Midnight Rant: E3 Has Only Just Begun

Game Rant

By Rory Young

Published Jun 16, 2010

Everyone has had a chance to explore the show floor, to look at the big screens and fancy booths, everyone knows what they want to try now, and best of all we don't have to worry about those pesky press briefings anymore.

While my compatriots were ranting and raving about the Nintendo press briefing, I was busy moseying through LA on my way to Sony's presser. After treating myself to a couple complimentary adult beverages, I sat down and started a conversation with friendly looking gentleman.

Brien was his name, and he had worked in advertising before he enrolled in the business program at UCLA. Needless to say, Brien had some great thoughts on gaming and E3 in general. We talked about our expectations, what we'd thought of the conferences up to this point, and what we wanted to see on the show floor.

It wasn't until I said goodbye to Brien, after we'd gone through everything leading up that point of E3, that I realized that E3 hadn't even started yet. The Game Rant crew and myself were eyeballs deep in E3 quicksand, but we hadn't even played a game yet. Still, there we were having a somewhat intellectual conversations, acting like we had a grasp on everything E3 had to offer. We were so wrong.

On the convention floor I played maybe 5 or 6 different games, and the remarkable thing was that I enjoyed the ones I hadn't been looking forward to more than my high expectation games. Rock Band 3 blew me away with 30 seconds of real guitar gameplay, and I was initially more interested in Harmonix's dancing game!

Even now, with one out of three days of E3 complete, I don't feel like E3 has really begun. There may be endless amounts of release dates, trailers, press releases and the like, but until folk can get their hands on a game you don't know anything about it. Well, except maybe Portal 2... that game is going to be awesome. Writing these previews up is such a great responsibility, because our impressions may be the only honest opinions you'll find on a game.

It's exhausting, really, spending the majority of your time reading about games rather getting to play them. Which is why E3 is only just beginning. Everyone has had a chance to explore the show floor, to look at the big screens and fancy booths, everyone knows what they want to try now, and best of all we don't have to worry about those pesky press briefings anymore.

Now we get to play the games, now we get to do what we came here for. Now the real fun begins.