When making all the arrangements for E3, we thought it would be a good idea to try and leave one day free from appointments so we’d each be able to go our own way and look at the games we hadn’t been booked in for, but which sparked our interest from snatched glimpses as we made our way from one developer to another.  It may seem ridiculous to some, given the amount of effort we were going to in order to actually cover E3, but let us not forget that we are, first and foremost, gamers.  We didn’t quite manage to leave the diary entirely free but each of us got at least three hours with which to do our own thing and so, for me, it was a question of where I’d go and what I’d see.

Having already been blown away by the advances to the Risen franchise in Risen 2: Dark Waters earlier that morning, and excited by the updates in the new Pirates Of The Flying Fortress DLC for Two Worlds II the previous day, I was already on quite a high… but wanted more.  Back in March, we discovered an absolute gem at PAX East and no other game even came close to how much it inspired us.  That game was Bastion.  With my free day, I made it my goal to seek out “another Bastion”, and so I trotted off into the pedestrian wilderness with my weighty camera bag over one shoulder , longing for one of those Peruvian guys that Michael Palin gets to carry his bags through the Andes.  Couldn’t find anyone though.

In true prospector fashion, I bypassed all the picturesque areas that had been smoothed down by prior footfall and headed for the craggy twists and turns that is the indie aisle, in the hope of that one glint of gold catching the light.  As you may already have suspected, E3 isn’t quite as indie as PAX as you’d still need a fair amount of wonga to pick up even the smallest of booths, so even the independent games were more polished than I’d hoped.  I saw free to play MMO after free to play MMO, various puzzle type games, but nothing grabbed me and so off I went around the main booths.

One particular game did actually stand out from the main areas, and that was Inversion.  At first glance it looks like a typical shooter but getting hands on with it allowed me to immediately see that there was a lot more to it than just run and gun. After fifteen minutes with it, I was sold on the premise of having to use gravity as an additional weapon, with a very Escheresque approach to gameplay in certain areas where an enemy would appear to be standing on the ceiling above me or a wall to the side whereas, in fact, it may actually be my own character that is on the ceiling and they’re still on solid ground.  Having to take gravity into consideration whilst firing, ensuring that grenades don’t immediately shoot upwards (in reality, downwards) if you’re trying to hit an enemy while you’re on the ceiling, was an interesting dynamic and one that I’m looking forward to writing more about.

On then to some other booths, and a quick shot at the most unforgiving game of my entire E3 experience… Dark Souls.  I hadn’t played Demon’s Souls before, so being thrown in to the follow up with no clue of what to expect was rather daunting, and this feeling of uselessness was further amplified by my being killed several times within the first minute or two of gameplay. It was at this point that I discovered a lever on a wall and realised that I wasn’t actually supposed to go down the linear route being provided by the game, because I couldn’t actually survive regardless of what I tried, and this new path opened an entirely new direction where I could bypass the previous mini boss… and be killed in a completely different location instead.  When Job Stauffer, who we’d already met at PAX with the guys from Demiurge, introduced the game to me as “the best game you’ll ever hate”, I was sceptical.  He was right, however, as I hated it straight away… and hated it enough to want to keep playing to prove to myself, and to the developers, that I wasn’t beaten yet.

I’d walked past the Sony booth several times that day, although “booth” is perhaps an inappropriate term as its enormity swallowed almost half of the West Hall between its main area and the various satellites.  There were queues to play the latest Move games, queues to play regular games and a huge crowd had gathered in one particular area, snaking around to create a combined huddle of around 100-150 people.  It was the queue to get a glimpse at the new Sony PS Vita and, from the looks on the faces of the line closest to the booth itself, most of whom where sat down with intolerance plastered all over their faces, they had been there for quite some time.  I asked one guy, who was next in line to get his hands on the Vita, how long he’d been queueing and he had no idea… only that it was the first place he’d headed when he got in that day.  A quick glance at my ‘phone showed that it was 3pm, so it would have been five hours between his joining the queue and reaching the front.  The dismay turned to excitement as he was called over to be led through the new Vita experience and I decided that I should try the same.

With only  a few hours left before the show floor closed for the evening, I decided to take a punt at the Sony desk and so, after strategically placing both my Microsoft and EA VIP passes (unconnected to the press conferences and, essentially, queue jumpers) either side of my E3 pass so that they were clearly visible, I asked the girl on the desk if it would be possible to get a quick hands on with the Vita without having to wait in the queue.  With more than an air of hesitancy, she explained that all the individual meetings had been booked out but I wasn’t about to give up so I added that I wasn’t planning on hogging it; I just wanted a few brief minutes to get to grips with the tech and wouldn’t have time the following day as it was a very tight schedule.

A quick shout to a chap to her left and the Sony VIP wristband was being added to my arsenal, at which point I was led past two colossal security guards to the upstairs VIP area, straight to one of the tech guys who then walked me through the Vita before passing it over.  Fifteen minutes later, as I gave thanks and started to make my way towards the steps back to the show floor, the same guy who led me upstairs asked if I wanted to see anything else while I was here.  “I’m afraid I don’t play the PS3 so wouldn’t really know how to comment on gameplay” I said and, as he gave me his assurance that anything I wanted to see he could make happen, it struck me… “Do you have the new 3D monitor with full screen split screen?” I asked, convinced that the answer was already ‘no’.  He smiled and led me towards two demo models tucked away in a quiet corner like a pair of naughty children.  More on the monitor and Vita later, as these will be covered in separate articles.

By the time the doors closed for the second day, I’d managed to see Anomaly: Warzone Earth, Dark Souls, Deponia, Inversion, King Arthur II: The Role-Playing Wargame, Little Deviants, Lucius, Men Of War: Vietnam, PS Vita, Sony 3D monitor, Risen 2: Dark Waters, Vindictus and XCOM.  It was more than I’d expected to see because, while eleven games and two bits of tech  may not seem like a lot on the face of it, getting from one hall to another, and even from one booth to another at certain times, can be a time swallower.  E3 is one of those events where you don’t want the day to end, but neither do you want it to continue as the fatigue of carrying so much heavy equipment, the constant queueing where no prior appointment has been made, and the insane amount of walking takes its toll.  Coupled with getting back to the apartment to record a podcast and then write up as much as possible, it’s a hell of a drain.

Day two was full of surprises though, with seven of the experiences being entirely unplanned, and learning that Lee had actually flashed an entire audience of Microsoft booth-goers during his stint on Star Wars Kinect made for yet another “Oh jeez Lee!” moment as we stuffed our faces with Chinese food back at the apartment whilst trying desperately to keep our eyes open and focus on the job at hand.  The days were getting longer, and the nights shorter, but there was still one more day to go… a day that I had internally dubbed “Skyrim Day”.

Last five articles by Mark R

• From Acorns to Fish
• Alone In The Dark
• Why Borderlands is Better Than Borderlands 2
• Falling Short
• The Division: A Guide to Surviving the Dark Zone Solo