It wasn’t! But still, it was absolutely my pleasure to write some coverage for PC gaming blog Rock Paper Shotgun, not least because it’s run by several gentlemen I respect very much indeed. The posts are less analysis heavy than my coverage for CBC, instead interviews, hands-on impressions and so on written with a sense of humour about it, but I thought the different style would suit RPS better.

RPS-ish at-ish E3: Day 1, Part 1 - MS - This first post has a “letter” feel because I initially wasn’t given my own posting title. But they retroactively changed that so it seems a little silly. As I said, this is broader and more light-hearted coverage than what I wrote for CBC - including reference to “speed dobbers” and cute sparrows.

RPS-ish At-ish E3: Day 1, Part 2 - EA - I witter on about film in this one at the beginning, but do redeem it by talking about games for the rest of it. Well, apart from the bit where I express my surprise that David Lynch has created a monster in Spore - something I still find surprising. What on earth would he make of the iPhone version, eh?

You may note that I blogged about E3 for the Canadian Broadcasting Company! Exciting, no? Why I’m mere steps away now from becoming the “go-to” guy when Jian Ghomeshi wants someone to cover video games on Q, or when George Stroumboulopoulos needs someone for the same thing on The Hour. Or at least that would be the plan, anyway… Though realistically I’m probably not much closer to it.

Anyway, my coverage! I decided not to go for the obvious route and write up “this is what happened” or “this is what I played” blog posts, and actually write a small analysis for each one. I think it kind of worked out, though it was a lot harder than I thought (writing commentary while your brain is fried from over-stimulation is… difficult, let’s say.)

Microsoft looks to Wii to take on PS3 and Xbox gets lips, Final Fantasy XIII - this was originally just one article, but was sub-edited into two. As I was writing for a specifically Canadian audience (not something I often do!) I wanted to make sure to lament that the Netflix thing wasn’t announced here. Which kind of sucks.

EA’s Dynamic DNA - I concentrated on the announcement of NBA Live ’09’s Dynamic DNA from the EA press conference, because I thought it was roughly the most exciting and “new” thing they talked about. I suppose it would have more resonance with the CBC audience if it had been announced for NHL ‘09, though.

“In Barbie Girls, players create an avatar, design their room and can then explore a virtual world where they can earn ‘B Bucks’ play games, watch videos and chat with other girls in a safe environment.”

Yep - I’ve played a Barbie game. But then I’ve also played a Bratz game, so…

Anyway, I’m LA for E3 all next week, so I’ve got an excuse for not updating my site properly for a while. But there will be interesting updates, I’m sure, when I return!

This column has actually made me wonder if Pyramid Head was a kind of in-joke at Konami. After all, they’d put Moai heads into a lot of their games (famously Gradius) - so why not have a “pyramid head”?

It’s a possibility!

I mentioned before my addiction to Team Fortress 2, and it’s gotten so bad that I’m randomly mentioning it in interviews, like this one.

Yep, I’ve been doing a lot of Q&As again!

Fun fact: I used to work for Babel’s direct competitor in the UK, Absolute Quality. I didn’t mention this during the interview.

“Kingdom of Loathing probably isn’t the kind of game you’d plan to look at if you were trying to work out how to build a community in your MMO, but it only take a short time playing to realize such an assumption is dead wrong. Kingdom of Loathing might be more of a ‘game’ than an ‘MMO’ but as either, it easily outclasses many of the competition.”

I liked Kingdom of Loathing! As a single player game it does get repetitive quicker than some other browser-based RPGs (like the excellent ForumWarz) but it’s fun for a while.

I was thrilled to do this interview, because I’ve been eagerly awaiting the video game version of Blood Bowl. I never actually tried Chaos League (though I can’t really remember why now) even though Blood Bowl is easily my favourite of Games Workshop’s oeuvre (well, of the stuff I’ve played, anyway.)

I actually have a painted Orc and Human team sitting at home in a box somewhere. It’s great, and on the basis of this interview I do think the video game is at least going to be authentic enough to please me, though whether that will translate to sales I don’t know.

Nothing came out this week, so this is a very boring Film Friday. Please ignore it!