A few E3 highlights to wet your appetite…

The US Army is putting out a free FPS action game based on the Unreal 2 engine called “Americas Army”. Basically, this game will be free for all to download and play online but the army DOES have a hidden agenda. This is a recruiting tool. There will be no SDK or moddable tools made available as they do not want the army’s good name to go bad with a ppor attempt to customization of the game. We should also be seeing versions in the future for other divisions of nations security.

More military games will be hitting the market. One of which is called “Platoon” offering.. well.. more of what you are used to seeing already. Karma : Immortality is perhaps one that looks to be on top so far.

DOOM III is nearly impossible to check out with lines that last hours. Luckily, I have an appointment to check out the new footage tomorrow morning.

Raven Software wasn’t in sight, but I did get to see Activision. Their series with Star Trek are looking great. Too bad they felt they were too busy to talk to anyone who wasn’t media related. This was a common problem throughout the conference. If you didn’t have a media pass, you were pushed aside (thinking there would be no press from any talks). I may have that problem fixed for next year as GDConnect may soon become a member of the press.

Hercules has some very nice looking game controllers hitting the market with the title of Thrustmaster. I am particularly interested in a left hand controller that mimics a keyboard with a layout that will leave you with nothing but comfort.

I checked out the SOF tourney being held at the bar across from the conference. All I found was a few fraggers and a dank, dark tent being sponsored by what seemed to be GameSpy. Bah… That is not inspiring. I had more fun at the GORE tourney held in the complex (I am in the finals tomorrow.. whoohoo).

Coming next week… maybe not any specific interviews since I was pretty much blown off, but plenty of awesome video footage. Something to make you smile if nothing else.