At the surface Erik Svedäng's Blueberry Garden doesn't appear to be much. As far as games go, it's fairly stripped down. It comes across as a platformer, though one seemingly without a clear goal. the world is mostly white, with plants and random animals adding some color to the bleak world. Unlike a regular 2D platformer, however, your goal is not to move from left to right to get to the finish, but rather to explore and find out what your goal is.

The goal itself becomes fairly evident after your first playthrough which will almost certainly end with your demise. Find various large objects such as apples, pencils and top hats hanging around the world and stack them. Touching one of these objects (or standing next to it) will cause it (and yourself) to teleport to the stacking point. The higher your stack the more you can explore by jumping or flying over the game's geography. Some items are easy to collect; just walk over to them. Some take a bit of thinking to get to.

There first 'mission' of the game is to turn off a large faucet that is flooding the world. There's a water level to the entire thing and after a certain amount of time the water will begin to rise. Our player cannot survive underwater unaided for very long, so once the water raises above all the land (or your stack) the game sadly ends.

Helping you out during the game are various kinds of fruit. There are red berries of some sort, something resembling onions (though they grow on trees), some kind of star-shaped fruit and of course blueberries. Red berries and onions alter the terrain when you eat them. So the area you happen to be standing by can be warped by eating one. This adds an interesting element to the game since stacked items are positioned in the stack in the same position they are collected in. So if you have a pencil laying on its side it will appear that way in the stack, however if you tilt it 45 degrees by utilizing berries then it will appear in the stack tilted 45 degrees as well. Using this method it's possible to create a taller stack with fewer items.

The game's soundtrack, a simple, almost somber piano tune, adds immensely to the atmosphere of the game. Often kicking in when you leap from your stack and fly across the level, the sparseness of the world combined with the music is something of an experience. It's a very 'indie' experience that some may not notice or care for, but it made the game extremely relaxing and enjoyable for me.

At a meager five dollars on Steam (sorry non-Windows users, it's an XNA game), Blueberry Garden is certainly not a major purchase. Once you figure it out there's not much more to the gameplay (I have played it for a total of 1.7 hours according to Steam) but its mechanics are simple enough, and its atmosphere interesting enough that you may find yourself replaying it even after you've completed it.

With my recent gushing over The Last Guardian and its stunning trailer I decided to replay Team Ico's most recently released game, 2005's Shadow of the Colossus. Loyal reader(s) may remember when I reviewed it back in December 2006 after playing it for the first time. The spoiler laden 'review' I wrote is mostly my own complaints about the ending of the game, which I agree is still sort of odd, but now knowing about Ico (which I still have not played but very recently purchased) it does make a bit more sense. However, my main purpose here is to go over the game again since I feel my initial review doesn't do justice for the rest of the game.

I didn't update yesterday because nothing really happened at E3 (nothing I really noticed anyway) so now I'm mostly just poking around and seeing the stuff I missed.

One intriguing thing I found was a little DS game called Scribblenauts which is an amazing looking game that almost looks too good to be true. That trailer will explain it better than I could (especially the last few minutes where they show off sandbox mode) but essentially you type in the name of an item and it's given to you and used to solve puzzles or beat levels. It's really intuitive and inventive and if it works as advertised (and why wouldn't it, that was a live game demo) it could be pretty entertaining.

This interview on IGN with Shigeru Miyamoto also sheds a small amount of light on the next Zelda game for the Wii which hasn't been formerly announced but is clearly in the works. Miyamoto notes that the concept art of Link shows him much older than he's ever appeared in a game before and without a sword. What that means Miyamoto obviously won't say just yet, but apparently it's of at least some significance. The interview also touches briefly on Pikmin 3, which appears to still be early in production.

Update: Nintendo has released the image of Link. He's not as old as I was expecting, but certainly at least as old as he was in Twilight Princess. And of course the missing sword is evident.

Alan Wake, a game most people never thought they'd see, also has some intriguing gameplay. I'm not entirely sure what to think of it just yet, but that gameplay footage was enough to stick with me. Horror games generally tread a thin line between terrible and good, and Alan Wake looks like it might actually come out on the good side. The jury is still out of course, but as of right now it looks pretty spooky and has a pretty interesting light/dark thing going on. I could probably do without the voiceovers by Wake though. They're not quite noir enough so they mostly come across as hokey instead of awesome ala Max Payne. Also the awkward shots of the guy playing the game in this footage are weird, but just ignore that I guess.

I also want to talk about Microsoft's Project Natal and Sony's motion tracking thing, but I will probably make a longer update about that and I need to collect my thoughts a bit. At any rate, that's more or less all my random and mostly unedited E3 thoughts, so everyone who reads this (all four people maybe?) is now safe!

With the first party press conferences all wrapped up I think most of the big announcements and 'hey, remember us?'s should be out of the way at this point. A lot of anticipated games seem like they are not going to be with us until 2010, but that's cool I guess. More time to save money or something. The big press event today was Konami, who showed off their new set of MGS games which had already been shown at Sony and Microsoft's events. Peace Walker for PSP, Metal Gear Rising for 360/PS3/PC, which is I believe the first simultaneous multi-platform Metal Gear game (though I think the first game or two had a PC release). I'm kind of interested in Peace Walker, just because I like to actually use my PSP once in a while. Not a requirement, but I've only played like three games on it.

Konami's biggest announcement was a new Castlevania game, Lord of Shadows. First time a Castlevania has been on a non-portable in a decent while. Kojima doesn't seem to be as involved with it as Konami wants people to think as they attempted to play up his involvement with the project quite a bit, perhaps to soften the fact that the studio making it also produced Clive Barker's Jericho (sorry for linking to metacritic, but it does prove the point I wanted to make).

Another game that's actually sort of come onto my radar in the past couple of days is The Beatles: Rock Band of which I basically said I was sick of plastic guitar rhythm games. However, the opening cinematic is extremely cool (done by the same guy who animates everything for Gorillaz, as well as opening titles in various movies) and the gameplay trailer paints an interesting picture of the band's extremely varied career and all its famous stages. Also it's done by Harmonix, who are generally the best at this stuff, so it will probably end up being pretty cool, even if you're not a huge Beatles fan.

The new Aliens vs. Predator trailer (for a game, not a movie) is also pretty exciting. I'm actually surprised there weren't more games after the two (terrible) movies were released, but perhaps that's a good thing since this game won't have to be shoveled out to coincide with a movie release. At the very least it looks nice. Hopefully they take a page from the first two AvP games.

Finally, I keep harping on it, but Left 4 Dead 2 continues to polarize nerds across the world. I've decided that it's going to be awesome and I'll pay $50 for it and love it, though sadly most people seem to feel Valve will drop all support for L4D after its release and that they are owed more content. Gamasutra and Shacknews have interviews with Tom Leonard (L4D lead) and Doug Lombardi (Valve's marketing VP) respectively that seem to state at least somewhat otherwise. A big influx of potential L4D addon content is probably not coming, but there seem to be at least some plans in the work for supporting or integrating L4D and L4D2. Valve won't say what just yet of course, but with the game already looming five months away, I suspect we'll learn more fairly soon.

And as if that wasn't enough, Peter Molyneux is now creative director of Microsoft Game Studios Europe. Yep.

Since I missed the Sony press conference I guess I'll watch it now and tell you what I think. Weird! It's like a delayed live feed or something. It's here on Game Spot if you want to check it out. The intro is ridiculously long. Was this actually in the thing or was it added after? I see a pink PSP, did that exist before this? Whatever! This crap is two hours long, I am probably not going to watch it all. Skip to 12:00 for Uncharted 2 footage.

Uncharted 2 - I never knew much about the first one, not having a PS3, bit this one looks pretty damned awesome, though the terrible resolution of this video kind of ruins it. Either way, action-platformer sounds pretty awesome. Like Tomb Raider but without boobies! Well, like the non-crappy Tomb Raiders. If I had a PS3 I'd probably buy this.

MAG - The concept of 256 players on a battlefield sounds cool. It looks pretty overwhelming but is certainly a cool concept. Battlefield 1942 comes to mind, and that generally had around 50 players to get a suitably epic feel. The concept of having a ton of players seems to be the game's main draw, however, and it doesn't look to do anything overly interesting beyond that. Also I question how well the game will work if it potentially requires that many players, since people on the internet are unreliable jerks. We'll see I guess.

PSP Go - Not a game of course, but a digital media only PSP. It looks pretty cool, with a crazy slide out controller. I applaud Sony for building a gaming machine without any tangible media, since it would essentially be ignoring retail which is a huge thing to do. The PSP 3000 of course still exists and won't go away, so I suppose this is looked at as another option. Who knows how well it will do, but the smart move to put a way to access PSN from a PC was the obvious move to not have it fail. I'm rooting for it, though I'm not sure I'll be buying one (I already have an original PSP).

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker - PSP Metal Gear I guess. The trailer didn't offer up too much, but it looks like it could be cool. Konami is certainly whoring the shit out of Metal Gear after years of Playstation exclusives though. One game every two or three years for a long time and now like three simultaneously on different platforms. Crazy.

Nintendo and Sony had their press conferences today. I missed Sony's entirely but I watched the last half hour or so of Nintendo's. As expected, some boring stuff, but also some cool stuff.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii - I can't find anything to dislike here. A new Mario 2D platformer? On the Wii? Awesome! The co-op stuff sounds interesting as well.

Wii Fit Plus - Yeah I'll pass.

Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story - Crap, more awesome Mario games? Following on the heels of Superstar Saga (which I enjoyed but not enough to complete) and Partners in Time (which I loved), this one apparently takes place, uh, inside Bowser? I saw some videos for the Japanese version of this a while back and it looked pretty great (you also get to play as Bowser), so I'm excited.

WarioWare DIY - I never really got into the WarioWare games, and this sounds mostly like more of the same but with the added 'make your own' aspect, which could be cool I guess. I'm sure it'll be fun (the series is a pretty big seller for Nintendo) but I can't really make myself care.

Golden Sun DS - While I'm not generally an RPG fan, I did play a decent amount of the original Golden Sun (on GBA) and it was enjoyable until I just gave up. I'm glad to see they're revisiting the franchise, but I doubt I'll pick it up. RPGs scare me.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong: The Minis March Again - This is actually MvDK 3, with the first one being a kind of obscure GBA game that was a sort of puzzle solving platformer and the second one being very akin to lemmings. I loved the first, and enjoyed the second but found myself getting bored after playing it for a while. This is also on DSiWare, which is intriguing. I don't have a DSi either, so I guess even if I was super enthused about it I would still need to pick up a new DS (again).

DSi Facebook Integration - I'm sure this would be cool if I used Facebook more than I do (which is barely at all).

COP: The Recruit - I don't know much about this except it's a third person action game for DS kind of like GTA. Who knows? It could be cool I guess.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days - Hey, I don't care! What does the name mean though? Kingdom Hearts 179 Days? Oh well.

Wii Sports Resort - I want to say I don't care, but it might actually be kind of cool. At least for parties and stuff? No? Well screw you.

Wii Vitality Sensor - Uh, what? Pulse monitor? This is where I almost started to lose faith in Nintendo. I am not ashamed to admit that.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 - Awwwww yeah. I loved the shit out of Mario Galaxy, and this looks like more of the same awesome (hopefully with less swimming). I will confess that I switched browsers during this part so when I started watching again I missed that it was SMG2 and I kept wondering why they were showing clips from the first game. It's similar, though that's not a bad thing.

Metroid: Other M - This was a pretty good way to end the conference. Brawler-style Metroid game (with 3rd and 1st person stuff) made by Team Ninja? Pretty awesome. I still need to play a Ninja Gaiden game, but I'm pretty excited for this just because those games are so popular. Hopefully it'll be awesome!

Since more stuff popped up, why the hell not?

Left 4 Dead 2 (Update) - Rock Paper Shotgun has a preview up and it sheds some light on the fairly surprising game. Namely that it seems to be L4D but better, but a good amount. Bigger maps, more interesting (and larger) environments, a better AI director, more types of common and special infected and some kind of crazy backstory for each character.

I almost get the feeling that Valve wanted to put all this stuff into L4D but it was just out of the project's scope. Wedging backstories and everything else into the existing game might have just been too difficult. I'm potentially making excuses now, but I think the game will have enough content to warrant being a second game. I can't even really pinpoint what makes L4D2 seem so offensive. Perhaps it's Valve's tendency to release free content-heavy updates for many of their products months or even years after their release. All this content seems like it should have been an update for the full game? Is that really what it is? Are we somehow self- entitled to all this glorious free content? Why don't we complain about yearly Call of Duty games in the same way? Because Activision never did what Valve did? If it had been called an expansion pack would that make it better?

I don't have an answer to any of these questions, by the way, just something to puzzle over.

Singularity - In the works by Raven Software, this game has piqued my interest just due to the time/physics control gimmick. Obviously a game with a feature so central as Singularity's manipulation of time space needs to be careful not to become tired and gimmicky (as Prey can attest) or overstay its welcome. Raven has a tendency to make technically and artistically sound games that somehow lack a soul, however, which could be a problem. I'm very curious, but I feel like it could go either way.

Red Steel 2 - Didn't play the first one in spite of it being the "number one 3rd party Wii launch title" (with it's major competition being Monkey Ball and Excite Truck) though reviews pointed to it being overwhelmingly mediocre. I'm not excited about the second one, and the trailer wasn't very impressive. I'll remain that way until someone tells me otherwise.

Splinter Cell: Conviction - I never really got into the Splinter Cell series (though I'm pretty sure I'd enjoy it) but this game doesn't really look like Splinter Cell. Aren't those stealth games? I mean, using a silenced pistol is stealth and all, but falling into a room via an air duct and killing four dudes doesn't seem very subtle. Sam Fisher is an angry old man now I guess.

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle - Fuck yes! I already knew about this game of course, but seeing the trailer is also good. Gameplay looks like more of the same, which is certainly a good thing. Very much looking forward to it. The brief glimpses of boss fights in the trailer make it look like they are at least attempting to make up new, crazy boss fights as well. Game of show!

I think that's it for today.

With working on launching a crazy E3 announcement myself (though that was to do with the web site and not the game itself; that part I leave to the professionals) coupled with an unfortunately timed Paypal incident that broke a number of orders, I didn't actually get to witness what E3, day 1, had to offer until 4:30pm Pacific time. Since I finally have a short break to collect my thoughts and watch a few videos, I thought I'd randomly share what I have to say about these announcements. This is quite a lot to take in. I'll go in order.

Borderlands - First time I've seen this game in motion. I wasn't sure what I thought about the new renderer, but in stills it looked pretty nice. In motion it's somewhat less impressive. It almost seems like a game that was built to look like a standard shooter but had the renderer changed for no real specific reason. Could be fun though, we'll see. Hopefully E3 has some more footage for us.