E3 Bastion

2D never died. It just got prettier, and trickier; using decades of in-built player training to form a kind of meta text back and forth between developer and player. Rather than disappear altogether, cheap price points and digital distribution have allowed 2D to become almost art-house video game language, demanding bizarro interpretation and on-fly experimentation. Bastion is the latest example of this trend, a lush indie show-stopper that mixes The Story of Thor style views with an ingenious on-fly contextual commentary that issues feedback based on what the player's actually doing. Could be this year's Limbo.

E3 Dragon's Crown

Frankly, Dragon's Crown demanded its own post. Internet word holds that the title began life as a Dreamcast semi-sequel to Atlus's Saturn RPG scroller Princess Crown. Distended development time on Murasama: The Demon Blade causing the game to slip a few generations. Dragon's Crown's art-direction is something else, shredded shoulders and frowns for the chaps, jiggly delicates for the girls. It's Dungeons & Dragons regulars redesigned by Simon Bisley in a full-on sex froth (Sorceress is Disaster Year's favourite). Developer Vanillaware, made up of ex-Atlus staffers, are carving out a delicate little niche catering to the apparently overlapping concerns of grubby boys, and mathematical 2D brawler fans.

E3 Prey 2

Never played the original Prey. Based on nothing at all, I chalked it up as first person shooter shovelware and carried on elsewhere, but this cinematic for Prey 2 demands attention. The banal Lost style plane event that opens this clip dulls expectation just enough for what follows to play like a delirious flight of fancy. This pops.

E3 Skulls of the Shogun

Skulls of the Shogun is a delightfully ugly turn-based strategy gobbler that sees the skeletons of deposed dignitary wandering the feudal lands desperate to chomp down on their opponents skulls. The game surfs a wave of good tell from E3 floor journalists, who've eagerly chalked up favourable comparisons to Nintendo's Advance Wars series.

E3 Asura's Wrath

With a lead that looks like Street Fighter 4's Ryu character model redesigned to convey maximum young-man rage, and a throaty, grumbly dub voice to match, Asura's Wrath looks set to be Capcom's take on God of War style divine vandalism. This clip trades off betrayal narratives, but other trailers have demonstrated a six-armed, man-sized Asura trading blows with planet sized deities. Muscle explosion! With most of Capcom's internal staff apparently knuckling down on Dragon's Dogma, Asura's Wrath is being developed by CyberConnect2, a company that specialises in action adventure anime adaptations, like the .hack// and Naruto: Ultimate Ninja series.

E3 BioShock Infinite

Irrational could'a rested on their laurels and just issued another mystery dispatch from their new steampunk setting. Instead they've released a minute and change of pure unadulterated motion set in a roller coaster world. Best of all is the tease that Elizabeth will be a persistent presence in BioShock Infinite, with her and the player character, Booker DeWitt, exchanging flirty, shirty, teamwork talk.

E3 PlayStation Vita

Hype vid for Sony's PlayStation Vita which, going on the first musical cue heard here, is a holy Roman artifact recovered from a Michael Bay movie. If nothing else, the new analog sticks look far more comfortable than the PSP's skin-shredding nub. Clip lists off a broad catalogue of first-gen software, from the tech-muscle sights of a handheld version of PS3 wunderkind Uncharted, to Sound Shapes' abstract puzzle peril. It's your usual collection of base-covering sport units, and wacky IP pitches designed to milk newfangled features. Reality Fighters aside, the weirdest looking proposal is Dragon's Crown, a mondo topless side-scroll brawler that looks like Russ Meyer's slobbering recalibration of Golden Axe.

E3 Battlefield 3

Battlefield 3 latest shill imagines a running tank battle between state-of-the-art American tanks and Soviet surplus boilers apparently piloted by the Iranian army on the outskirts of Tehran. Thanks to DICE's Frostbite 2.0 engine, this is the best looking nightmare simulator yet seen in video games, easily outstripping recent Modern Warfare 3 footage for sheer mind-numbing detailing. How much of this bleeding-edge tech reel will actually be possible on home console, or average joe PC remains to be seen, although it's heartening to see a renewed focus on the campaign element. Recent Battlefield installment haven't exactly enjoyed the most robust single-player modes. Battlefield 3 looks to be offering the kind of experience that last year's Medal of Honor promised, but woefully failed to deliver - reportage flavoured bulletins from the World War III front line, told with the visual vocabulary of YouTube atrocity leaks, and Sky News hysteria journalism.

E3 Street Fighter III Third Strike Online Edition

Street Fighter X Tekken is still looking a little too threadbare to get truly excited about, instead 20XX is pumped for this YouTube clip exporting, hip-hopping, windowboxed re-release of Street Fighter III Third Strike, my second favourite installment of Capcom's deathless fighting series (Street Fighter II' Turbo is still number one). Looking forward to face kicking folks half-way around the world with Urien's big lanky legs. It's why they invented wireless broadband Internets!

E3 Killer Freaks from Outer Space

One of the first Wii U exclusive announces is Ubisoft's Killer Freaks from Outer Space, an alien invasion chewer that sees a slobby opportunist firing wildly at monstrous gremlin state Raving Rabbids, and bloody loving it. Word is that the screen on the Wii U controller is used for aiming and target acquisition, with the sticks dedicated to movement. A next-gen light gun game then? Cool!

E3 Wii U

Continuing Nintendo's long-standing trend of excellent codenames succeeded by lesser release branding, Project Café becomes Wii U. As usual, rather than attempt to wow with dry technical jargon, Nintendo talk about the toy potential. We are sold the key point of interaction, in this case a backwards compatible controller, that resembles an iPad by way of a Wii Classic Controller, locked in an airy, safe, middle-class environment. Share prices have dipped slightly since this rather anaemic announce, but who seriously bets against Nintendo?

E3 Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

When my nine-year-old self first considered the plastic game pieces of Space Crusade, this is more or less what he imagined - armoured football hooligans relentlessly pulverising fragile alien meat sacks. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine doesn't look like it'll rely on minutely timed, frame count combat, but those orks sure do a good job exploding.

E3 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Gameplay reel for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, ably demonstrating the kind of micro-campaign the series specialises in. Many games would be content to break this sequence down into three distinct stages, not so here. Instead this segment blurs clashing objectives, guiding the player along a strict linear path, through the bowels of New York's totaled tube system and onto a floundering nuclear submarine. This is James Bond in Thunderball, and you're 007.

E3 Brothers in Arms: Furious 4

Gearbox's austere /dull Brothers in Arms is another series ripe for a volte-face, semi-colon rebranding. Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 is a trashy muddle that aims for Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, and ends up closer to 70s British war comics. Not the worst miss in the world by any means. An interactive approximation of Garth Ennis's recent sweary hairy Battlefields comics could work. Maximum optimism aside, it is rather rubbish to note that Furious 4 is yet another World War II title that attempts to white-wash the symbols of the Nazi regime from history. I know it eases distribution in several European countries if you replace the swastika with a stylised iron cross, but surely if you're aiming for maximum pulp fiction larks, and perhaps an ethical stance on sanctioned video game murder, it's better to be killing Nazis rather than just Germans?

E3 DmC

Ninja Theory's scratchy rethink of Devil May Cry continues to underwhelm, despite some sparky thuds and trip-hop beats. Above all there's very little indication that Ninja Theory, and their Capcom paymasters, have any idea what to do with the Dante character. Series creator Hideki Kamiya imagined him as a supercool smart alec, much like Buichi Terasawa's Cobra. In series reboot DmC, he's a skinny jeans wearing frowner, with ill-defined authority issues.

E3

Something a little different for the next few posts. Journey through the sights and sounds of the E3 trade show with Disaster Year 20XX. We'll shake our hands and make tutting sounds, until something shiny catches our magpie eye.