This years E3 was by far the most underwhelming show i have seen during my years following the industry. The big three didn't really seem to do anything in there press events to excite the people back home. We cant be at the show, and we don't get to play the games so for the average Joe public the off the wall left field announcements are usually the highlight of the show for us. FF13 coming to the xbox 360 doesn't qualify as exciting to anyone with a ps3, that's not a fanboy statement, its just i have a ps3, before this announcement i was in a positions to get FF13, and after the announcement I'm in the same place. I'm obviously very excited about animal crossing but the rest of Nintendo's stats based snore fest diluted alot of the pleasure i got from that announcement. MAG sounds cool, but as it stands its nothing more than a concept.

Gamespots live show was really the highlight of E3 for me. They had stage demos of all the games i really cared about. Here is a brief summery of my thoughts on each big game

-Xbox 360

• Gears of War 2 - I am seriously seriously stoked for gears 2. It looks like a serious improvement on the first game, and since the first game is my favorite game on the 360, i don't think i will be disappointed here
• Fable 2 - I never actually played much of fable 1 so this wasn't a title that interested me a whole lot, but after seeing the way they have implemented co-op they have certainly caught my attention.
• XBLA - The future is bright. Geo wars 2 and portal still alive will definitely be getting bought.
• Fall Update - If its not broke, don't fix it. I'm yet to be convinced.

-PS3

• InFamous - This is my game of show. I am a fool for anything super hero related, and crackdown was one of my favorite games last year, and based on the live demo they did on gamespot infamous is a massive improvement on that solid formula
• Little Big Planet - Continues to impress
• Resistance 2 - I was sold at 8 player co-op. I don't think this game will really do many new things with gameplay, but the boundary's of scale will be pushed in every field
• Killzone 2 - I'm kind of indifferent about this game. I appreciate it looks pretty, but I'm going to need to see a bit more before i add it to my purchase list.
• Home - Has just taken too long now. I find that if a game takes too long between announcement and release it can completely kill hype. This is a prime case of that.

- Wii

• Animal Crossing - I cant wait.
• Wii Sports resort - I was actually quite a big fan of wii sports, so i will probably pick this game up.
• Wii music - With all the current music games on the market nintendo thought it was a good idea to release this? The plot has been lost.

- Multi-Platform

• The Force Unleased - This looks like a real return to form for lucasarts. I'm a huge fan of JKA and star wars in general, so i hope to enjoy this game. Shame there is no multiplayer in the 360 and ps3 versions, it might have bumped this game down to a rent for me.
• Mirrors Edge - There's something about this game that just doesn't sit right with me. Looks kinda cool i guess.
• Far Cry 2 - Visually stunning. I was stunned when watching the live demo when i realised it was being played on a 360. I thought maybe a ps3, but the 360, wow. Impressive
• Fallout 3 - Looked like a very interesting game, but i think i really need to play the older games to get excited about it
• Resident Evil 5 - RE4 was one of my favorite games of all time. RE5 looks like a more action packed version of 4, but now with co-op. It should be an amazing game.
• Left 4 Dead - I will play most games if they have co-op in. I will also play most games developed by valve. So i will prolly play left 4 dead

So yea, Looks like its going to be an expensive year.

Last week i was lucky enough to win the Citizen Game podcast swag competition. It won me the Blizzard invitational exclusive wow pet, mini tyrael . If you listen to this weeks podcast you can hear my entry lol. Go Legomans!

You can click the images for a bigger version. I won some other stuff as well but I'm still waiting for it to arrive. Ill update this blog with some pics when it shows up.

and Finally, The Giant bomb beta started up this morning. If anyone wants to add me as a friend my user name RatherDashing. I don't plan on leaving gamespot for giant bomb or anything that drastic. In-fact if i cant find a nice quite and calm community on giant bomb my stay on the site might be drastically short.

Wow that was long. Thanks to anyone who read it all

-Dash out

Im back on animal crossing.

All this e3 animal crossing wii business got me just too excited and i ended up going back to my old town.

I took some pics of my favorite townsfolk along with my avatar, Dash.

This is Dash

Pudge

and Stiches

Animal Crossing is the closest i have ever come to a full blown addiction lol. I can play and enjoy wow, but i can always quit, but to me animal crossing is serious business lol. Its good to be back

Me and lant have been having a go at making some kind of "web" "comic". With penny arcade as the inspiration we picked a news topic from kotaku, i drew the comic, we discussed the script and when it came down to doing the colouring we both ended up with out own versions lol. So here they are.

Before you read them i should warn you one version does feature some "bad" language lol

I wont say whos is whos is whos. All feedback is welcome

I finished metal gear again. Me and charli have been staying with family this week, so my play time has been seriously limited. I only took my HDMI cables for my ps3 so i can only play metal gear on charli's dads HDtv when no one is using it. However despite this i have managed to finish the game a second time, again on the solid normal difficulty, only this time I did it without killing anyone, and without being seen once. For this i was rewarded not only the Bandanna (granting me unlimited ammo) but the stealth suit also, and the rank of octopus. It wasn't a massively difficult task to be honest. The first 4 acts where pretty straight forward. The only part that gave me issues was the start of act 5. It was a total nightmare doing the start of act 5 without being seen by anyone.

I took this opportunity to try out the in-game camera. I took these pics in act1 just after meeting up with the metal gear mk2 so they are both spoiler free, but nicely show off my stealth suit in action.

MGO is unplayable on my horrendous internet connection at the moment, but my year contract runs out on the 4th of july and i plan to upgrade to a 10meg connection. Once i have this connection i would like to try and put a clan together of some kind. Ive played a few games while im staying here on a reasonable connection and i just love it. The potential the game could have if played with a solid team of people all on head sets using SOP to its full potential. Could be an amazing game, if enough people decided to play it right. Ill blog more about this once im in a better possition to play it more and once ive got the mgs4 headset.

-Dash out

I finished it

In-case you don't know me, "it" is MGS4. I managed to get it a little early. My rooms-mates friend works at gamestation and he got us a copy each last night. I started playing at around 6.30pm and finished it just now at 12.49pm. I played all through the night armed with nothing but my DualShock 3 and a 6 pack of redbull.

I don't want to spoil this for ANYONE, so all i am going to say is as the massive metal gear solid fan that i am, this game was everything i hoped for and more. I cant stress enough how much i loved this game. It was a truly incredible media experience.

Now i guess ill play a little MGO, or maybe see if gamefaqs has any secrets for me to go look for.

-Dash out

P.S. Eagle was my rank when i finished, if anyone was looking at the blog title with confusion