Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. Mr. Light Blue has entered the building. Don't say we didn't warn you.

E3 is here, and it is loud. Which is a good thing. I don't know how this show relates to previous ones, but suffice it to say I'm suitably impressed with what I've seen so far. Some companies haven't made quite the explosive showing I would have hoped for, but some have done far better than I would have thought possible. The loot is good, the games are fun, the women are... well, let's answer that one below.

Onward.

I'm kind of the wrong person to ask this to - women are great, but as I said last year, the entire concept of booth babes strikes me as somewhat silly, and seeing it firsthand hasn't changed my opinion any. Even if the idea of a moderately attractive woman dressed up like Lara Croft seems interesting to you, the reality is still fairly tacky.

On the other hand, the conference is jam packed with media relations personnel in high heels and tight business attire, which is a good thing. Add to that the number of petite asian women wandering the halls as journalists and exhibitors, and the eye candy requirement gets filled quite well.

There are two different ways to answer those questions: what I did in particular, and what an unattached E3 attendee might do. Since what I did mainly revolves around boring stuff like registration and figuring out where specific booths were, I'll skip that one and move to the second part.

E3 is set up in three different halls of the convention center: West Hall (Sony and Nintendo, who have the largest booths by far, and a few others), South Hall (Square, Capcom, Konami, Microsoft, others) and Kentia Hall, which is where smaller distributors are located. Most people probably would stick to the first two halls, and would see different things depending on where they came in to the convention center, which is a large complex of buildings alongside LA's Staples Center. Either way, you'd see a hell of a lot of colored lights hanging from the ceiling when you first walked in, and you'd be enveloped by the roar of fifty different sound systems all doing their best to down the others out. Catching your attention is clearly a high priority, because nearly everyone has a huge banner or electronic display over their area, either showing their logo, character, or gameplay footage.

The display booths themselves are more along the lines of open areas, ranging from relatively small (the surface area of maybe two school classrooms) to huge (Nintendo's area was at least the size of a football field, if not two.) Most places have information desks, kiosks with playable games, and merchandise displays. And beyond that it's impossible to say more, because everybody's made themselves different from everyone else in an effort to stand out.

I think it's worth pointing out why the coverage is shaping up the way it is - it's not that the show is boring, but because we have to do something of a survey before we can really go in-depth on games. Some obvious tidbits can be thrown out immediately - the Nintendo games were big news, as were the details on Square's Disney RPG. But beyond that, the first day or so we're primarily going company by company, trying to figure out who has what and what games are worthy of more attention. A lot can change based on first hand experience: I had little to no interest in Devil May Cry prior to the show, but after seeing the producer at Sony's press conference and playing it a bit myself, I can safely say that it'll be around the top of a lot of people's year end lists for best game. Tomorrow we'll be talking more about specific games, and that's when you'll likely find specific details to make your ears perk up.

As for Square's Disney game...

It's not a joke, and it's honestly not as bad as it might look. The game isn't playable at this point, but the screenshots look interesting. One thing to remember is that this isn't just a generic RPG Square made with Disney characters; this is clearly a hard core Square RPG which happens to use Disney characters in a different context than you're used to seeing them in. The bosses in screenshots look menacing, the battle system looks fairly complex. And it's also important to remember that pretty much every major Square employee who wasn't working on the next FFs was working on this: we likely haven't seen an FFT2, etc., because this is where the talent went to. Which isn't as bad as it sounds, given how damned cool this may turn out to be.

Bottom line: some of the visual choices may seem somewhat... odd, but give this a chance.

It's important to stress the difference between the two launches. Xbox unquestionably has more games, and some of them are pretty good... but there's nothing truly great, as of yet. The Gamecube seems to be following Nintendo's previous mantra of quality over quantity, but when it comes to capturing the hearts and minds of the people here, that mantra puts them way, way ahead. The crowd was cheering loudly during their presentation, because so many familiar characters were returning in unusual ways. Luigi's Mansion is by far the least "kiddy" Mario game in history, and Pikmin is completely outside the whole kiddy/mature classification scheme. All of the Gamecube games looked much better than most of what's being shown on Xbox and PS2, and the entire presentation showed an attention to detail that was truly impressive. Gamecube's one flaw may be that their focus on fun games (not kiddy games, but games that are truly enjoyable tend to be for all ages) could chase away more mature ideas. I don't think Nintendo itself would have a problem with Silent Hill 2, but the game's unlikely to come out on a system that emphasizes the joy of gameplay over provocative narratives.

But the bottom line is that I really, really want to play Nintendo's games after seeing them, whereas I've played a good deal of Xbox's launch lineup, and little of it attracts me. I've already got a PS2, and I'll definitely be putting down money on a Gamecube as soon as I can, but the Xbox will be getting a miss for now... especially since no, I didn't see anything about MGX or Silent Hill 2 on Xbox.

Closing Comments:

Sorry this isn't longer, but send in more questions about show news and about the expo itself, and I'll do what I can to answer 'em. Until then.

Chris Jones, fried, but in a good way