Just came back from my trip over there. I know I missed all kinds of stuff but it is very tiring fighting through the crowds. I may go back later and try catch some more on my list.
Seems a pretty good year this time. I found a lot more stuff I am looking forward to than I did last year. It should not be a surprise to anyone that first person shooters and third person RPG games are the lion's share of the stuff there, and frankly I just walked by most of them. I saw very little truly original, and that should not come as a shock to anyone either. The highlights for me were:
Thief III, which just went gold(!!!) On the top of my list for games that I have been looking forward to. I had heard bad bad rumors coming from ION Storm; people leaving unexpectedly on less than good terms, including the lead programmer, but from what I saw it looks solid.
Rome: Total War, which looked like one of the more interesting and just plain huge strategy game I have seen in a long time. The amount of units involved in battles is staggering, hopefully you can control them adequately. Looked nice though.
King Arthur: Out of all the 3rd person RPGs there, and there were more than I can possibly count, this one made me stand up and take notice because of the extremely realistic graphics. Of course, I have no clue about the gameplay which of course is the thing that matters most, but still.
Heroes of the Pacific: A flight sim/flight arcade game. In a move I thought quite brilliant, this game can be a realistic flight sim or a more fly by the seat arcade game depending on the settings. It looks like a truly beautiful game and a hell of a lot of fun to play.
And then I saw a lot of other sequels of games I like; Call Of Duty has an expansion and a sequel coming, a Farcry expansion game, and some more games in the Lord Of The Rings world that looked pretty cool. There are some games I just couldn't seem to find (Knight Of The Old Republic II and the rest of Lucas Arts, Halo 2, and Sid Meier's Pirates) and a whole host of games that the bastards just were not showing, either at all or unless you waited in some stupid fuc*ing line, like Spiderman 2, Halflife 2, and Doom 3.
I would have had some pictures, but the fricking camera I had borrowed broke or something. So sorry, no booth babe goodness for you all.
All in all I was quite pleased. I think my year is going to be kind of busy.