Today, E3 kicks off with a slew of media briefings. Microsoft, Sony, Ubisoft and Electronic Arts are all showing off their goods later today, and we'll be there, of course.

Thomas and Chris arrived in Los Angeles last night. Later today, we're picking up Tony and Greg from the airport, and Ricky and Brian are local, so that makes things easy.

We've loaded up on granola bars, water, Coke and lots of candy for a massive sugar rush, so we're good to go for the rest of the week. Not saying we'll be the beacon of health by the end of this trip, but we'll make do. :)

Let the games begin...

News will be rather quiet for the day, as it is Memorial Day in North America, and most businesses are closed. However, we'll be around to cover what's out there in between eating ribs, cornbread casserole and creme anglaise for dessert.

No dice on the movie watching yesterday. Maybe we'll have better luck — read less lazy — today. We did watch a few episodes of Hawaii Five-0 and brought down the DVR to 20%! Go team!

Our large-scale attack on our main enemy in Stronghold Kingdoms was a success. After 10 hours of constant attacks, one of the enemy's factions surrendered. Now we are working out a peace agreement for them to either support us in the Governor election or just join our house.

Most of our day was spent doing errands, cleaning up and going out to dinner (Outback gift card ftw!). Oh and a quick pit stop at Best Buy to get some new speakers, since I managed to vacuum clean up one of the wires from my old set after the window installers left. Mauled that thing!

We're debating about whether to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean or Bridesmaids, but one thing is for sure: Supernatural season finale!

I'll also need to keep an eye on my villages in Stronghold Kingdoms since our house has planned a major offensive that the game has never seen. It's a little contest among our factions (we've got about 10) to each send out 100 attacks to the enemy in one day. If you take into account that on a normal day, you send out about 30-40 for an entire House, we hope for a total of 1,000 attacks. Booya!

Elfender is a tower defense game  where Players can summon various monsters and elves to fight against other gamers and NPCs.

In Sept. 2006, Viacom's MTV Networks acquired Harmonix after it had been developing Guitar Hero titles for RedOctane for several years. Wanting to take the music game genre further Harmonix wanted to add more instruments and came up with Rock Band in late 2007. However a $299 million deficit in Nov. 2010 prompted Viacom to sell off Harmonix and last week investment firm Columbus Nova acquired the developer, in particular it's subsidiary, Harmonix-SBE Holdings. Unfortunatly some will not make the transition as Harmonix laid off 39 of its employees, primarily in the Q&A department.

Wow, that was a rather quiet news day yesterday. There wasn't much happening at all. I'm afraid that we're going to be seeing more of those from here on out, as most companies are pushing out their holiday titles, and not much new stuff will be coming until next year.

While most normal businesses have their holidays over the summer, the video game industry usually shuts down over the holidays. Maybe the Video Game Awards will bring some excitement next month ....

Blood Bowl is a "game" of American football played by the insane warriors of the fantasy Warhammer universe. The Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition adds 12 new playable races, new and more impressive stadiums, a new Story mode, as well as many additions and updates.

Nothing too exciting happened yesterday, work was dragging, weather was crappy, just one of those days you want to go back to bed.

If things continue like that today, I'll try to get into replacing the case on my gaming desktop, get some better airflow going.

This weekend we're going to go see some movies, Salt, The Other Guys and The Expendables are all on our to see list.

E3 is over! Long live E3! Next year's date has already been announced, so the countdown has begun.

We went out to dinner with the crew to blow off some steam, and tomorrow, most of the guys are flying back to their hometowns.

While we were mostly hiding in the press room doing various updates, we did venture out yesterday afternoon for some meet & greets with various PR people we work with on a daily basis, but we also ran into Steven Seagal and Sam Witwer.

We'll be sticking around in L.A. until Saturday, and then on Sunday, we're off to see Iron Maiden!

Apart from certain PR people being (rightfully) upset with me for missing yesterday's Pixar event, today went quite well. Got to see Mafia II with some hands-on time, and there are quite a few new bells and whistles that we'll be telling you more about next week when the official announcement is made.

Tomorrow, we're getting the first hands-on time with Epic/People Can Fly's Bulletstorm, so that should be quite an experience, and Cilff Bleszinski, the artist formerly known as CliffyB, will also be there.

Red Dead Redemption is coming out soon. I'm so jazzed about that! But where is my announcement that it is coming to the PC? What's keeping you guys so long?!

Our tickets for the Faith No More concert arrived! I'm very excited about that concert, since I haven't seen them in a long, long time, mostly because they split up several years ago, so I'm looking forward to it.

Not much else is going on. Our press trips are over for this week, and we look ahead to GDC for the next batch of gaming goodness. This weekend will start in style with, hopefully, a good movie, and apart from that, nothing has been planned, so maybe we ought to catch up on our DVR, and if there's any time left, we can squeeze in some sleep.

Today is a big day with lots of things on the agenda! We have to decorate our Christmas tree that's been sitting bare in the living room, or else the 25th will come around and Santa will have nowhere to leave the presents.

A friend and I are going to drop by a few stores to check out new monitors, but I'm still debating on whether or not to get a widescreen since not too many games actually support that format anyhow.

Another big Tuesday shipping day. Good thing we don't have to pay for our games, or I'd be dirt poor by now! The new Scene It? and LEGO Indiana Jones 2 totally slipped my mind, but hopefully we'll be able to check them out soon.

My eBay-purchased zapper laser guns shipped, but they are coming all the way from Hong Kong, so it'll be a few weeks before they get here. I can't wait! Ever since I was a kid, I've always been drawn to the lightgun games, like Mad Dog McCree, and now I'll finally have my own setup.

Not much TV watching today, but we did manage to squeeze in the latest House. Hopefully, I'll be able to make more headway into the ever-increasing DVR backlog.

Reakktor Media GmbH announces the abrogation of the current insolvency proceeding. The insolvency plan, suggested by insolvency administrator Rainer M. Baehr, was accepted by all creditors. Due to the support of a solvent investor, the financial reorganization of the company could be carried out successfully and all jobs have been saved. Despite the insolvency proceeding caused by the insolvency of Reakktor’s parent company, its Space Action MMO Black Prophecy will be released next year and set new standards in the genre.

StarCraft II will feature the return of the Protoss, Terran, and Zerg races, overhauled and re-imagined with Blizzard's approach to game balance, designed to be the ultimate competitive RTS game. At Blizzcon's StarCraft II lore panel, Blizzard revealed that Battlestar Galactica star Tricia Helfer will voice Kerrigan.

Tripwire Interactive's Killing Floor is a first-person co-op survival horror, set in and around London after a mad scientist’s “specimens” have broken loose and gone on the rampage.

Independent Welsh PC adventure game developer Arberth Studios has taken back all North American rights to its title ‘Rhiannon: Curse of the Four Branches ’.

Alan Wake places gamers in the role of the best-selling suspense author, Alan Wake. He escapes to this small town to recover from the mysterious disappearance of his fiancée and comes face to face with his darkest nightmares. An online petition (endorsed by Remedy) has been started asking Microsoft to explain why it suddenly decided to halt the PC development, and strongly urges them to reconsider.

echoshift a shares echochrome’s unique puzzle concept, however brings a new gaming style as well as visual appeal to players who are tasked to strategically maneuver a mannequin-like figure through each level while solving intricate puzzles within a certain amount of time.

With an extensive range of features Runes of Magic prepares to redefine the standard of free-to-play MMO games. Even at the beginning Runes of Magic conveys its absorbing story in over 1,000 quests embedded in an atmospheric world.

A deadly symbiote invasion brings total devastation to the streets of New York City in the next Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, where players have ultimate control over the city’s salvation and Spider-Man’s destiny. Fans who pre-order at Best Buy will receive an all-new collectible art book filled with unique art.

Slitherine has announced it will start self publishing its own titles starting January 2009. The new publishing house has already started a strategic development plan to approach the retail market with a fully developed release schedule starting Q1 next year.

The second complete album is coming to the Rock Band downloadable content catalog: The Cars’ 1978 self-titled debut will be available Tuesday, May 27. The Cars was released 30 years ago this month and spawned a slew of new wave classic hits.

Last week it was revealed GTA IV sold 3.6 million units and earning US$310 million in its first day of release, which earned itself the title of Highest Grossing Video Game in 24 Hours and the Highest Revenue Generated by an Entertainment Product in 24 Hours.

Stargate Worlds, an MMORPG use Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 technology, provides players with a form of ranged combat unique to MMORPG that will take full advantage of modern and science fiction weaponry, cover and terrain. Developer Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment has set up a subsidiary FireSky to publish Stargate Worlds, as well as other unannounced titles.