E3 Expo
Hehe, it’s the time of the year again for gamers. All hail the E3! The (almost) Holy Grail of Gamers! The world’s third largest game exposition comes alive again at Los Angeles Convention Centre!
Ok, back to Earth. If you don’t know what the E3 is all about and the E3 2006 was held earlier this week, you’re probably :
1. Not a gamer (Good for you, for not being a computer zombie)
2. Been spending your recent life fanatically dotaing or engaging in some sort of online gaming (Well, they’re the Internet gaming zombie, so you know…)
3. Anime (Do I even need to explain further?)
4. Only bothered about games when your friends tell you about it or read about it in In.Tech (which incidentally should be publishing its own coverage of the event next week or something).
So for people under category 1, 2 and 3 you can probably stop reading and do something more ‘useful’. For people in category 4, read on if you want to. 
What’s the big deal? Apart from gaming, gaming and more gaming, not much actually. It’s one huge event to go through and see what the game developers have to offer, so I only stopped at Electronic Art’s booth. After all, Sierra’s Half Life 2 Aftermath: Episode 1 is already prepped for release on May 31, 2006 so they didn’t showcase the game there. The time for you to don the HEV suit and wield that crowbar is closer at hand than you think. 
Furthermore, there’s no hint of F.E.A.R. 2 coming out soon, so I didn’t bother checking for it. Activision did come up with Call of Duty 3, but it’s going to be released for console. I don’t have a console, so damm you Activision for ditching us loyal to the PC platform! What about Microsoft? They already came out with Age of Empires III and planning to do a sequel for it. That leaves EA, the Microsoft of games in North America.
What do they have to offer? In short, quite a lot (especially in terms of RTS and FPS). To the uninitiated, that stands for the Real Time Strategy and First Person Shooter genre respectively.
For starters, they set up a nice booth at the South Hall, practically smack in the middle of the entrance. As you can see in the photo, it’s a nice circular booth, complete with a 360 degree panoramic projector screen to play their game trailers (BF2142, MOH:Airborne, BFME, C&C3:TW and Spore) and subwoofers built into the floor for the audio effect. That’s not all folks. The smaller displays are also around, to showcase their console or for the in-game preview stuff. There’s also a theater for closed door viewings (one of them was that evolution game, Spore). BTW, the picture further up at the top is Activision’s booth.
So on with it then! What’s in store for us? Stay tuned for a little while longer, and I’ll whet your appetite. 
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