E3 and Video Games Live

 

Normally to get into E3 you have to be involved in the gaming industry but not if your the GameNinja and know how to sneak your way in. My girlfriend and I were able to enter the first section of E3 and play the newest Street Fighter game, which was pretty much just a visual upgrade of super street fighter 4 with more characters. Another game on my "to buy" list that we were able to see was Lord of the Rings: War in the North. This game looked aesthetically pleasing and had the same feeling as the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Return of the King games for Xbox, ps2, and Gamecube. One thing that sucks is you can't be Legolas, Aragorn, or Gimli because it is following a different storyline. Probably the most anticipated game for me is Star Wars the Old Republic for PC. I've literally been waiting since the 09 E3 game trailer. I may be hurting some feelings here (including my own) but SWTOR has the most potential for being a true Wow Killer. If you haven't seen the trailer yet I linked it here:

These were just a few of the games I was able to view considering I wasn't able to get into upper demo section that had more security.

Onto the event that I did actually have a pass for, this was the Video Games Live symphony. First off, let me start by saying have you ever wondered if you would ever get to see that movie moment when a dude gets on his knee and asks his girlfriend to marry him, then everyone starts to cheer? Well that coincidentally happened here and of course the dude introduced himself as Hawk when he got on stage (he also looked like a viking). The best part was his new fiancée (I'm assuming she said yes because you wouldn't want to deny Hawk his Glory) was wearing a shirt that said Epic Fail! What a great start to a gamer marriage Congratz!

Anyway, if you grew up playing Mario or Sonic and you remember the theme songs with fond memories, then Video Games Live is a great concert for you. What VGL does is take the theme songs from the most popular video games such as Mario, Sonic, Street Fighter, (Grammy winning) Civilization 4, Final Fantasy, Warcraft, and oh yes Halo and has a symphony play it in front of you. Here is a picture I took of what the stage looked like from our seats

They would also bring out special guests to either play with the symphony or conduct, such as the kid who played the Mario theme songs blind folded on piano, the creator of the Pokémon theme song (he is a legend), Kinuyo Yamashita who was the composer for the original Castlevania games (to my surprise she was a girl), and the guy who conducted the World of Warcraft music for Cataclysm (which he looked like a giant dwarf, which wasn't to my surprise). All in all, this event is a must see for any type of gamer, young and old. I literally get the chills when I listen to the Halo montage because not only does the music sound awesome, but it reminds me of the Maw campaign level from Halo One and the countless hours my friends and I would spend trying to beat it on heroic. As the last part of this post, I am leaving you with the Halo montage.