 Well,
another E3 has come and gone and HeavenGames was there in force to see it all. The
best description of E3 that I've heard is "total sensory overload". E3 is
a feast for the eyes and ears and is a wonderland for anyone who loves games. While
the sights and sounds certainly are fantastic, what we really valued most was the chance
to meet and talk to some of the best game designers, artists, programmers and producers in
the industry. Angel Thunder, Draco, Farmgirl and SpineMan were able to attend E3
this year and we got a chance to meet a lot of great people. The great part about
the show this year is that most everyone we talked with knew about HeavenGames and were
happy to finally meet us. That was a big change for me since the last time I was at
E3 in 1999, we only had two sites and hardly anyone knew who we were. I really
enjoyed meeting so many people in the gaming industry. Just a few of the people we
met and talked to were Bruce Shelley, Tony Goodman, Sandy Petersen, Mike McCart, Kevin
"The Sheriff" Holme, Greg Street, Ian Fischer and more from Ensemble Studios,
Brian Reynolds, Tim Train, Danan Davis, Paul Stephanouk, Kristine Ishii and more from Big
Huge Games, Rick Mehler and Steve Cherrier from Microsoft, Eric Ouellette and Simon
Bradbury from Firefly Studios, Alex Rodberg from Sierra Studios, Oleg Yavorsky from GSC
and Franz Felsl from PopTop Software. Universally, everyone was really great to us
and I can't thank everyone enough for spending time with us at the show.
 As for
the games themselves, there were a massive number of high quality games on display but
really none that stood head and shoulders above the crowd. It might seem predictable
but honestly, my favorite games of the show were Age of Mythology and Rise of Nations.
Age of Mythology is simply stunning and the gameplay improvements will have a
dramatic impact on the entire real time strategy genre. The Mythological units and
various God powers are awesome to behold. Look for lots of detailed AoM E3 information
on Age of Mythology Heaven.
To be honest, I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Rise of Nations but I was
very impressed with what I saw. Although at first glance, it looks like an Age of
Empires clone, there really are a lot of gameplay improvements and interesting twists that
make Rise of Nations a very unique game. Draco and Thunder got the chance to play in
a mini Rise of Nations tournament at E3 so we have lots of Rise of Nations information to
comb through. Be sure to check out our Rise of
Nations Preview for lots more detailed information on this exciting game.
 The big show highlight for me was the Rise
of Nations tournament on Friday that our very own Angel Thunder was able to win! The
prize for winning was the chance to play Brian Reynolds at his own game. All during
the show we had been hearing how good of a player Brian was and obviously since he knew
the game inside and out, Brian was the heavy favorite. In fact, on the previous day,
Brian had a good match with the winner of Thursday's tournament but won pretty easily.
When Thunder got his chance, he didn't let it slip by. The game was very
close and the advantage moved back and forth many times during the game but eventually
Thunder got the upper hand and he didn't ever let Brian get back in the game. As you
can see in the pictures, there was actually a
very big crowd watching the game and Tim Train was being very nice as an announcer by
always saying "Thunder from HeavenGames" as he called the game on a microphone.
Awesome stuff and the best part was Brian Reynolds being so kewl about getting
beaten. I got a chance to talk to Brian for about 15 minutes and you'll never find a
nicer guy in the gaming industry.
 That
was the big highlight for all of us at Heaven but obviously there were many other
highlights as well. I got Tony Hawk's autograph on Friday which was pretty awesome.
On Thursday night, all the HG Angels along with ex-Angel Vidguy (Steve Cherrier)
and three guys from Microsoft went out for a Cajun dinner where Draco barely escaped with
his tongue intact after adding pepper to an already quite spicy smoked chicken and taking
a nice big bite. Him screaming "Oh my god!" and reaching for any water he
could find was a pretty hilarious moment. :)
All in all, E3 was an awesome experience for
all of us and we'd like to thank Microsoft, Ensemble Studios and Take 2 Interactive for
providing guest passes so we could attend and report on the show. Please check out
the links on the right side of this page and enjoy the 12 pages and 220+ photos from the
show. Along with the photos, you'll get my personal impressions of the various games
we saw. In the coming days, look for a report from Angel Draco on the games that he
checked out and look for a comprehensive review of Rise of Nations. We are also
going through all the media kits and flyers we got along with additional photos and will
post any juicy bits of information on this page as we continue to process the massive
amount of information we received.
by Angel
SpineMan |
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HG E3
Links Age of
Mythology
Info
Age of
Mythology
Photos
Age of
Mythology
Images
Rise of Nations
Preview
Rise of Nations
Photos pg1
Rise of Nations
Photos pg2
American
Conquest
Images
Emperor
Images
Empire Earth
Expansion
Images
E3 Photos pg1
E3 Photos pg2
E3 Photos pg3
E3 Photos pg4
E3 Photos pg5
E3 Photos pg6
E3 Photos pg7
E3 Photos pg8
Booth Babes
Photos |
