Ok, I won't say much since there's probably hundreds of sites saying their own stuff.
When I get back (which might not be until next...friday), I'll start capturing the videos (I'll log them ahead of time), compressing them, and hopefully upping them to the hotline server(s) for you guys to see. Yeah, they're just more vids of E3, but I don't think any other sites will have high quality, high(er) res, video (though you're welcome to try IGN's crappy 320x240 Quicktime clips). So until another week or so, I'll only be able to try and say what I can.

Thursday - May 17, 2001

Could've been better
Can we say, bad start? Ouch, first I end up sleeping just a biiit late (as in, I woke up when I had planned on being there). Then, okay, the first bus ride was no problem. Hm...where's the next bus. I wait. And wait. And...well, you know, wait. Finally, after what was most likely 45 minutes to an hour, I just said, "Screw this", hopped on another bus (going in a somewhat different direction), and made a few transfers in order to get to the LACC. Mental note: Knowing New York's transportation system will get you nowhere in LA.
LACC
Ok, I get in the convention center, and I'm already lost. Mental note #2: Knowing every convention center in NYC will get you nowhere in LA. Anyways, I make my way to media registration. Huh? What's that? Oh, I need to see another person about this. Ugh, fine. So, this second person does what the first should've done, cleared everything and given me my media pass. Good, ok, got my pass, what's next. Oh, the media press room, nice place to pick up all those press releases and related "stuff" that Bo wants. Oh, crap, looks like they're out of practically everything (except for Microsoft. They must've had hundreds of those things). Oh well, onto the show!
Part I
Wow, this is pretty damn big (and that's only one part). I didn't spend much time in this area, but I'll probably return there tomorrow. But, in the back, near this freaky fountain thing (hard to explain), was the Nintendo/Game Cube area. Hm, sounds like a good idea, I think I'll check it out.
Cool! Right inside are demos for Luigi's Mansion, Super Smash Bros. 2, as well as a few other Game Cube titles. My first stop was Luigi's Mansion, a title that I had been fairly interested in (Luigi was always better than Mario). What do I think? Frankly, they've got a long way to go to impress me (*dodges misc. junk thrown in my direction*). The graphics were only half decent (kinda looked almost 2.5d, not quite 3d, not quite 2d). The gameplay, from what I saw in the 10-15 minutes around the various consoles, was limited to Luigi running around with his vaccuum, "cleaning" any ghosts or coins in his way. Sounds like fun.
Smash Bros 2 looked pretty damn good though. The characters are now fully 3d, and the environments looked quite nice. Sure, the gameplay seems the exact same, but you can't mess with success (until around the 3rd or 4th sequel ). Got some vids of this right from the "private" big screen too, so it'll be fairly decent looking when you see it.
The GC's on display looked fairly nice, although one of them made me turn my head. It looked like it had a hardshell case (like a hardshell camera case or something), and apparently its a 3rd party Game Cube/DVD combo or something (I wonder if Nintendo would officially support dvd playback if this one outsells their own). Although a lot of people have dvd players already (I think I've got, what, seven?), I still hear people in stores talking about getting a PS2 because its a "dvd player".
I passed by Star Fox Adventures fairly quickly, and although it doesn't really interest me, I'll check it out at a later date.
Roge Squadron II was jammed in the back of the area, with only like 2 booths playable (as opposed to a good 15 or so for Luigi). Looked decent, nothing GREAT, but nothing too bad for a game in development. At least most of it was smooth. I'll be buying this one regardless, even though I hated Rogue Squadron (look, I can see 20 feet before the N64 starts kicking in the fog...!).
Ok, well like I said, I didn't spend much time here, so there's not much to tell.
Part II
Forget what hall it was in, and forget what games it had. It was that sad. I wasn't the only one walking in, walking around for a few seconds, and walking right out. End of part II
Intermission
Damn, it is HOT here. Coming from, and living in, northern New York most of my life, I'm not exactly used to a sunny day in LA. For me, a hot day is 85-ish (although, it has reached up to 108 in my area, but 95+ days are rare). Heh, now that I think about it, this is probably the only E3 article that you'll read where someone is bitching about the weather. End of intermission.
Part II
Okay, here I finally see some things worthwhile.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 (I think, forgot the actual title *dodges more crap*) looked OKAY, but nothing more. The environments look quite a bit better, but Tony does NOT. Plus, his animations don't look like they've been worked on at all. So, if you don't mind the same jerky animations, this should probably please some of you.
Dragon Warrior VII looked fairly decent, although I'm not one who should comment on the series, since I've played Dragon Warrior, and ONLY Dragon Warrior. Next!
Ooh, Konami's area. Look, on the big screen, its Solid Snake. What's this? Metal Gear Solid Submerges? What?!?! Silent Hill?! Damn, it turns out that I had to stand there, holding my FREAKING HEAVY camera for about 25 minutes before they ran the new MGS2 trailer again (which included two showings of a 3d Frogger game, and about a million "Yu-Gi-Oh!" ads). Ah...Metal Gear Solid 2...seems to be a big crowd pleaser here, although I'm far from its biggest fan (for those of you who remember my "Why does everyone like MGS thread on the old CHV, you can begin throwing more junk at me. ). Metal Gear (on the NES) was cool, and I liked it a lot. Those feelings didn't translate as well to MGS (for me at least)...
So the trailer starts up, and I honestly can't say the same things every other gaming site said, so I'll keep it short. It starts up and says that "Solid Snake did die. But he is also here." Hm...either they think he died, or, as they soon says, there are two of them. Then it goes to a militia group, or the actually US Military, or possibly both (in a sense), since they don't say. He goes on about Shadow Moses, Metal Gear REX, on to a short pep talk. It then shows a bunch of videos from the first demo/trailer, and at the end of that, the milita says that "The terrorists call themselves Sons of Liberty. Their leader is Solid Snake."
Next, we see "Fortune", a dark skinned female with a BIG ASS electrical gun. Snake thinks he can hide behind some metal crates, and *PFHZZAAATTTCCCHHHH!!!!*, the crate is destroyed. Better find a new plan... Then it goes to a scene that looks a lot like the one from MGS, dead soldiers all over the place, their blood on the walls and floor. Could this be another Ninja with a stealth suit? Nope, its some kind of Vampire character, who looks a little too happy to slit a soldier's throat.
Then we go to some jets over by the George Washington Bridge (the same one Snake jumped from in the demo, which suggests that he gets OFF the ship at some point, and is somewhere in NY [even if its just on the bridge]) launching missiles at Snake (who can, of course, dodge anything). Cue Snake and his cheesy cinematic forshadowing... "I won't die. There are too many things I need to do." Riiiight....
Our good old friend Revolver Ocelot is confronted by the troops seen earlier, and before you know it, Ocelot has their leader in his hands. Once again, in a cheesy Hollywood style script, the leader asks if he's there to steal Metal Gear RAY. And, of course, Ocelot says that he's not here to steal it. He's taking it back. Riiiiight...
Snake screams at Ocelot, and Ocelot's hand starts going in to some sort of seizure. He rips his glove off, revealing a bar code on the back of his hand (*Crcshh* Can we get a price check on six-shooter-weilding psychos that call themselves Revolver?). "Ocelot" then calls Solid "brother", and once again, the cheese drips from the screen as Snake asks "Liquid?" I have no clue if "Ocelot" is really supposed to be Liquid, or if something else is up, but I think Solid jumped to conclusions (or at least a few pages in the script ) by immediately saying "Liquid?". The hand spasm starts up again, and Metal Gear RAY starts up. Fade to the American flag, and the voice-over "George Sears was how the public knew him, the 43rd president of the United States. But his real name was Solidus--neither Solid nor Liquid, but a well-balanced masterpiece." (Warning: Beware of the cheese that is now dripping from the screen in record quantities). Then we see "MGS2 - Submerges", which is most-likely referrencing to the media-blackout that's about to take place after E3, regarding anything MGS2 (which will make it far more anticipated than if they kept releasing shots and videos like they have been).
We then see Snake being overpowered by rusing water (read: Metal Gear RAY is such a bastard, that his own actions have caused the ship to sink). Some decent fx with the water on the "lens" though. Then we hear "This is my son. I taught him everything". Big Boss? Anyways, no time to think because we see The Ninja again (or, if not THE Ninja, A Ninja), complete with a stealth suit. Snake asks "Who are you?", and (warning: cheese ahead) the scrambled voice of the Ninja says "I am like you. I have no name.". And...that's about it for MGS2 until the end of the year.
Konami then proceeds to show off some cheap SSX and Tony Hawk imitations, and I'm out like a fat kid in dodge ball.
However, maybe 200 yards away, is a half pipe, with what LOOKS to be Tony Hawk. Unfortunately, with a HUGE crowd amassed, covering the entire area, along with the speaker saying "This is the last round!", I couldn't tell. Oh well, no biggie.

Part III
Ah, its that light green glowing X. And with that, I walk over to the X-Box area. Luckily for Microsoft, I don't stick by my first impressions. I watched a 4-vs-4 match of Halo (presumably over whatever Ethernet card the machine has), and not only can I say the graphics sucked, but the frame rate as well (Ooh look! Its incredibly aliased characters running at 10fps! Wow!).
Then, the X-Box Tony Hawk game (what was it called, 3X?) failed to even interest me, with only decent graphical updates, and the same damn animations. Plus the kid playing sucked HARD, so that could be a factor. It did look decent on a 16x9 flat panel screen though.
Ooh, in the distance I see "Super Street Fighter II: Turbo", on a screen, running on the Game Boy Advance (am I the only one that thinks Nintendo didn't translate that well by not calling it a Game Boy Adcance d?). Not too bad looking, and it might be something I'll pick up since Street Fighter II (not the Turbo version) was the last fighting game I had played for a LONG time before picking up Tekken Tag and DOA2 on the PS2.
The sequel to Jet Grind/Set Radio looked pretty decent on the X-Box, as well as a few other titles. There was also a good list of X-Box game boxes beind displayed, suggesting that these could/would/should/are launch titles. These ranged from Halo, to Obi-Wan, to Kengo, even to a game based on the movie Shrek.

Part IV
I'll go back to MS tomorrow, but for now, I venture off to somewhere else. There was a promo over by Universal for a Mummy Returns game. Somehow, I predict this one will be at least as bad as the first Mummy game. And the Jurassic Park: Survival game they showed right after failed to interest me at all, and even the movie succeded in that area.
Half Life running on the PS2 looked pretty decent, although the frame rate dropped like a brick in water during some scenes. But since no scientists, marines, or even aliens were present while I watched, I can't say anything about how the character models work. And since when did Gordon have an assault rifle?
There was a pretty good CGI intro for "Medal of Honor: Allied Assault", (over)using the same "storming the beach" look as everyone has done since Saving Private Ryan came out. Oh well, its a game with you killing Nazis. Since when has that formula gone wrong? (Pushes copy of Mortyr under the desk...).
The next Bond game on the PS2 looked fairly decent too, although each person playing SUCKED (Oh look, its a red laser beam coming from a high window down onto the street below. I wonder what happens when I walk into it. *BAM*). Hope its as good as Goldeneye was, and not as bad as Tomorrow Never Dies was...
EA's promos for their next NHL and Triple Play games looked pretty damn good, although the NFL, NBA, and FIFA ones left a little disappointed. Ah well, who needs football when you have a REAL sport, ice hockey.
Then came SSX:Tricks (or something like that), showing what's-her-name (in the pink top) doign some INSANE tricks that looked very cool. I'll be picking this one up.
EA's Harry Potter game failed to interest me, but then again, I havn't read any of the books, and maybe that's why. I'll have to look into this later.
Then there was a game that was called (I THINK, not sure until I review the tapes) Simpsons: Road Rage. It was basically Crazy Taxi in Springfield, with those pseudo 2d cartoon graphics (although each character is in 3d. Go figure).
There was an Aliens game nearby too, and aside from the LONG (we're talking a minute +) load times, it looked like something Aliens vs. Predator SHOULD have been. The aliens no longer run at 4x the speed of light, and you now have some marines to go along with you. Looks interesting.
Midway's NHL Hitz 2002 looked very cool, especially since its basically NFL Blitz, but with hockey. This one will be added to my library upon its release.

Part V
Ah...Final Fantasy... Loved by everyone in the world except for Bo...
Anyways, I was filming the Final Fantasy X demos for about 5 seconds before Square's "security" promptly asked for me to NOT film the displayes. I flash my media badge, and their heads still shake no. Ugh. So I go over to the Square booth, ask the rep behind the desk if I can film, and voila, I'm back where I started.
There wasn't anything really new with the FFX demo, although I did get entire shots of people going through each of the two demos.
I also got a few shots of FFIV and Chrono Trigger too, but I might revisit them again later.
What's this? A "sneak peak" of certain scenes from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within?!?! TOo bad the line closes, and I'll have to wait until late tomorrow before it opens again. And guys, they will NOT let me film ANYTHING in there, so don't ask for some footage (plus that lets be say "Nah nah, nahnah, nah!" and stick my tounge out like this: ).

So I guess that's it for day one in a nutshell. I'm fairly tired (been up a LOT lately, and I'm still on NY time), so I'll only be around for a little longer.
Side note: The Papa John's near Kai's place is going to hear plenty from me tomorrow. Ordering a PEPERONI pizza and get a saussage one, kinda makes me a bit pissed.
Anyways, if you're still reading this, congrats for listening to my convoluted (at best) ramblings. Until tomorrow, this was Jim (a.k.a. Ed [one of these days I'll explain that]) signing off from E3 2001.
Goodbye.