id Software hasn’t been an innovator in the gameplay space since Quake III Arena in 1999. While they were tinkering with new graphic engines and designing monster closets in the new millennium, upstart developers were surpassing them by leaps and bounds. A decade later, Tim Willits sits on a stool in front of me. His badge reads “Bethesda Software” and he’s holding a gamepad to demo the Xbox 360 version of Rage. All three of these things are from bizarro world. I’m surprised Tim doesn’t have a goatee.

Todd Hollenshead, the CEO of id Software, whispers a few things to Tim before he strolls out of the demo room and back into the hustle and bustle of the Bethesda booth. His stride is confident. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he had a bit of a swagger going on. A minute later he pokes his head back through the door. “You told them they can’t record video, right?”

In an E3 where real surprises were few and far between, Driver: San Francisco was one of the only games that shocked me. This is a franchise I’ve completely ignored since the awesome original. Now that it's been rebooted there might be something worthwhile here. As you might expect, it’s entirely focused on car chases over a 208 mile city landmass. Driver: SF has a few things going for it that give it a fresh spin over similar games.

- You never get out of your car.

- There are over 100 licensed and fully destructible vehicles, which is a bit unusual for an open world driving game.

- Burnout style slow motion crashes.

- The main character is in a coma.

That’s right, a coma. In fact, the entire game is a dream that Tanner is having. Not a speaking naked in public or being assaulted by clowns dream – a car chasing dream. The reason for the conceit brings me to my favorite feature of the game: If you’re chasing a car and you slam into a pole --that would normally be the end of the mission. In the new Driver, you press X (when your meter is filled) and you can zoom out into a birds-eye view of the city. Moving the cursor, you lock onto various cars as they drive around, pick one close to your target and take control of the driver. This simple mechanic keeps you in the game when you’d otherwise be out of the action.

It’s also a way for you to get missions. When you zoom way out into a wide view of the entire map, icons will pop up showing you where missions are. You can jump into a cop car who is in the process of chasing down a criminal. Run someone who is late for an appointment to their destination. All kinds of different missions are available between the main story events.

The ability to rapidly shift into other cars extends into the multiplayer. We had some hands-on time with a game mode where the objective is to drive behind a target AI vehicle. The car you chase leaves a glowing trail that run off its tail lights. By driving in that stream you gain points and block other players from getting theirs. Everyone can shift out of their current vehicle and jump ahead into a new one at any time, keeping the pace frantic and exciting.

Is it a bit gimmicky? Sure. But the driving feels like a good mix between arcade racing and the more technical driving from the original. The fundamentals are sound and the chases they demoed were exciting, dynamic and oddly tactical at times. If you need to catch a fleeing car, why not take control of a semi ahead of him and block off the road? Lots of potential here, I’m looking forward to seeing more.

Releasing simultaneously this Fall on the PC, Mac, 360, PS3 and I believe they mentioned a version being made special for the Wii.

As a fan of the first Witcher game I entered the small Atari office with some trepidation. Pre-show talk of controller support and streamlining some elements reeks of oversimplification and a loss of nuance in favor of splashy presentation. Seeing the developer cradling a 360 pad (plugged into a PC) as he prepared to walk me through his 15 minute presentation wasn’t helping. Once the game loaded I was even more worried by something that we’d normally celebrate – it looks gorgeous. The old Aurora engine has been jettisoned, replaced by a game engine created from scratch. Watching it in motion, it’s clear CD Projekt is putting the extra graphical muscle to good use. But are they sacrificing nuance and depth for the sake of better visuals?

I almost didn’t make it to the show. At about 10:12 a.m., I learned that I had been sitting in a car queue for a parking lot that was closed. Some aggressive driving later, I was sprinting across the L.A. Convention Center’s South Hall concourse, hurdling up stairs and past security.

That’s when I hit the shag carpeting in front of Disney’s Tron booth. Catching rubber on grippy white fabric, I did a header onto the convention floor. As I hit the ground, I pushed the question of just how clean the purple field in front of me could be. I pushed my hands out, tucked, rolled to the side and spent a moment admiring the pretty lights above my head.

Sitting in Harmonix’s faux-auditorium, replete with heavy velvet curtains, a small stage and fancy old-timey theater chairs, I wondered if RockBand 3 was worth all this trouble. But when the house band (composed of developers, producers, and other assorted Harmonix personnel) hit the stage, they made one thing very, very clear to me.

Harmonix does not bring weak sh*t to E3.

There aren't enough hours in the day for E3. The expo floors are packed with video screens, play booths and makeshift meeting rooms. Some of the bigger news outlets here have upwards of 18 people attending, a small army setting out each day to invade and conquer the Staples center. GWJ is just a tight-knit squad of news solders, like Gears of War with significantly more neck.

What I'm trying and failing to say here is that there's no way we'll get to see it all. But we've seen a lot. Here's a couple of games that stood out to me on E3 Day Two.

Hi gang! It's been an incredibly busy E3 by any standard this year. I have a ton I still need to cover but it will have to be disseminated over the next few days as I collect my thoughts and find some time to write. Ruminations on the PlayStation Move, The Witcher 2, id's Rage, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and more to come.

Mafia II

Years ago, I was a big fan of the original Mafia on the PC. It had style and grimly clung to odd open world tropes like having the police come after you if you went over the speed limit. Years later I'm surprised to find Mafia 2 continues that tradition. We're so used to acting like maniacs in these games, it may seem like a step backward to have a toggle button for locking the car's gas to the speed limit -- but little controls like this force you to stay more grounded in the world they're presenting. This isn't the kind of game you play for cheap laughs.

While the shooting, cover mechanics and movement are all above average for the genre, it's the environment and the story that steal the show. Their eye for detail is impressive, with most object blowing apart under direct gunfire and bits of the wall crumbling under a hail of bullets. The voice acting and cinematic cutscenes show flashes of greatness, but whether or not they sustain their narrative punch for the duration remains to be seen.

Mafia II is showing all the signs of being a proper sequel to a great game from the previous generation. If you have a choice, consider the PC version, it's looks quite a bit better than its console cousin.

Brink

It's really too soon to tell if Brink is going to live up to its lofty goals for a truly dynamic multiplayer mode that brings first person parkour online. We were told it was "pre-alpha" in response to so many questions I don't think a fair shake was possible with this demo. It definitely had a Borderlands flavor with experience points tumbling off enemies as you shot them; but the demo we had available wasn't really highlighting the better features of the game.

I mention Brink only because I saw it and it's a "big" game at the show. I hope we see a beta somewhere down the line so we can give it a proper test.

ArcaniA Gothic 4

This is the first Gothic game not done by the original developers. One of two things lead them to thinking this demo should be on the show floor. One, they figured a buggy game with a poor framerate, stunted animations and poor graphics was better than nothing. Two, they actually think it was ready. The second possibility is chilling, given how buggy and poor Gothic 3 turned out to be.

They have a lot to prove.

Anime fans acquainted with the 1980s know that the decade spawned some wonderfully gory, testosterone-driven experiences. Chief among the field of Anime for Dudes stands Fist of the North Star, the story of a man who can unleash a barrage of punches after he utters the mystical incantation A-TA- TA- TA- TA- TA- TA- TA- TA- TA- TA- TA (sometimes he makes bad people explode, too.) Tecmo Koei, sick of mining the classic Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms for their hack’n’slash fantasies, intends to release a game version of the Fist later this year.

And honestly, it’s not a terrible idea. The main premise behind the anime is that the main character, Ken, is a hulking badass with a heart of gold that won’t hesitate to beat the absolute sh*t out of the mutated evildoers that haunt his post-apocalyptic wasteland. [I think there’s something in there about an ongoing quest to save his ladyfriend… but that’s not really manly so we’ll forget about it for now.] I don’t think there’s ever been a better justification for a game adaptation. It’s even one of the few times I can stomach using the tired Dynasty Warriors formula of gameplay, which consists of “beat guys up, run around, beat guys up, open gate, beat REALLY BIG guy up. Repeat level for cool wares.”

The game certainly adapts the source material’s wonderfully, as Ken casually whoops ass from town to town. Ridiculously powerful moves are accompanied by equally ridiculous title cards as a mysterious narrator calmly states the name of the arcane technique just used to flatten a legion of cannon fodder. You get the requisite super-power bar that fills up as you kill more folks, but I couldn't see much (if any) type of levelling system or power unlocks. Hopefully there's something like that that wasn't shown in the demo. There’s even some nice end-boss superpunch action under the guise of a quicktime event. I felt that Ken’s a bit lead-footed, and tends to lumber about as he’s stomping people to and fro, but a mercifully included quick evade button takes most of the sting out of his slow movement.

I can’t really say if it’s a viable purchase option yet, but it’s definitely a good stress reliever after a long day at the office. Just don’t expect Shakespeare.

Navigating the E3 showfloor is kind of like being tossed back into High School. There are people absolutely everywhere, you’re constantly worried about someone catching you looking like a fool as you try to dance along with the hip cheerleaders, and all the cool kids want nothing to do with you (actually, there’s a chance they might care, but only if you’ve made an appointment). As you traverse the dizzying twists of the main hall, you quickly learn to catch things out of the corner of your eyes (games, large installation, scantily-clad girls) instead of looking at them head-on, for fear that some large bloke will approach you. Oh, and there’s a strong chance you’ll miss out on the bland cafeteria food if you’re the meek type that avoids crowds.

At the very least, it’s nigh impossible to get stuffed into a locker.

There aren’t a lot of things that will get me out of bed by 6:30 a.m. After four months of commuting to Los Angeles from San Diego, I’m kind of burned out on travelling and waking up before the sun has risen. I cherish every slothful drop of sleep I can squeeze out of the morning, almost without fail.

This morning, I was up by 6:10 a.m., cracking eggs into a pan and tossing English muffins into the toaster with a manic zeal. Instead of my usual groggy lurch, I was wide awake and ready to venture out. (Hardly any coffee was required). There was a good reason for today's spirited energy. After all, it's not every day I get to go to Nintendo's E3 Press Conference.

Holding a 3DS and looking into its top screen didn't blow my mind. Instead, some pieces of the puzzles just clicked into place and I felt the same way I did when I first played the Nintendo DS. Of course this is the next logical step in portable game technology. What else would it be?

It's a natural. The moment you lay your eyes on it and see what 3D is like without wearing glasses or crossing your eyes you're all set. The first game I played was Nintendogs + Cats and having that depth really made it seem like there was an adorable puppy trapped in the DS. I actually felt kind of bad for it.

Kid Icarus wasn't playable, but I did get to see the video from the press conference in full 3D. As you might expect, it looks pretty damn good and was one of the few titles on display clearly pushing some serious graphics compared to most DS games.

I saw more tech demos than I could list here, but one of the simplest and most striking was a cat on a pogo stick. Something Satoru Iwata said at the conference had left me scratching my head: Would the 3D screen really make things like platform jumping easier? Playing this silly little game where you maneuver a cat on a pogo stick from one platform to another really showed this to be true. I could slide the 3DS into 2D mode and get by fine, but sliding back up to 3D really made judging those jumps easier. Thanks, cat on pogo stick.

I also played one demo where you could jump between various 8 bit Nintendo games like Metroid, Mario and Tennis, only they were converted for the 3D view. Surprisingly, it actually worked pretty well. Suddenly the blocks in Super Mario Bros stood out and had depth against the backdrop. The odds of Nintendo triple dipping on a ton of old games (now in 3D!) are high.

The unit itself is not radically different from a DSi. The inclusion of an analog nub is a big plus and the slider on the side of the DS that allows you to adjust how strong the 3D effect is really impressed me. Some of the demos made my eyes strain a bit because the effect was so extreme -- Harvest Moon being one of them. By sliding the 3D effect down a bit, I was able to maintain the 3D look without bothering my poor eyes.

Without a price or firm release date it's hard to speak to the value proposition here. 3D is not going to magically turn bad games into something worthwhile. What it does is gives the game you're playing some more bam. It's a little extra something that you can live without -- but why would you if you had the choice?