Maybe I've been absent minded, but I completely forgot about Electronic Entertainment Expo this summer. Now every video game publication on the internet has reminded me, and who am I to stand out from the crowd?

Before I get too deep into this, let me apologize to those who were tricked into reading spoilers in my post yesterday. Telling you that there was no deception in that post, and then immediately saying that there were no spoilers, was a dirty trick that I felt bad about using. I still got a bit of a laugh out of it all, but I'm sorry all the same.

That being said, this coming E3 doesn't seem all that exciting. Although I expect/hope to be surprised next week when E3 starts, right now I feel like I already know what's coming in the coming months. By Christmas I expect to be playing Spore, Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Rock Band 2, and Left 4 Dead just to name a few. I might even be able to replay Bioshock for a 3rd time on PS3.

Even so, I'm exciting about learning about some of those titles in even more detail during E3. Rock Band 2 is of particular interest to me since I've eagerly downloaded most of the DLC. I wasn't really surprised when they said DLC was going to be backwards compatible, and I wasn't disappointing when they said that music creation wasn't going to be a feature. Frankly I think it's a dumb idea in the first place, a cheap substitution for what the music video game genre genuinely needs. I'm hoping that Rock Band 2 will let us upload our own mp3s and turn them into game data, so we could buy a CD, load it up onto our consoles and play it on Rock Band. Then again, that's a tall order and I won't be surprised if it doesn't happen.

On the Playstation 3's front, I'm afraid we'll see lots of JRPG crap which will probably bore me to death. I don't know if there's much new for me to hope for from Sony, so I guess I can only hope to be surprised. I'd like to know that I'll be playing LittleBig Planet before 2009. I'll also keep a cautious eye on God of War 3. I'm disinterested, bordering on having a mild dislike, for the first two, but if the third looks pretty and doesn't look like more of the same I'd gladly grab that. My one far-fetched wish is to hear about an ambitious project from the people who made Shadow of the Collosus. Oh and a software patch for 40gbs to have backwards compatibility would make me feel warm inside.... my pants.

But warming my pants is easy; the real challenge is thawing my frigidly cold heart. The only machination of man that can really do that is the PC, and I don't really know what to expect for PC players during E3. I've got my eye on Left 4 Dead. It looks like a very different game from what I'm used to playing on PC, and I'm a little worried that not enough of my friends will play it with me. Right now I have four or five friends I play Team Fortress 2 with, but not regularly at the same time. I haven't even gotten the "with friends like these" achievement for that game yet... I cry. Regardless, I'll probably buy that game on day one or earlier if there's any incentive. I guess Starcraft 2 is a bit far away to really get excited about, but some new details would be exciting.
As far as surprises go, here's what I'd like to see... Mass Effect 2. I guess that would go with 360 (or would it?), but I consider it PC since that's where I played Mass Effect.

The final company that will have my attention this E3 is, ofcourse, Nintendo. I don't really know what to expect, but I'll tell you what I absolutely don't want: news of a new DS, or anything like that. I think it's a bit early to make a jump like the jump from GB to GBA or GBA to DS. I might be making broad strokes when I brush aside the PSP and iPhone as competition, but I think in terms of sales (vs psp) and audience (vs iphone, which sells to older kids and adults) the DS is really untouchable right now. I'd appreciate a little more time to get some really great DS titles in before developers focus on creating games for next gen handhelds. We haven't even had a Mario Party DS worth playing (aka: online mario party DS).

So that does it I suppose. I'll be wearing adult diapers just in case there are some huge surprises, but honestly I don't think I need them this year. I think I'm ready to be a big boy.