Well, I guess a wrap-up of this show is in order. Now that the dust is slowly settling and the local game guys who flew in for the show are already back at their jobs/offices, it's a good time to recap how E3 went this year.

First of all, what is E3? The media summit of this year was supposed to be just that - a MEDIA summit. So how was it for the media?

Well to begin with, the show was nonexistent. Yes, you heard me right, E3 as such didn't exist. Although a modest looking space at Barker Hanger was set aside for, you know, an actual show floor (at the Santa Monica airfield, way in the fuck away from the main "event" at hotels spread across the Ocean Avenue), it was a complete side-event, or a nonevent really. Anyone who was serious about covering the show was going to have to hit one of the "show" hotels: Loews, Fairmont, Shutters, Viceroy, Casa Del Mar and more, and taking a shuttle bus to the freaking Hanger was simply out of the question.

So, the show as such did not exist. E3 this year was all about a bunch of meeting rooms set up in hotels. You'd either walk, or, I don't know, drive (if you had a car) from one place to the next, and if you were understaffed, or just not quick enough on your feet, you'd simply miss a bunch of appointments or make a decision to skip the less important ones - we're talking heavy prioritization here. Bottom line, for what was its main purpose - to help media write and cover the new games that are coming out - the E3 made it anything but seamless and easy for the media. On the other hand, IF you could find the time (and had the physical strength), you really had more time to spend with the big names in the industry and really get to assess and understand the games they are working on.

I hope that in the end, the organizers learn from the mistakes they made this year, and we have an actual working summit in 2008.

As for the games themselves, there were no BIG surprise announcements and the timing for this event (July) is a little off, but there were some nice surprises for me and, of course, I got to see a lot of quality games in the making.

So here's how ActionTrip awards this year's crop of E3 titles: