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.