I managed to sneak into the Sony booth today, a day ahead of my appointment, to get a look at the new games. Only Sony can manage to force you to camp a rare spawn here at E3. They placed a flyer in the magazine you get here that when read under a blacklight will show a phrase that either allows entrance to their booth or rejects it. So we camped the magazine and went through a stack under the black light security uses looking for that rare entrance allowed spawn until we finally got them. Fortunately, the magazines respawn at a single spot in large numbers, so it was at least a fairly easy camp. Here are my initial impressions. Star Wars Galaxies. The game looks beautiful. While I was watching, they walked into Jabba the Hut's house and it looked exactly like in the movie, down to the dancers and musicians and even Babba Fett. I half expected to see the princess chained at Jabba's feet. Pretty cool. The level of detail paid to the landscape and characters is very impressive, and will definitely satisfy anyone looking for a true recreation of the Star Wars Universe. However, I am just not sure about Star Wars' game play aspects. It looked to me like this is more of an exploration game than a hack and slash one. It certainly looks like a far different game than any that exists right now. This is not necessarily bad, but a game that relies upon exploration, trade skills and questing rather than combat requires a lot more content and balancing than your typical RPG. That makes me a little wary. Still, I didn't get enough of a view to really get a feel for the gameplay aspects, so I'll have to wait until we get a more detailed demonstration or perhaps until they start the beta. This is still clearly the game to be reckoned with for future multiplayer online gaming. Everquest 2. It's way too early to be able to judge anything in this game other than the graphics. Certainly, the announced changes like decaying items, class trees, etc. means this will be a significantly different playing experience than Everquest. We will just have to wait until they get further along to figure out if that's a good or bad thing. We can, however, judge the graphics. In that respect, this is an amazing game. The level of detail in the characters and the dungeon is far superior to even the Luclin graphics engine. You can zoom into the character's face to the point where you can actually see the freckles on her nose. Spell effects leap out of the screen. Casting a shield, for example, causes a real three dimensional shield to form around you. And the dungeon they demonstrated just felt creepy, which is what a dungeon should feel like. There is no doubt that Everquest 2 and Asheron's Call 2 (which by the way looked just as great as EQ2, and was far enough along to show that the game play will also be great) have raised the bar on graphics in this genre. I know I'll want to play EQ2 just to see the new look of the zones as much as anything. There you are. Remember, these are just my preliminary impressions. I'm getting a more detailed tour tomorrow, so I'll be able to post up a far more detailed preview next week.