Now that the digital dust has settled on E3 and I’ve had a day to reflect on the craziness that it was, I want to put my experience in writing. What I failed to do, however, was to keep diligent records of what I witnesses across those three days, so this post may seem a little rambling and disjointed. If for some reason you don’t make it to the end (I don’t blame you), just hear this: Go to E3. Find a way to get there. Do whatever it takes to experience the event at least once in your life, you will not regret it. Now on to my story.

I wasn’t even absolutely positive that I was going to E3 until the day before it started. The company I work for didn’t have a booth or anything, and I’m not a business development guy, but I was trying to use my job as the PR Manager to as leverage for my boss to get me a full pass to the show. Luckily passes didn’t turn out to be as scarce as we thought, so I got my own full ticket.

The Los Angeles Convention Center is about 10 miles and 5 billion other cars away from my office, so I had plenty of time sitting in traffic to get myself psyched for what I was about to see. When I finally got into downtown LA, I could feel the electricity in the air, and it wasn’t just because of all the TVs, monitors, Xboxes, PS3s, Wiis, and everything that had just been turned on in the last hour, but it was also the day of game 6 of the NBA Finals, and it was rumored that Michelle Obama was going to be there, too. The entire city was a throbbing ball of energy. It was great. Sometimes I really love LA.

Officially I was there to network with some media types with the prospect of getting coverage on our next game. As a fan of video game journalism, of course I wanted to meet with the journalists and bloggers whose work I know so well, so really I was there for myself. Finally I got to the Convention Center, received my entry badge, ditched my coworkers, and set out on my journey of video game self-discovery.

I walked into the West Hall, and was immediately hit with sights and sounds that rival a casino floor. The first display strategically placed directly inside the front doors was Marvel vs. Capcom 3. The line to play the game was 50 deep, and there was a massive crowd of onlookers. I soon learned the MVC still had a huge following, and there was a core group of fans that was really looking forward to the game.

I took a quick right and passed by the Crave Games booth. Doesn’t sound familiar? Does the Deadliest Catch video game ring a bell? That’s what I thought. I also learned that they are coming out with a Man vs. Wild game soon as well, and Bear Grylls was going to make an appearance at the booth the next day. I didn’t make it to that one.

The next major stop was the Perfect World booth. PWis free-to-play MMO game maker that recently released Battle of the Immortals, and published the popular RPG Torchlight. Nice people.

I soon made my way to the Sony booth neighborhood block just as they were doing a live telecast of the Sony keynote. I got into sweet position just in time to see the new Gran Turismo 5 trailer (amazing), and the first look at the Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood multiplayer first look (amazinger). The crowd applauded at the end of the trailer, and it was at that moment that I truly felt like I was part of something special. After this, and throughout the rest of the show, I was constantly refreshing Joystiq and Destructiod on my iPhone to see what they had to say about what was happening at the show, and so often something that I had just seen was the most recent post. Such was the case for Brotherhood, and it was awesome.

Near the Sony area was the Great Wall of Nintendo. Literally, the Nintendo “booth” was like a giant soft-white box where you had to stand in line just to get into, and even then you had to stand in a specific line for each product. Metroid: Other M, 3DS, whatever else, all required waiting in the own line. I didn’t want to spend my first day at E3 waiting in line, so I moved on.

As I walked around the show floor, I was just flooded with thing to see. I wanted to take it all in, but the fact is that it is so overwhelming that some things just slip through the cracks. I spent the first 2/3 of of the day in the West Hall before I even realized that there was an entire second half of the show, and even then I didn’t get to see everything. On my way to the South Hall, I passed by the Bethesda booth, which was something fittingly straight out of Fallout 3. The goods, Fallout: New Vegas and Brink were being shown only to press inside to monolithic walls, but the trailers of the two games were on constant rotation facing the public. New Vegas looked just like Fallout 3 (definitely not a bad thing), but Brink looked surprisingly awesome. It was like a mixture of Mirror’s Edge and…I don’t know, something really good. Definitely something to look forward to.

(This post is becoming longer than I thought, so I'm breaking it up into to two parts. More to come!)