Beat. Set up the living rooms for a party I'm throwing tomorrow, then fell asleep on the couch cat-sitting at my sister's place. Some tidbits first:

1) Crysis looks amazing. It was running in 1280x800, and it was already sweet. Robert, the one demoing the game, decided to have some fun and bumped it up to 1600x900 just for kicks. Yeah, it ran at like 17 frames per second, but every frame was more gorgeous than the last (is that possible...?) so. Yep. Hot. Got a few notes on the funny stuff he did or got eaten by (sharks).

2) Gears of War looks stunning at 60 frames per second. Absolutely stunning. With sharper textures than the Xbox 360 version, I might add - which we all know already looked fantastic. Some hands-on playtime and keyboard tweaking revealed the double-tap - tapping W/A/S/D twice to do what you'd normally do by pressing A. So as an alternative to using the space bar as your A button, you could simply double-tap W to go into the roadie run or press up against a wall, and double-tap A or D to leap from side to side. It felt really intuitive not having to use my thumb to hit the space bar, but those who are way comfortable with the A button and don't like WASD setups (likely dual-analog players - btw, the PC version is of course fully compatible with the 360 for PC Pad) will take a few minutes to warm up to it.

3) Couldn't find the 1up.com booth no matter how hard I tried. Will try again tomorrow. They're supposed to be giving away good schwag.

4) Some more Guitar Hero. the_antipode dropped by, lookin like Itagaki with his shades and long hair, for a good 3 hours to sample III and join me in some II. We tried the new guitar - they finally had it at the show (pics up tomorrow). Honestly? I don't like it as much - or at least, I didn't like the one I tried. The fret buttons were too mushy. The strum bar felt good, and the unit was nice and weighty - felt really sturdy, and it was wireless. But the fret buttons... again. Too mushy. I played fine, but I was uncomfortable the entire time. It felt like the Playstation 2 fret buttons with extra mud. I prefer the Xbox 360's X-plorer frets. Pair those frets with the new strum bar and body, though, and you've got a winner. I didn't check out the detachable neck yet, though.

That's all for what constitutes "coverage", so to speak. I'll have notes up tomorrow. Day 3 will just be relaxing and playing some games without whipping out the notebook. Hope to see some of you there. Again: black Trigames.NET tee, red-white-blue cap, khaki cargo shorts, white adidas on the feet. Yes, I know it'll be the third day in a row but I do wash the shirt, and I shower daily and always - always - deodorize. I am a clean human, if not self-naggy about it. Speaking of which: some people smell there. Yeah. Not cool. Wash once in awhile, will ya?

First, read the Guitar Hero III Quick Impressions here.

Ok, so now here's what else I did at DigitalLife today.

1) Waited in line for Guitar Hero 3- BESIDES THAT. I took a brief trip to the Microsoft booth to see if it had the same setup as last year, with two rows of Xbox Live Arcade games (including Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Lumines Live and Doom) ripe for the picking. NOPE. But, it did have Gears of War PC - dear lord, mouse control makes that game so much more awesomer than it already is (and we know it's already quite awesome); Crysis (didn't get to play it, just gaped in awe at the unprecedented visuals); and Hellgate: London (also just looked at it for 3 seconds). I'll go back to this tomorrow and give Crysis and Hellgate a try, and perhaps try not to die right away in Gears PC. Schwag: a deck of ... Windows Vista ... playing cards.

2) Dell had a booth and was showing off some new silent, water-cooled PCs rigged with Peltier-cooling GeForce 8800s in SLI. I think they were GTXes but I didn't confirm that. In any case, BioShock was running at 1920x1080 (that's 1080p, folks) at 60 frames per second. In DirectX 10. It's the best I've ever seen BioShock. Ever. And this is after looking at plenty of hi-res Xbox 360 and PC footage and experiencing it for myself on my PC (at 1280x1024) with everything set on max. Then I noticed that there was a Samsung TV with the same video feed, and it looked even better. 5 G's for a PC that can do that, as well as edit and encode video and music? Umm. Yeah, actually. If I tripped over a duffel bag full of money, I'd totally build something like that / just buy that outright. Unreal Tournament III was also running on another screen, looking tarted up and beautiful. I'll check it out tomorrow.

3) Took a peek in Namco's booth. Every year it's that same damn Namco Mobile thing. I'll check stuff out tomorrow, but... mobile gaming. Ye-ea-ah. I guess I shouldn't disparage it, but tain't for me. I did see Mr. and Mrs. Man walking by again, though - it being the Namco booth, and all. They posed for a shot. I obliged. They didn't wakka wakka though. I was disappointed. The booth had lines of cIassic Namco games lined up, including Galaga and Pac-Man of course. I will probably unwind by reliving my youth at those machines.

4) Watched a dude break-dance under one of those projected image thingies that react to your movements.

5) Stopped by the Newegg setup right by the Guitar Hero III space. It had a huge Mitsubishi TV playing... Guitar Hero II. (And a bum guitar which was finicky with the HO/POing and alt-strumming.) I turned in a sorry performance of Six (130k) and a Newegg dude came by asking me and the three other guys there if we'd like to be in a (makeshift) tournament. It had to be done in like, 30 minutes, so the rules were that we had to agree on a single song and compete for the highest score. Unfortunately, the game didn't have all the songs unlocked and we were trying to use the Playstation 2 version's unlock-all-songs cheat. We gave up without realizing that it was the wrong cheat. After a little brainstorming, we finally agreed on, "Whoever survives the longest in Jordan wins."

Yeah, I haven't beaten Jordan yet. Eat me.

So anyway, the first guy to go - Shawn - was obviously going to win. Unfortunately the star power didn't activate for him during the part we all dread. (I will blame the guitar - it worked for all of us every other time, including him, except for that one part. He tilted it in the exact same way he did before. In short, he got screwed because it was obvious to me that he was the best of the bunch.) So, he failed at 48%. The second one to go failed at 21%, and the last contestant and I both tied at a 56% failure. They then demanded a tie-breaker song. Shawn chose the song for us - it ended up being Less Talk More Rokk. Another 335k performance from me? Wrong. With the bum guitar, I managed a paltry 197k. Thankfully, my opponent managed 130k. The prize? A $20 gift certificate to Newegg. Eh, not bad.

After trying a bit more Guitar Hero III, I went back to see that they were holding a second tourney later. I helped the guys at the TV - including Shawn - unlock the songs in Career Mode to make them available for the tourney. In the middle of completing Set 3, someone else came running by with the Xbox 360 version of the unlock-all-songs cheat. Problem solved. I stayed out of this tourney to let someone else get a crack at winning, having a sneaking suspicion that it'd be Shawn. That was fine - I figured he got jilted out of the $20 last time. The Newegg people turned to me, asking, "Are you playing again?" I said no, so they responded with, "Ok - so YOU pick the song now! Make sure it's not too long though since this time we have 7 contestants." After thinking for 60 seconds, I announced - with an evil grin - that the song would be Misirlou. There were three failures, a score under 100k, two scores between 103k and 107k, and Shawn's winning score of 157k. After that we fooled around with Jordan and I left. Schwag: Windows Vista T-Shirt, soft foamy Newegg egg, Pac-Man Ghost Lollipop.

PHOTOZE! Check out the gallery of shots I took from the show floor. A cameo appearance from Alyx of Half-Life 2 fame and more!

SCHWAGGERY! The... uh... playing cards, and the foam egg. And more. Yeah.

(Thank you, Slunks, for pointing out that my links were pointing to the place they weren't supposed to be pointing to but were pointing to anyway. This have being fix. I are idiot.)

At this year's DigitalLife conference, we had the chance to take a peek at a Guitar Hero III demo for the Xbox 360. RedOctane had a booth set up alongside a small exhibit set up by the Gibson Guitar Company, offering up real guitars for people to play with. But for those of us concerned with them dang vidjagames, the RedOctane booth had around ten - give or take - stations set up with Xbox 360s and single Gibson X-Plorer guitars. That's right - on Day One of DigitalLife, neither co-op play nor the much-vaunted Battle Mode was on display. Perhaps this will change tomorrow.

With that disappointment out of the way, we still had ten songs to fool around with. The demo consisted of the following songs (*** = the ones we played):

The Metal / Tenacious D ***
Hit Me With Your Best Shot / Pat Benatar
Even Flow / Pearl Jam
Rock You Like A Hurricane / The Scorpions ***
Avalancha / Heroes del Silencio ***
Lay Down / Priestess
Closer / Lacuna Coil
Take This Life / In Flames ***
Hier Kommt Alex / Die Toten Hosen

Read more here for some key takeaways from Day One of playing, and below check out some of the shots we captured from the show floor.

Will you be at DigitalLife? I'd like to say what's up if I run into you. I'll be the 5'7" Asian guy wearing my black Trigames.NET t-shirt (just a plain black tee with the white logo on the left-front and "in games we trust" on the back), khaki cargo shorts, and white adidas. I will likely have a red-white-and-blue Sacramento Kings throwback (making them the Kansas City Kings) hat on unless I'm talking to someone for a potential sit-down interview. I'll likely have a notebook out and a heavy-duty Canon camera around my neck.

Thursday:

Estimated arrival: Noon. I'll be making the rounds, seeing what there is to cover. I'll also be waiting in line for Guitar Hero III.

Friday:

Estimated arrival: 11am. I'll be trying to take notes on what I've actually decided to cover and setting up meetings, if possible, with people. I'll also be waiting in line for Guitar Hero III. the_antipode will be there after 3ish waiting in line with me.

Saturday:

Estimated arrival: 11am. I'll be cleaning up any potential coverage that's left. I'll also be waiting in line for Guitar Hero III. Tony may show up.

Sunday:

Estimated arrival: 3pm after the podcast is finished recording. I'll be waiting in line for Guitar Hero III.

...I'd like to try Halo 3. I struggled through Gears of War on dual-analog for you, so I think I've paid my dues. Right?

...right? Hello?

Are you out there, Microsoft? Please let me stick a USB mouse into my Xbox 360 and try this Halo 3 thing everyone seems so excited about. Thanks.

While you're at it, why don't you make Halo 2 playable on Windows XP? No, I didn't give the original Halo the most favorable review (which was poorly-written, I admit), but I did enjoy it enough to want to give your second and third chapters a chance. Are you just going to let me succumb to the Crytek hype and crown Crysis as the best shooter evAr? Don't let your Halo Hype go to waste.

Oh, but I've still got Bioshock and Metroid Prime 3 to play. And before that, finish off Super Paper Mario, Metroid Prime 2 and the Prince of Persia trilogy. So nevermind.

3) Hey SIXAXIS, say hello to Dual Shock 3 or whatever the hell they decide to call it. Good thing I haven't gotten a SIXAXIS for my PS3 yet. YAY

2) Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time beateded. Scratch one off the backlog. YAY

1) Taking off 2 days of work to cover DigitalLife in NYC next week. Hoping - praying - for a Rock Band / Guitar Hero III appearance. YAY

0) Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. YA...AAR.

-1) Episode 62 of the podcast posted. YAY.

Before I post the Podcast details, I'm just going to take a few lines to remind everyone to remember those who were lost in the 9-11 attacks six years ago today. I was lucky to not lose anyone but I offer my sincerest condolences to those who have. (Don't want to bring down today's mood with a long post like I did last year.)

------------------

We WERE going to talk about Denis Dyack's vision of a one-console future. However, Ethan had an emergency and couldn't be with us. Therefore, we saved the topic for next week and instead talked about what we would do to improve on **** games. Whaddaya know: the bag of **** and the main topic, merged into one ultimate being! Following, of course, a whole slew of news - much having to do with rocking out - and followed BY some nice bags of ma...il. One of these days I'll misspell that.

Bake Down

0:00:00 - Tomfoolery
0:01:01 - Intro and What We're Playing
0:14:36 - News
*'Robot Chicken' Creators Team With Rapper to Develop Game
*Guitar Hero Wii Won't Launch With Online Play
*Sony Changes Halo 3 Wikipedia Entry - naughty naughty
*Aerosmith headlining Guitar Hero IV?
*Morello a villain in Guitar Hero III
*Analyst: $499 80GB PS3 by year's end
*More Bioshock bad press - Why Should your Brother Play for Free?
*Lair Designer: Our Controls Work For Me 80% Of The Time
*Rock Band tours America. Dates and cities announced.
*Wii GHIII WILL Have Online, Just No DLC.Yet.
*Uncensored Manhunt leaked
0:42:36 - The Bag of Main Topic ****
1:03:54 - Mailbag

Download here.
Run time: 1:24:36
File Size: 40.6 MB

Please - digg us, review us on iTunes, and don't forget - hit the mailbag with your Questions and Reader Bags of ****! You can get previous episodes at our Podcast Homepage.

3) Out of a fit of I don't know what - insanity, boredom, stupidity? - I made a playlist on my free trial of Rhapsody that mimics, as closely as possible, the Guitar Hero II (X360) song list... leaving out songs I really couldn't stand, of course (I'm lookin' at you, "Yes We Can"; no, you can't...). They didn't have The Rolling Stones' "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" (currently one of the songs in Week 1 of the third season of Zaps' Guitar Hero II League), nor did they have maybe one or two other tracks (including Jordan - but you can get that off of Buckethead's mySpace page) - but otherwise a satisfying list. Moreover, this is the first time I'm actively venturing outside of my hip hop / c1assical music / videogame music / orchestral movie soundtrack bubble. See? Guitar Hero is edumacational!

2) I was lamenting earlier to my friend Dave about how Pharoahe Monch, who put out the awesome rap record "Internal Affairs" (1999), hadn't released an album in who knows how long. He then said, "You really HAVE been out of touch - he released something last month." Thanks Rhapsody! I'm sampling it right now and already know that I'm going to buy the full record as soon as I get my feet in a Best Buy.

1) Another win for sampling music online (legally): I managed to find some records by Jean Grae, one of the most talented unheard-of female ra- nay, one of the most talented unheard-of rappers period. Time to find out if she's got any decent retail distribution...

0) Episode 61 of the Trigames.NET podcast will be uploaded Tuesday morning. You knowz you wantz itz. Z. Zz.