My final weeks in the US are one big non-stop ride from game event to game event, followed by the occasional afterparty (or two). Starting next week, it’ll all be about finishing articles, packing up for home and preparing for unsere VGV Abenteuer in Leipzig!

So y’all enjoy our upcoming coverage of QuakeCon! My good friend Jordan will be joining the VGV ranks and we will also be helping out Jeff from TheGameReviews.com with their coverage of this event.

Yeehaw!

Picture is courtesy of the Dallas wiki.

The guys and girls over at the CGS sure know their televised game competitions. I had the pleasure of attending this year’s Championship Gaming Series World Final and boy was it a treat! Hung out with Rob and Hailey from Coin-Op.TV and helped them out with their coverage of the spectacle. This year the title went to the Birmingham Salvo, who managed to win from my personal favorite, the San Francisco Optx.

Also had the pleasure of talking with some of my longtime inspirations, such as the world famous shoutcaster Paul ‘RedEye’ Chaloner, general manager and former ‘Frag Doll’ Kat ‘Katscratch’ Hunter and successful pro gamer gone entrepeneur Jonathan ‘Fatal1ty’ Wendell. Good job guys!

Check out the super snapshot action that is our photocoverage of the CGS World Finale (aka. the Coin-Op.TV stalker gallery) on the VGV Flickr, right here.

Cause boy was there a lot to see! Even though some of it wasn’t really intended for kids…

Check out the VGV Flickr for some super swift snapshot action, right here.

Before I start throwing the huge collection of stories that I gathered at Comicon, here’s a quick run-down of our entire E3 experience:

Getting into the E3 spirit

Getting into the E3 spirit – part deux (with beer!)  

E3 Day #1 – The event has changed, thank god the people haven’t!

E3 Day #2 – Work hard, play hard and party hard!

E3 Day #3 – Enjoying the social warmth of E3. Work pays off.

E3 Day #4 – Saying goodbye and planning ahead.

VGV @ E3: Explore our complete photo coverage of E3 2008!

E3 VGViews #1: Warhammer is just like Batman. Wait. What?

E3 VGViews #2 – Expanding the user’s experience is key to movie games

E3 VGViews #3: Ultimate Band & the challenge of going non-peripheral

E3 VGViews #4: Camera shy? How about camera tired?

E3 VGViews #5: We’ve only seen less than 25% of Dead Space? OMG!?

E3 VGViews #6: MK vs DC Universe is one big negotiation

E3 VGViews #7: This is Vegas has some aces up its sleeve.  

This isn’t even everything! If you can read Dutch, check out these in depth interviews I personally did for Gamerush.nl

And I still have stuff I haven’t started on yet…

Wow. Comicon is all I ever expected and more. I won’t be writing about it till it’s over for reasons that I think are more than apparent if you know what Comicon is all about. Combined with the lack of a stable connection to the interwebs. Here are some quick on-site scoops which everyone else has picked up on already:

 Tera Patrick is a ’special producer’ for Saints Row (DUH)
 Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe has 5 newly announced characters: Liu Kang (Bicycle kick!), The Joker (awesome), Shazam (am I supposed to know this guy?), The Green Lantern (and his one ring TO RULE THEM ALL!) and Jax (he’d better be!).
 Mirror’s Edge Comic coming. Cause the Dead Space one already kicked major ass! Got me some copies of that. Talking about the Dead Space comic, I think I’m the only Dutch game journalist with an actual signed copy of that, woohoo!
 The Dead Space animated feature looks amazingly good ‘n’ gory! More info soon!�

Picture courtesy of Cosplay.com

Though I was one of many  at E3 who were quite sceptic about Midway’s new sandbox title, Alan Patmore and his team clearly aren’t lounge lizards. He promised that the game will cater the core demographic of the mature open world action game player and will consist of action packed content for more then 70%. The casual mini-games suddenly appear like a pleasant addition to the more intense gameplay elements that are yet to be seen.

Niko Bellic should’ve moved to Vegas.

They sure are trying to redefine the franchise with this one. Ed Boon and his team picked a tough a road ahead of them, full of challenges and compromises, but they’re chugging along quite well from the looks of it. Their focus on bringing downloadable content to the game is also very ambitious, but will we see downloadable fatalities and other finishing moves? “You know what, that’s a really good idea! That’s something we definitely have to keep in mind,” Ed answered.

I’ve had my eye on Dead Space since I first saw EA with a little booth at Wondercon, showing off a short concept trailer and their #1 issue of the prequel comic. I had a chat there with Alex Charlow, one of the game’s developers. We talked for almost an hour before I realised I should have been recording it all! This senior producer Chuck Beaver steps up to tell us more about the development of Dead Space.

They have a lot of cool stuff planned for Comicon, so stay tuned! Oh and ehm, EA. Loved your showroom at E3 and all, but the changing colours had kind of an unusual effect on our interviewees .

During the second day of E3, it struck me. I had gotten tired of watching myself over and over during the editing process of all the VGV footage I’ve ever touched. I bet Chris felt the same, having filmed more then 12 hours of my blabbering since we first started. Lucky for me, that was about to change. Hallelujah!

I would also like to thank Rob Welkner from Coin-Op.TV for all the of inspiration, help and advise! See you at Comicon dude!

The guys over at Fall Line Studios did something that people such as Nolan Bushnell and Gene Simmons have taught me to do: find a hole in the market, cater for it and believe in your own ideas. Ultimate Band for the Wii has all that. Intended for teens and people that don’t have room for an entire Rockband set, like almost all Japanese people. Let’s ask Tim Huntsman how they pulled it off.

Disney Interactive Studios must be really happy with Tim and his buddies.

Derek Dutilly wants you to rise up from your couch and get engaged with his newest movied based game: High School Musical 3. He also let us know that it’s important for Disney that the game expands the user’s experience of their franchises, which have almost always involved music and dance. Derek, the floor is all yours!

I wish all game demo sessions at E3 were like Derek’s.

Paul Barnett, creative director for Warhammer Online, has single-handedly convinced me that Warhammer Online is definitely worth our hard earned cash. How? He puts the W in wittiness.

What’s wrong with the pogo stick anyway? I love the pogo stick!

It’s all on DailyMotion for now. YouTube’s been screwing up the sound for some strange reason. If you know how to fix this, please let us know!

Jonathan did a great job capturing the E3 from our team’s perspective. While many are discussing the quality and usefulness of this year’s E3 setup , we here at VGV would like to show you the event through our own eyes: an optimistic focus on all the great things that were taking place, the great people we’ve met and the joyful moments that we’ve had together.

The good times strongly outweighed the bad for our team and as you might have noticed while scanning through our E3 coverage, we just totally had a blast.

We do really advise everyone to also read up on the critique surrounding the event’s shape and role in the industry. We REALLY recommend you read Colin Campbell’s enlightening take on this E3 over at Edge-Online.com

E3 got me thinking. A lot. The entire experience taught us a lot, which eventually forged a strong personal format in my mind last night. Here’s what I think our E3 preview commercial would look like if it ever appeared on television. Or Youtube.

I was inspired by the [adult swim] shorts I recently saw on TV. I call the style ‘Simplicity Awesome‘. Let us know what you think in the comments. Your opinion is worth more to us than gold!