OK, E3-03 is over and gone, I’m back from travelling (note to self: next year don’t travel on the weekend after E3) and its time to start sifting through the madness. Being a lazy bloke I’m delighted at how much TV coverage can be found. G4’s Pulse was probably the first show to hit the air with E3 coverage, and TechTV’s X-Play starts their coverage this weekend.

Given that I’ve just started digging in, my initial impression is that the XBox and PC are the platforms to be on this coming year. I haven’t seen anything mind-boggling on the GameCube or PS2 so far. Specifically, the two games that have wowed me so far are Halo 2 and Half-Life 2.

The most interesting sound byte I’ve heard so far is John Carmack on DOOM 3. Apparently they went with a linear, strongly scripted type of gameplay for D3. With games like GTA3 and BF 1942 making ’emergent behavior’ the current industry buzzword, its interesting to see id backing away from AI and relying on scripting. While DOOM 3 looks good, I’m skeptical about it as a game; in my opinion while id has made a lot of great 3D gaming engines, they haven’t made a lot of great games. That said, I can’t wait for it to come out, just so the DOOM 3 engine can start being licensed by other developers.