Thursday, May 15th

Today was a much more relaxed affair. With all of my meetings taken care of, all I needed to do was to go out on the floor to play as many games as I could to write impressions. This sounds easy, but it's not really. Fun, definitely. Just not easy. Most of the big name games had lines of people waiting to play them, and, since we were bound to have a lot of staffers covering them already, I decided to play some of the less hyped games.

I started off the day by uploading everything that I had written on Wednesday night, and then I hit the floor. My routine for the rest of the day basically involved walking the halls, finding a game that looked interesting, and then playing it for about half an hour. Repeat as necessary, or until spine feels crushed. Since I was carrying around my notebook, camera, and various other swag with me at all times, I started getting the worst back pains today. It actually worked out for the better though, since I would then play games for a couple hours, then rest and write up my impressions at the same time.

Besides RPGs, I also tried to play as many games in other genres that I've been salivating to play. Some of my favorites included:

Ape Escape 2:I've been waiting ages to play this one, and it was fantastic. The graphics are great, and the gameplay is just as fun as the previous one was. The monkeys are adorable, too.
GiFTPia: Even though I couldn't progress very far in this one, I thought that it was rather enjoyable. I did start getting a little infuriated at some of the puzzles, but I'll give it another go tomorrow.
Soul Calibur 2: I only played the GameCube version, and even though the pad is a piece of crap for fighting games, I was still convinced that there is no way that I'll be able to survivce the year without picking up a copy. Probably for the PlayStation 2, which has the best controller of all time, as far as I'm concerned. But then I can't play with Link. Curses!

Most of the rest of the day was spent cruising the booths. I spent a lot of time at Nintendo, which once again had the largest booth of the show. Of course, with any elaborate booth come the booth babes, and they were plentiful this year. While I'm not going to tell you that I don't like checking them out, the pervasive sense of female objectification at a show dominated by males is something that I find rather sickening. I can only imagine what the perception of most of the young women is of gamers after an event like E3.

Other stops on Thursday included some more time at Natsume, to check out the Harvest Moon games some more, and Konami's booth. They had a really nice Castlevania section setup, with kiosks running Lament of Innocense and Aria of Sorrow in a large castle display with posters of Ayami Kokima artwork. They were also showing the trailer for the recently announced Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. The game seems to be a Rambo wannabe, and I can't say that the trailer impressed me too much. While I'll gladly admit that I loved the previous two games, this one just doesn't grab me yet. Of course, I would probably feel a bit different if there had been a build on the floor that I could have actually played. And another thing: Snake Eater!? What the hell is up with that name? I can think of infinitely better names for the game than that.

Everyone was pretty much pooped by the end of Thursday, so some of us headed out for a bite at Denny's. There's only so much pizza you can have in one week, and I reached that limit on the previous day. When we got home, there was more writing, talking and video game playing. Everyone was also showing off all the swag that they scored on the day. Nintendo was giving out these cool Wario shirts that said, "I got more swag than you!" on the front. They were being handed out to people with more than five pounds of swag. And let me tell you, that's a lot of swag. I never really got into that, since I'm not much of a packrat. I hate having crap lying around, and most of the stuff, while still pretty cool, is definitely just crap. Some people on staff were going overboard.