I had an amazing time at E3 this year. Electronic Arts had an exceptional showing with titles such as Command and Conquer 3, Battle for Middle Earth II on Xbox 360, and Spore. I spent a good portion of the show helping out at the EA booth.

I also spent several hours at Square-Enix and saw the future of Final Fantasy! For the first time, the original FFIII will be available in North America (it was a great game, great music, definitely buy it). We also saw two new titles based on the FF7 plotline: Dirge of Cerberus and Crisis Core. I imported Dirge of Cerberus a few months ago and found the plot very exciting, but the gameplay itself is third-person shooter (which I’m horrible at) rather than turn-based combat. The highlight of the demo was FFXIII for the PS3. The video showed one female lead character that uses a gun and magic. The setting was futuristic, and there was a quick demonstration of real-time combat. There will also be two additional titles based on the FFXIII world.. FFXIII Versus for PS3 and FFXIII Agito for mobile.

The final highlight of the convention was the Nintendo Wii demonstration, which featured a variety of titles ranging from Ping-Pong and Tennis to Zelda. The console is extremely innovative to hit a tennis ball, you swing the controller like a racket. If you swing late, the ball goes out wide. In Zelda, if you want to shoot and arrow, you pull back the controller and fire just like you’re drawing a real bow and arrow. All of the Wii titles featured this kind of very creative gameplay.

Those were the highlights for me, but there was so much to see that three days really wasn’t enough!