Day Two Impressions by Jason "Rodzilla" Rodzik   Posted on May 12, 2006   The initial plan today was to see how the lines outside the doors to the West hall were and that if they weren’t too bad, to head straight for the Nintendo Wii. Of course, the lines were already horrible when we showed up to the media hospitality suite an hour before the floor opened, so we decided instead to head back to the South hall and play some other games. Logitech’s racing rig consisting of a mockup of a race car complete with three flat-screens linked together and a full steering wheel, pedal, and shifter setup caught our eye on the first day, so we stopped by their booth on the way in as it was on our way to Microsoft’s montage of Xbox 360 games. It took me a half a lap or so to get used to the steering wheel’s super-sensitivity, but once I got the hang of it racing around the course and using the paddle shifters was a piece of cake. It’s too bad building one of these for yourself would cost an arm and a leg, and then you wouldn’t be able to use the wheel or the clutch too well with only one arm and leg. Stopping in at Microsoft’s booth, we simply went down the length of the entire booth, playing nearly every single Xbox 360 game on display. Many of them were rather impressive, though I was a bit disappointed with the new Sonic game. Not only is there something weird with Sonic not being on a Sega system, but I found it rather tricky to control Sonic from the third person view. As with most games, however, the graphics were spectacular. After playing a few more games, including Full Auto 2, a PlayStation 3 game similar to the Twisted Metal games, it was time for a nice, overpriced, quality decent lunch. We decided to see if we could snag a quick picture of Paris Hilton before attempting to get Adam West, the voice of Family Guy’s Mayor, to sign a poster for us. Paris Hilton was there promoting some game which looked to be the worst excuse for reason to spent money on something in history. When we showed up, Paris Hilton was nowhere in sight, but from the looks of things you would think the President had shown up, as there were tons of people crowding the area around the booth she was hiding in, and security goons were everywhere. For some ridiculous reason that was never given to me, an entire section of the front part of the rather large walkway between booths near Hilton’s location was blocked off by her security goons. After getting nothing but circular answers from one of the goons, we headed out to see Adam West. Of course, the line for Adam West was about 100 times as long as the line for people wanting to get a picture of Paris Hilton but not actually have to listen to her speak or see her product, so that whole idea didn’t work out either, as we would have been there all day. A trip into Kentia Hall kept us busy for the rest of the day, and we privately demoed a variety of games as well as trying out some of the variety of intriguing products that are always found in Kentia. We showed up just in time to catch the last brief segment of a song from Backyard BBQ, a band promoting Guitar Hero II which also had songs included on the first game, but unfortunately they were not allowed to continue playing as nearby booths had complained about the noise. Rounding off the day was a spectacularly comfortable racing session in a complicated gaming chair contraption which included the built-in godsend of a massager. Perhaps it was the large number of games played in the first few hours, but for some reason I can’t explain, the second day of E3 blew by a whole lot faster than the first. I doubt the state of the industry address made that much of a difference, as it was only an hour difference in start to finish schedules, but today simply blew by. Somehow today turned into massive swag-collection day as well, as I must have been given at least two hats, two shirts, a free Logitech game controller, a free copy of Red Orchestra, and a variety of posters, pins, and other goodies. Maybe I’ll pickup some of those inflatable goodies that Webzen is giving out tomorrow. Of course, at the end of the day there were the usual realizations of things that were forgotten or we just didn’t have the time to see. Hopefully we’ll have a chance to sneak a peek at the Nintendo Wii tomorrow, along with Unreal Tournament 2007 and a variety of other promising games. Game Impressions: Lost Planet Crackdown 99 Nights Coming Soon: Too Human Battlefield 2142 F.E.A.R. - Extraction Point Full Auto 2 Cell Factor Shadowrun The Wall White Gold The Precursors Saitek's New Peripherals See Also: Day Two Photo Gallery