For the longest time my dream has been to attend E3 at least once. I imagine quite a lot of other gamers also have the same goal. E3, where the big 3 show off their new line consoles and games are shown for the very first time. It sounds great but after attending the Euro Gamer Expo, E3 is no longer the dream. I have to say it’s not because the Euro Gamer Expo was bad in anyway, I think they did a fantastic job and it was great value.

Euro Gamer Expo had some great games to show ( http://expo.eurogamer.net/whats-on.php) and going into the convection centre I had one game on my mind, Mass Effect 2 (Oh how I love Mass Effect). So after a quick browse of the games upstairs I head down to the basement where ME2 was waiting for me. Of course there were already some people waiting to play so I just watched for the time being. Finally I get my hands on the controller but I can’t hear a damn thing and I have no idea what’s going on. Trying to pick up and play a game when someone else has just walked away in the middle of a mission with Lady GaGa playing as loud as the speaker system would let it is not the ideal environment to play a RPG like Mass Effect. This situation kept coming up again and again. I think it’s possibly the worst environment to try and play a new game. Here is an example of me and a friend trying to play Star Trek Online, it doesn’t go so well.

I can’t imagine how hard it is to then go away and write something informative about that experience apart from “Yeah it looked good.... I couldn’t really hear over the music. I think it’s about your dude trying to find other dudes to kill this bad dude... I’m really not sure.” I have much more respect for games press attending E3 as I can only guess it’s ten times more hectic than Euro Gamer was.

For some games it was better than others to pick up and play. I had a lot of fun on MAG and Battlefield: Bad Company 2. If someone today offered me the chance to go to E3 I would still go but I would bring a taser.