Well it's that time of year again, time for E3 to take over my whole life for a week. Tickets are booked, press pass recieved and in a few days I get to head on out there into the fray once again. Last year I was super excited to go to E3 but there were no games that I was frothing at the mouth to see. The only game I was really interested in was Silent Hill Shattered Memories and that turned out to be wholly underwhelming when I finally got the chance to play it. However this year there's a whole bunch of stuff that's got me all excited. Warhammer 40k Space Marine and W40k MMO are both super exciting for me andthen there's Red Faction Armageddon. Rock Band 3 will be there, Fallout New Vegas, I'm sure Atlus will be showing stuff I love long time and The Force Unleashed 2... oh yeah, I'll be busy.

In addition to all of that, a few awesome little tidbits:

I've been published. My first strategy guide was put to market by Doublejump a bit ago for a lesser known, mediocre game called Last Rebellion. It's pretty cool, even if it is for a non blockbuster. I did a guide for Persona PSP's re-release but all sorts of issues prevented it from being published. So I've got parts of a really cool looking PDF guide sitting on my computer, heh.

Over on the regular freelancing side I've completed guides for Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction - a Deniable Ops Multiplayer guide and an Alan Wake Collectibles guide over on GamesRadar. Forget the pay, those were just awesome to write.

On the non-paying IGN side of the fence I also finished a Red Dead Redemption FAQ. That took for-freaking-ever.

For reviews I totally managed to piss off the guys at EA by giving Army of Two: The 40th Day a fairly low review. Their... disagreement actually caused the site to re-do the way we handle reviews, removing individual scores for categories like graphics because they're just not accurate enough. It produces weird things like games having high scores in graphics, replay, sound, etc. but then having a pretty low score since storyline or fun factor aren't so easily scored. I'd have hated to see how they would have reacted if I reviewed Dante's Inferno or Dragon Age Origins: Awakening, two more bad EA games.

Lastly have any of the three of you who actually read these been having difficulty with the GameSpot messaging system? I just got the reminder for the May 26th, RDR game night today. Kind of annoying since I don't check that every day but I do check my inbox and I totally missed that game night. Bah.

Edit: Cool new screenshot and music video for Alan Wake (screen is for the first DLC) if you're into that sort of stuff. Because I am. Totally.