As you probably know, E3 was last week, and as you would expect, most of my blogging that week was E3 related. I finished two games that week, but I never got around to talking about them because my E3 blogs were already pushing 15-20 paragraphs, and I didn't want to make them any longer. So I'll talk about those two games here instead.

The first game I finished was Sly 2: Band of Thieves. I had originally started this game back around 2006, stopped playing it for whatever reason, and somehow bought and completed the other two Sly games in the meantime. I promised myself this summer that I'd finally get rid of some of the games on my monstrous backlog (actually, I originally said I'd get most of them, but I quickly realized that is not going to happen), and Sly 2 was one of them, so I had been playing it for the past week or so.Anyway, I finally beat it. I'm not really sure what caused me to stop playing it back then, because it really is a great game. The game is very nice to look at, even by today's standards, due to its colorful and original cel-shaded look. The gameplay is tons of fun as well, and the objectives are extremely varied, so it's almost impossible to get bored of. There are some mission types that repeat themselves a few times, such as Sly's recon missions at the beginning of each episode and Bentley's hacking minigame, but it does a wonderful job of keeping things fresh, unlike some games that involve running around on rooftops (I'm looking at you, Assassin's Creed!).

Sly 2's plot is really well constructed. There are some pretty big twists in the game that help keep you interested in the story, including a pretty big one at the end (but of course I was stupid and played Sly 3 before finishing this game, so I already knew about it). When it's revealed exactly how each Klaww Gang member fits into the grand scheme of things during the final episode, the story really comes together, and that's when it claimed the title of my favorite Sly Cooper game, just barely edging out Sly 3 for the crown.

I also beat The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. I already gave my impressions on the game a while back, and my opinion on the game hasn't really changed since then. The game was pretty damn great. The only thing I really didn't like about it was the repeated trips to the Temple of the Ocean King. It was really annoying having to go through the same exact floors and solve the same exact puzzles over and over again. To be fair, the items you gain throughout the game do open up new shortcuts, and about halfway through the game, you even get a warp point to the sixth floor of the temple, so it's not as bad as it could have been, but still. Never make me visit the same exact dungeon six times in a row again, Nintendo!

In other news, I bought The Who Track Pack on Rock Band last Wednesday, and while playing through one of the songs on drums my pedal snapped in half. I was a little pissed because I had just spent $20 on those tracks and now my only option was to sing to them (I'm garbage with the guitar). I was also a little worried that support would say I "abused" the pedal and refuse to replace it, but when I called them up yesterday I had no problems ordering a replacement. I went with the express replacement option, which means that they will send me another pedal immediately, and ship the old pedal back in the same box I got the new pedal in. However, choosing this option means they place a $125 hold on your credit card, which is am absurdly high amount for a pedal. You can buy an entire Rock Band drum set for less than 2/3 of that price. The hold amount should be no more than the part that is being replaced costs. I really hope that pedal doesn't get lost during shipping.

Fast forwarding to the present, I'm currently playing Pokémon Ruby, and even a little bit of Pokémon Diamond. Why? I have no idea. In the six hours of Diamond that I've played in the past few days, I have done absolutely nothing worthwhile. I'm trying to get a Milotic in Diamond, so I rode my bike up and down the same stretch of road for 2 hours hatching a ton of Feebas eggs until I got one of a certain nature. The reason I need one of a certain nature is because its nature determines what kinds of berries it likes, and different kinds of berries increase different stats, and Feebas evolves by maxing out a certain stat, and now I feel like a nerd for knowing all this so I'm going to stop talking about that now. After I got the Feebas I needed I spent a half an hour mixing the necessary berries and feeding them to Feebas. But of course my berries weren't strong enough, so the stat didn't get maxed out and I had to turn my game off. Since then, I've been trying to find and grow more berries, hoping to find a combination of berries that will max out the stat I need and finally cause Feebas to evolve. But I've been at it for six hours, and I still don't have a Milotic. Pokémon is the only series that can make me run around the game world and do absolutely nothing for six hours. At least I'm actually playing through the story in Ruby, though.

I've also gone back to playing Crackdown. There are only a few key criminals left to defeat, so I should probably finish that up soon. After I finish either Ruby or Crackdown, I think it's time to finaly finish Okami. I say this every month, but I really (maybe) mean it this time! I don't think I've ever procrastinated on a game that I love this much before.

I've been waiting for Giant Bomb to launch for months now, and it has finally arrived! My account name is Hexogen over there. If any of you guys join, make sure to add me!

I'm definitely not leaving GameSpot, but I do have to make a decision on where I'm going to post my blogs from now on. I really want to participate as much as I can in Giant Bomb's community, so I definitely want to post blogs there, but I definitely don't want to stop doing them here either. Yet, at the same time I don't really want to post the exact same blogs on both sites. Writing two different blogs on the same subject and alternating posting on each website doesn't make much sense either.

I guess whether I decide to blog exclusively on Giant Bomb or not hinges on how many people I know from here join Giant Bomb. I'm so conflicted right now.

So E3 has pretty much come to a close, and I've seen many great demos of games over the past few days. I've only touched on the ones shown at the press conferences so far, so I figured I'll touch on every game I'm looking forward to this time.

Rock Band 2 - They played Everlong by Foo Fighters and a very small part of Anyway You Want It by Journey in this demo. It totally looks like Rock Band. It has some nice interface changes and I'm looking forward to seeing exactly how the new and revamped modes work.

inFamous - This was my most anticipated game of E3. Sucker Punch won me over with the Sly Cooper trilogy, so when they announced inFamous at E3 2007, they had my full attention. We haven't really known much about it until recently. The demo I saw was the first gameplay footage ever shown, besides quick montages of gameplay shown in the trailers. Sucker Punch must really like games that involve climbing stuff and traversing rooftops because Cole, inFamous's main character, can climb up things like buildings and telephone poles, just like a certain character in some of Sucker Punch's previous games. The climbing system is completely dynamic and adds a vertical element to the game a-la Assassin's Creed or Crackdown. You can even use the climbing system for cover. The demo showed Cole hanging off the side of a rooftop, raising his body up just enough to be able to throw a few bolts of lightning at his foes, and dropping back down out of harm's way. It's a really neat idea to be able to take cover like that, and the climbing definitely looks smooth.

What makes Cole a superhero is that he can harness electricity from the city's power grid and manipulate it to be used for various purposes. He can shoot bolts of electricity out of his hands, create an electromagnetic field that can push objects (think "the force"), bring down lightning from the sky, throw an electric orb of energy that explodes like a grenade, and act as a defibrillator and revive dead citizens with an electric shock. And those are only a fraction of the powers he will have. What's cool is that electricity actually arcs between metal objects, which means that you could shock a car with electricity and it would also shock the nearby payphone. You can use this to your advantage and take out enemies who are hiding behind cover.

The last part of the demo showed a blackout happening in a part of the city Cole was currently in. The city has a problem with blackouts, and if Cole is in a blacked-out section of the city, he is weaker than normal because he draws his power from the city's electrical grid. While in the blacked-out sector, he encountered another person with superpowers. This person moved extremely fast, leaving a blurry trail behind him as he moved. He was firing what appeared to be a gun at various citizens as well as Cole. He also threw huge waves of energy that tore up the concrete. Cole tried shooting bolts of electricity at him, but the enemy was too fast to get a good hit on, so he brought down a huge lightning storm that defeated the enemy, but also blew up a bunch of cars and killed a few citizens. Awesome. I had high expectations for inFamous, and I was not let down by the demonstration at all.

Gears of War 2 - Gears 2 is one of the biggest 360 titles coming out this year, and its single player is looking pretty good. The demo they showed had Marcus and Dom going through a city that the Locust Horde had just sunk. The game looks better than the first, especially the lighting. The color palette is more saturated this time around, which isn't to say the game still doesn't look dark and desolate, but it's a very noticeable difference compared to the first Gears, which was a little too colorless.

The gameplay is mostly the same. There have been many small tweaks to the cover system to make it work better, there appears to be more enemy variety, you can now use downed enemies as shields, there are new weapons, and other standard things you'd expect in a sequel. The game's scale is definitely larger than the first. The demo has a huge, burning city in the background, and there is a time in the demo where you have 20-30 Locusts running off in the distance. It makes the game feel much more like a full scale war. Overal though, it's mostly what you'd expect a sequel to Gears of War to be, and that's not a bad thing at all.

Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty - The demo looks good. The game is relativey similar to Tools of Destruction, but that's not surprising considering this isn't really a full fledged sequel. The game supposedly focuses more on platforming and puzzle-solving than Tools ofd Destruction did. The wrench's environmental manipulation is pretty cool. Some examples of things you can do with it is pull platforms towards you and pick up lava rocks and throw them at gates to break the. They've also talked a little about light and dark gameplay, but haven't shown any. The environments are also supposed to be a little more open, as opposed to the linear environments of the other Ratchet & Clank games. It looks to be shaping up well, and I'm glad it's coming out soon, because Tools of Destruction's ending just totally left us hanging, and I want to know what's going on.

Resistance 2 - I already talked about the Leviathan demo last blog, so I'll skip to the second location they showed. It was another portion of Chicago, wheich featured a large number of fast Chimerans charging at you in an attempt to overwhelm you. They showcased a cool new weapon which fired plain old bullets, but those bullets could then be detonated via secondary fire, whether they were in walls, in the ground, or in bodies. Insomniac is really good at making creative weapons, and this is no exception.

The third level they showed was Oakland/San Francisco. They didn't really show much shooting in this portion. It was really just to show off all the eye candy in the game. But what eye candy it is. The level puts you on one side of the Bay Bridge during sunset. There are tons of huge Chimeran ships hovering over the San Francisco Bay, as well as plenty of little ones flying around. The huge Chimeran ships were firing upon San Francisco in the distance and absolutely demolishing it. The game is definitely pretty, and a huge step up from the first.

Fallout 3 - This is another game I already covered earlier, but the demo show on GameSpot was longer than the one shown at the Microsoft Press Conference. All I really have to say about this one that I didn't cover earlier is that they claim to have the biggest selection of beards ever in a video game, and that you can kill people with teddy bear projectiles. What's not to like about this game?

Far Cry 2 - This game is looking really good, especially for the console version. When they announced Far Cry 2 (originally built with only the PC in mind) was coming to 360 and PS3, I thought it was just going to be a crappy port that ran at 15FPS and had half the features and eye candy removed, but I was wrong. The console version has all the features intact, and the graphics haven't been significantly downgraded at all. I wasn't that big of a fan of the first Far Cry. I just didn't find it all that fun. But it seems like they totally nailed what I would want out of an open-world shooter.

Prince of Persia - The artistic direction in this game is great. Considering how devoid most games are of color these days, Prince of Persia is a breath of fresh air. The gameplay looks more open than past Prince of Persia games (though I wouldn't know; I never played a PoP game before--perhaps I should). I like that they're focusing on dramatic 1-on-1 fights rather than throwing 100 generic enemies at you at once. I'm also digging the simple approach to calling on Elika for help. One button and depending on what you're doing she'll respond accordingly. I hope it works as well as it looks like it does. It'd be nice to have a support character you don't have to babysit.

That's all for today. I don't want to make this blog too long. I've only talked about half the games I want to cover, so I'll most likely be doing this kind of blog again tomorrow. I've really got tons of catching up to do with watching trailers and whatnot. E3 totally overwhelmed me.