Yakuza has had a certain amount of hype surounding it. It seemed to me that it was sort of a gangster Shenmue. The little time I spent with it brought back sour memories of Beat Down and Final Fight Streetwise. I will leave it at that.

Another E3 staple: the new VF game. The feeling when the VF3 demo was shown for the first time, seeing Dural in all her Phong shaded glory... amazing. Of course, the updates since then have all been incremental. 4 looked somewhat better than 3. 5 looks a bit better than 4, perhaps more PS3-ish. Sadly, Takarashi is still AWOL. Still, we have El Blaze. What is a fighting game without its mexican wrestler?

And the game itself. Virtua Fighter seems so... stubborn in its mechanics and presentation. I felt a distinct sense of deja vu as I watched. It pains me to say it, but Virtua Fighter 5 has, like Super Mario Galaxy, almost become a non-event.

And Enix. From the camp of "3D always > 2D": FF3 on DS. I think the government needs to commit more resources to finding the leader of that camp in his or her degenerate spider hole and end that regime once and for all.

I was _really_ looking forward to this, as I love classic FF and have a gaping hole in my heart where FF3 should be. But, instead of a beautifully drawn remake (a la FF Origins) we have what looks like a generation-one PSX game. It is really ugly. And slow. Whats next? Stupefyingly-long monster summons?

Oh, pity me. The Square-Enix Theater has sold out of tickets. I will be seeing neither the Advent Children trailer nor the Final Fantasy XIII preview. I will wander the wastlands of the booth with the other unclean, wailing and gnashing my teeth.