that they have trouble working with Sony's hardware, due to the programming differences compared to a Windows based system they work with on both PC and Xbox360. A great suprise then, that not only are they planning to get behind the PS3's rise to glory, but they are going to do it by using their own platform, Steam, to deliver content updates and provide access to the steam community through your PS3.

Fancy stuff and unsuprising to see it happen on the PS3 first. You might think this kind of thing would work much easier on the Xbox360, and I would agree. But Microsoft are becoming legendary in their scrooge-like efforts to make everyone subscribe to their premium gold service. If this Steam idea comes to the xbox360, I would expect it to be avilable to gold subscribers only.

So a little less about the platform holders, and a bit more about what this article is about.

Delicious Cake.

The original game, Portal, was part of the Orange Box, Valve's first release on the current generation of consoles. Inside said box, were, count them.. 5 games. At £39.99 that was a bargain. Even if two or three were utter garbage it would be worth it. But Valve put into this box five absolute gems: Half-Life 2 (HL2), HL2: Episiode 1, HL2: Episode 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2. The Half-Life saga is one I have played through a 'few' times, let's say, and it remains to this day as my favourite set of first person games ever made. Team Fortress 2, is a massively popular First Person team based shooter, with a rather unique style and perfectly balanced gameplay. But finally, Portal. Almost overshadowed by the other huge names of Valve's catalogue, on the outside, it looked like a nice little puzzle game to keep you entertained for a while. Upon further inspection, Portal was (and still is) a massively accomplished first person adventure, featuring some mind bending puzzles and a lovely portion of dark humour.

So Portal 2 is coming, but what does it have to offer us? From the interviews and the developer walkthroughs show at e3, Portal 2's story is set up to be twice as long as the original (which is good news, as the first took me about an hour 1/2 to complete first time), but not only that, it has a completely separate co-op story, which is again twice the length of Portal1. So that's four times as much portal goodness. In addition to more length, the Arpeture test facility has developed a few new things to test you with.

The first major ones were are shown are the 'Excursion Funnel', a kind of tractor beam that you can send through portals and use as a lift to carry you across gaps or up to high areas, the 'Faith Plate', which are essentially bounce pads that throw you up in the air, and the 'Thermal Discouragement Beam', a high powered laser that you can direct with new weighted cubes that have mirrors inside them. The really interesting ones however, are the introduction of two new 'gels', "Repulsion Gel", which changes the surface to bounce you off it, allowing you to jump much higher, or even off walls, and "Propulsion Gel", which increases your movement speed as you move across it. The effect these two gels have on the scope of puzzles that can be created is huge, possibly allowing for intricate and massive chambers.

Using Propulsion gel to squeeze through some spiked pneumatic walls.

So all in all, I have to say, Portal 2 is looking like a standout game, with a massively fleshed out single and multiplayer game, new ideas and new characters. Will GLaDOS and Chell really put their differences behind them for science, or will Chell remain a monster and kill her again? Will there be cake? Will there be another song for the credits? Time, and Valve, hold the answers.

E3 2010: so far...

Well, with only 24hrs to go until the electronic entertainment expo closes it's very expensive doors for another year I'm here to give you a 'lil round up of what has captured us so far.

It's been an interesting but not an earth shattering year with 2 new machine unveilings, some suprises (twisted metal and Sony's move) and some real joys (Zelda Skyward and Microsoft's lengthy Kinetic demo.)

Microsoft hit us with the U.K launch date of their new black slim 250gb 360, tasty.
Forza 4 announced WITH Kinetic support,
Fable 3 and Gears 3 got demo'd.
Free ESPN channel for all gold subscribers on live.
Star wars got the Kinetic touch,

Sony got us going with an impressive Move demonstration along with a streetdate and price,
Gran turismo 5 announces 3D support,
Killzone 3 dated for Feb'11,
The fantastic Infamous gets a sequel next year,
The real suprise came when Steam announced it's connection to the PSN, a real suprise considering what Gabe Newell has said about Sony in the past. I see $$$$ !!


Nintendo's 3DS got the show going with it's impressive floor demo, showing off Kid icarus but failing to give a retail date.
GOLDENEYE FOR THE WII !! (I liked the look of it)
Zelda Skyward sword announced for the Wii, along with Motion-controls,
Anyone for a new Mario Sports game - booya thats-a-coming in 2011. Mini games ahoy for the Wii,
A final and solid release date for Metroid Other M in the U.S
New Donkey Kong country rumors were true, Q4 in 2010, nice !!


I'll be back in a couple of days to add some more nuggets of tasty info for you all.
Have a glorious day
The good Dr.