(Resported: Ben Barone-Nugent / Photos: Cal Lamshed)

Well, it was interesting. I’m not sure it was quite in the E3-league of things, but there were some really great games. The Avatar game looks amazing in 3D. So amazing, in fact, that my faith in 3D things has been restored since seeing the Polar Express. Disappointingly, though, 2k seemed to be absent, rendering me unable to see any of their offerings (read: Bioshock 2).

From a game-critique perspective, it wasn’t hyper-enlightening. There was a large gearing towards game design in education, and there were some developer panels. But both these things were meant for students. This is great, don’t get me wrong. But the event wasn’t purely gaming-oriented experience. However, seeing some live progaming was quite awesome.

But that being said, gaming events aren’t always about the games themselves. I did get to meet Mario:

A US marine walked be through the harder parts of DragonAge: Origins:

And I left with a desire to play Warcraft II:

All in all, it was enjoyable, just not particularly enlightening. It is also good to see that Melbourne yields a burgeoning gaming community with countless active and engaged players and designers.