Eric Layman

The opening cinematic (if you can even call it that it today’s age of CG orgasmia) begins with Dr. Wiley pleading I’m so sorry, please forgive me.  Thus the trap is set, because Mega Man 9 was the hardest game I played on the show floor.  While the original six titles were by no means a cake walk, the two levels on display here were downright brutal.  Note that this is not a complaint; in today’s ...[Read More]

I hated playing anything Resident Evil on my PS1. Oh sure, I was a dedicated fan of the narrative and the emerging survival horror genre, but the actual gameplay wasn’t as accessible to my needs. Though I played all the way through RE2 (twice), I allowed my neighbor Kyle to trudge through the original, RE3, and Code Veronica while I sat on the sidelines and took in the narrative. And, like most of...[Read More]

This probably sounds hyperbolic, but stepping into Capcom’s Street Fighter IV room was like stepping into some sort of weird alternate reality of E3.  The clingy PR reps and clueless mainstream media was nowhere to be found.  In their place was the shadow of days past, a true American arcade scene.  Standard rules applied, winner keeps his seat while the loser has to get off the stick.  The only d...[Read More]

The new Ratchet expansion seemed as elusive as Bigfoot.  After its debut at the media briefing I fully expected it to be somewhere on the show floor.  Strangely, however, it seemed to be entirely absent.  Sony’s kiosks didn’t seem to be featuring the title, and it wasn’t until the last day that I saw it occupying the screen that used to house PixelJunk Eden.  Even then I had to wait behind an exhi...[Read More]

For months I wondered if I’d love to play the game I adored to watch.  That answer is yes, an ever so joyous and resounding yes.  PixelJunk Eden comes hot on the heels of Q Games other PixelJunk titles, the flawed but enjoyable PixelJunk Racers, and the niche but heavily appreciated PixelJunk Monsters.  As anyone who watches it will usually confess, Eden is almost completely different from anythin...[Read More]

Cue another success in the Out of Nowhere department.  I saw Flower during the media briefing and was mildly intrigued, but had easily forgotten it two days later when we arrived for our meeting with Sony.  Resistance 2 was already happening, Little Big Planet was also full of players, Killzone 2 had a running line of media…hell, everything seemed to have a queue (protip: don’t schedule appointmen...[Read More]

Have you ever been so immersed in a game that you actually get motion sickness and have to leave the room?  Me neither, but that happened to two other people as I sat in on four presentations of Mirror’s Edge.  That reality alone is enough reason to suspect Mirror’s Edge might be a game far, far different from anything else on the show floor.  I had read Play’s cover story and seen the trailer, bu...[Read More]

I had a clear mission on Thursday morning. Little Big Planet, Sony’s darling crown jewel of their PSN lineup, had a packed kiosk on the show floor for the duration of E3.  Even though I had an official appointment with Sony later in the day, I still wanted to get my hands on it as soon as possible.  This lead to me, quite embarrassingly, camping the show floor well before it was set to open for th...[Read More]

Going into E3, there were few titles other than Mirror’s Edge that I absolutely had to get my hands on. This proved to be difficult; however, as it was not on the show floor and we had no suite appointment with EA.  Still, a little determination and a lot of begging eventually got me into EA’s room and right in front of Mirror’s Edge…and six other people who actually had ap...[Read More]