As an addendum to my previous post in which I detailed the road trip that brought us to E3, here's a recap in video form. You can check it out in slightly higher quality over here, or hit play below. Be warned: there are two or three rather mild vulgarities used in the video, a product of six hours of road trip fatigue. Our sincerest apologies.

Unfortunately, I wound up being too busy to record any more footage while actually at E3. This will be the last of my video blogs on this year's (not so) big show. But my wordy recaps on Tuesday through Friday are still to come, so stay tuned for those.

Monday July 14

The week of E3 2008 started as any normal one might. I woke up at the usual hour, took the usual express bus toward downtown San Francisco, and took the usual walk down Second Street to the office. But this time, I was in and out in a manner of minutes, stopping by merely to stock up on business cards. Just as every non-GameSpot employee was walking toward the office, I was walking away, heading toward the BART. It was there that I boarded a train that would send me under the San Francisco Bay, eventually spitting me out at the Ashby station in Berkeley. It was an oddly cool and overcast morning in the East Bay, an experience that toyed with my personal belief--as an SF resident--that it is always hot and sunny on the other side of the Bay.

Turns out I didn't have much time to think about weather, because James Yu quickly pulled up in a rented Ford Edge to pick up Bethany and myself. We then drove five or six blocks to the home of Chris Watters, where we picked him up and began our southerly drive into the belly of the beast that is Los Angeles. Lunchtime was spent at a mildly famous roadside establishment called Andersons's Pea Soup Something or Other (mild, apparently, in the sense that I can't recall the name in its entirety). It's a restaurant/souveneir emporeum famous for its neon green pea soup and slightly out of place Dutch windmill. James, Bethany and Chris all ordered the pea soup (complete with plastic medicine cups full of fixins) but I decided to be different and go with the Danish Meatloaf. Apparently what makes it Danish is the fact that it has about 4 times as much gravy as a normal meatloaf might. This was fine with me, except that I made the rather poor decision to follow it up with the vanilla milkshake that came with James' order (he's lactose intolerant). It was already an early lunch, having taken place at about 11:30 am, but a particularly disastrous one with this combination of gravy and milkshake. I wound up groaning in exagerrated agony for the next 100 miles of empty freeway.

As brown hills gave way to industrial farmland and out of place golf courses, we slowly made our way closer to Los Angeles. The landmarks along the way were numerous: the Safeway regional storage facility, the Ikea regional storage facility, the one Chevron in the world with a clean bathroom. Eventually the road brought us up the first hill we'd seen in 300 miles, notable for the view of downtown Los Angeles it feebly provided in the distance. LA tried its best to hide behind the thick layer of gray-brown haze, but we could make out the shapes and knew we were close. The only detour we faced between us and downtown LA was so I could earn dirty looks from Dennys employees by running to the bathroom and running out the door, but soon enough we made it. We got off the freeway, took a few poorly advised directional choices, but made it to the Holiday Inn where Chris and I checked in. We went to the fifth floor, threw our bags on the beds, and went back down where James' rented Ford Edge was waiting to take us to the Marriott about eight blocks down Figueroa. There we were greeted by a substantially nicer hotel, complete with over-anxious taxis looming like vultures on the valet circle.

Inside, up the escalator, was the ballroom GameSpot had rented out for the live show. The first step inside was surreal thanks to the bright green glow (not unlike an Anderson's pea soup) eminating from the virtual set across the room from the editorial bullpen. We went in and greeted our co-workers, introduced ourselves to the international crew we hadn't met yet (it was my first time meeting the UK guys) and talked the day's events. Apparently Microsoft had a rather dull press conference and Final Fantasy XIII is coming out on the 360. At any rate, it was soon time for dinner, a pasta medley cooked to order right there by a frazzled hotel chef who messed up people's orders but still made even the incorrect ones quite deliicious.

Monday was more or less a wash for us because of how much time we spent on the road (it's a good thing we were the only editorial crew who elected to drive). And even though this year's E3 wasn't as big as it's been in years past, it still proved to be a rather eventful week. Stay tuned.

When E3 is over, I'll be sure to have an exhaustive recap here in this blog (including a video montage of our road trip) but for now I'm a little busy with scrambling between appointments, searching for leftovers on the show floor and writing it all up back at the hotel. In the meantime, though, let me share with you a little E3 blog feature Guy Cocker and myself put together on the indie games tucked away in the corner of the show floor.

Guy contributed descriptions of a stylish co-op platformer called Ibb & Obb and a bizarre art project called levelHead where you hold a block in front of a camera and tilt it to make a small man walk up stairs and through doors. I then chipped with my own fawning over a strange little puzzle-platformer called The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom. It's basically a game where you record your movements to create looping clones of yourself to either help you reach a goal or act as enemies depending on the game mode. This one was my biggest surprise of the show and a game that I would love to see available on XBLA soon (they've already coded it in XNA, so that's their first choice).

They're all cool games, so you should check them out.

The GameSpot user video upload tool is down at the moment, so I had to host this one through other means. Enjoy this walk around the office from yesterday.

Edit: User videos are up and running! Check it out below, or hit the link above for the widescreen version.

I submit, without comment, the new Mirror's Edge 2D trailer and a youtube compilation of Esurance commercials. See if you can tell which is which:

I went into this weekend fully expecting to put the finishing touches on Metal Gear Solid 4, but all the hullabaloo about the latest PS3 firmware update got me a little distracted. One of the games at the center of trophies discussion has been Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, a game I absolutely adore and have been looking for a reason to revisit for quite some time. Well, that's exactly what's happened this weekend. By most accounts, it's a doubly foolish decision on my part considering A) the amazing MGS4 sits unfinished next to the TV and B) they haven't even released the trophy update for Uncharted yet!

But that's fine with me. The only part about the firmware I update that really interests me is the in-game XMB, a critical update to the system's usability. And though it effectively renders this t-shirt I got at GDC useless, I welcome the update with open arms. Trophies I'm a bit more ambivalent about. I think my sub-10,000 gamerscore after two years of owning an Xbox 360 proves artificial replayability isn't really my thing. But I understand many people are stoked about it, so it's nice to finally have that option on the PS3.

So yeah, Uncharted. An awesome game. All my gripes from before still stand, most notably the difficulty imbalance between platforming and gun combat and the fact that firefights last way too long, probably as a way of keeping an already short game from ending even more quickly. But those are really the only two gripes I have in an otherwise stunning game. I actually think it looks prettier than MGS4. Character models aren't as realistic, but there are so many incredible vistas to be gazed upon that more than make up for it. But beyond just the looks, this game is just plain fun. The quick pacing, likeable characters and Indiana Jones-like story all amount to a terrific experience.

If anyone is planning to buy a PS3 these days, I would instantly recommend MGS4 and Uncharted as the first games to buy (and Planet Earth and Ratatouille as the first Blu-Rays to buy). If you own a PS3 and you haven't played Uncharted yet, it's a travesty.

Almost as much of a travesty as me not being done with MGS4 yet.