Diaries of an E3 Virgin is a short series of articles about the E3 experience from a first timer on the floor. Here’s day zero and day one.
Day two began with a bright and early (for gamers) 10am appointment with Bethesda. Admittedly, I was probably up at about 6:30, as a hard floor is not conducive to sleeping on, even after a night of partying and drinking, but enough about the personal woes of a video game journalist. This is about E3.
Bethesda took us into a theater where we were treated to gameplay demos of The Evil Within presented by Shinji Mikami himself, Wolfenstein, and The Elder Scrolls Online. After watching live gameplay, I was allowed to personally play The Elder Scrolls Online and Wolfenstein (more on PSLS soon). In our 45 minute tour of The Elder Scrolls Online, Dan and I teamed up to help save a burning village and then moved on to a cove to take on an advanced dungeon as a party and ultimately decided on this title for one of our Best of E3 awards, but I’ll have more on those on day three.
After Bethesda, we were free for a number of hours and decided that it was time to try out the PlayStation 4. The Sony booth was massive, creating an ‘L’ shape that almost choked out the Xbox booth in the crook of the ‘L’. Everything looked so enticing and so good, but deciding to divide and conquer, I got in the line for Knack and Dan queued up for Blacklight: Retribution. It took some time of waiting in line, but finally the PS4 controller was in my hand.
I could hardly focus on the game that I was playing, because I was playing a PlayStation 4 before the majority of the world got to get their hands on it. Not only that, but the DualShock 4 feels incredible. It is truly the perfect evolution of the DualShock controller as Anthony can attest to with his preview. This experience was unreal to me, but knowing that I was here to preview games for those that couldn’t be here, I reeled myself in and focused on previewing Knack.
Once finished with the game, I wandered through to check out some other PS4 titles such as Contrast, trying to fully and completely get the next-gen experience for the short time that I could. Meeting up with Dan again we decided to check out some of the bigger PlayStation 4 titles like DriveClub, Killzone and inFamous. Unfortunately we were only able to effectively squeeze our way into DriveClub using our ‘press fast track’ powers, but it was nice to get further experience with the PS4 in general.
After unsuccessful attempts with Sony’s PR to circumvent the huge lines for Killzone and inFamous, we decided to leave well enough alone, but were approached by Ripstone Games on our way through the enormous Sony booth. We had a short conversation in which they remembered my Morning Wood episode about men’s room etiquette in response to the fun Men’s Room Mayhem and then we were treated to a demo of their new game Stick it to the Man, with the developer at my side walking me through the demo.
The enthusiasm in a developer’s eyes, voice and personality as they show off their creation is like nothing else. You can really feel the care and love that they have poured into these titles and it is incredible to get to interact with them in a one-on-one experience that few other players of the game get to have. You can play a demo of a game anywhere, but to have that demo be with the dev commentary live in your ear as you play adds another level of depth that is truly difficult to convey effectively to anyone that has not experienced it.
At 4pm I had an EA booth tour scheduled, but due to some extremely poor service towards the press and very few PlayStation games to preview, it was decided that I should forgo that event and take in additional miscellaneous titles from the show floor. I decided to make the trek back to the other hall – did I mention there is a TON of walking to be done at E3? As someone who typically is on his ass in an office all day, walking about 40 total miles across the four days was what one may consider to be Hell, but it was worth every step.
My last preview for the day was Beyond: Two Souls. A long wait in line and a brief gameplay demo later, the second day of E3 was over. We may not have been invited to any parties, but that didn’t mean that the hotel room was any less drunkenly crazy as we made yet another crazy, laughter filled, and very late close to our day and prepared to finish out our E3 experience.
Check out my account of the press conferences on Day Zero and the show floor on Day One and stay tuned to PlayStation LifeStyle for more ‘Diaries of an E3 Virgin’ to get a glimpse inside E3 from the eyes of a first timer.
