E3 2006 Special | Cubed3 E3 Diary: Issue 3

So, as you'd expect, we decide it's time to move on. For now at least. First up on our list, we make a date with Dr Kawashima, and the Big Brain Academy. After a maths test, some games of match the picture and feeding a moving dog a bone (amongst other tasks), we find out our brain is comparable to that of a Museum Curator. Not sure if that's a good thing, but the Big Brain Academy say it's a fact and we think it could certainly be a lot worse.

After that, Kirby's on our list, and it doesn't take long to remind us why we spent so many hours playing with the cute-pink-suck-'n'-spit-superhero. Then we move on to Children Of Mana, Elite Beat and Pro Evo, deciding that the DS has really got a strong show.

Moving on from the Nintendo stand (there is a whole show out there you know...) we set out for a few specific stands. We see Pandemic's great looking sequel to the brilliant Mercenaries (it looks great for so many reasons. Two player co-op anyone?). Then there's Haze, a brand new FPS from Ubisoft, set in the near future, where one company (Mantel) holds the contracts to supply almost every major western society with its own military defence, amongst other things. Suffice to say, it doesn't look like they are the good guys.

On top of this, we played Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus, Destroy All Humans 2, Beatmania IIXD, Guitar Hero II and Desperate Housewives. All a bit of a mixed bag to be honest, with Dirge of Cerberus feeling a bit too clumsy to convince us that Vincent Valentine can really hold a game by himself, and Desperate Housewives looking more like The Sims than anyone would like to admit.

But the worst was still to come. Bomberman. Just saying its name reminds us of thousands of nights of great multiplayer explosive action with our mates. So when we saw the latest 360 version, we couldn't help but notice how un-Bomberman it looked. It's like the developers thought: "it's coming out on 360, so we need to make it look like Halo, with bombs."

Whatever happened to our favourite little bomber-dudes, cos all we've got here is a bunch of wannabe Master Chiefs. Still the game itself feels pretty enjoyable, if a little slow and simple, because there are only three power-ups. Looks like we'll be sticking with the older versions for a while yet.

The good side of things though, is that the Namco booth was ace. Mainly publicising the Namco mobile arcade games, the also managed to bring a couple of strange things onto their space. With a Pacman coated VW Beetle, a pool table, and a multitude of staff wearing Pacman hats, it certainly was an active stall. Best of all however, was that the Pac-heads were also handing out tokens, which could be used in little toy vending machines. One token in, and we already knew our mission must be to get all the different versions of Pacman (they've got ones that flash and everything!) and the ghosts as we can.

The good news didn't stop there either, as it wasn't long after our discovery of the Namco toys, that we found the Sega stand, complete with rolling footage of Sonic's latest adventure: Sonic: Wild Fire. Man it's looking quick.

But with that we realise that we're also slowing down. Two days standing in queues, playing Dancing Stage, and walking between meetings are taking their toll, and at the end of the second day of E3, we're starting to tire. Having said that, we still don't want to admit the fact that tomorrow is the end of the whole expo. What's worse is that these lazy Americans also want an early finish on Friday's, so we head back to our room, to get down to some work, and plan our final day at E3 2006.

Anna Sky Houlton