Around the halfway point of Jack Tretton’s massive speech last week, Sony played a reel of assorted upcoming Playstation Network games, though did little to actually explain a lot of them at any other time during the press conference. So on Thursday morning last week, two days after the press conference, we hit the Sony room at E3 2008 to get some hands (er, in this case, eyes only) on a number of quickly mentioned games coming to Sony’s platforms. We sat down with Ted Price, President of Insomniac Studios, for a long talk about Resistance 2, got a walkthrough of Little Big Planet with Alex Evans, Technical Director at Media Molecule, we even talked to Caley Roberts, Assistant Producer of Resistance: Retribution for the PSP (all of which will get the preview treatment shortly) — and through all of that, the game that stood out the most in Sony’s lavish digs was the cutesy and humble Fat Princess. Read on for our impressions.

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The film comparisons begin quickly and don’t stop: 28 Days Later, (the new) Dawn of the Dead, even I Am Legend. There’s no doubt that Valve’s upcoming co-op survival-shooter Left 4 Dead comes with a heavy dose of cinematic influence behind it, but can it stand on its own in a world supersaturated with zombie games and flicks alike? We had a half-hour sitdown with three other journalists at E3 for a quick run through some of Left 4 Dead and we can confidently say…

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After spending the first morning of E3 2008 watching Shiggy and Jack explain their assorted “announcements”, we were glad to have a brief respite from the press conference speeches and discuss the past, present and future of the Nyko Technologies catalog. From the rechargeable Balance Board battery (”Energy Pak for Wii Balance Board”, $19.99) to the Xbox 360 wireless controller base (”Charge Base 360″, $29.99), Nyko has a wide variety of third party peripheral attachments that may or may not make your life a little easier. After our lengthy conversation with Michael Quiroz, Marketing Associate at Nyko, we’re here to let you know what’s worth your bucks and what can be left on the shelf for someone else.

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Velvet Assassin is a unique title from a unique developer, as we discovered early this past Wednesday morning in the mezzanine of the Hotel Figueroa. Developed by German dev-haus (har har) Replay Studios, VA is set in war-torn Europe, 1943. Reliving the memories of Violette Summer (real life Violette Szabo) as she lies unconscious in a hospital bed, miles from the vicious battles, she psychologically experiences the game you play. Unlike other WWII games we’ve played (and tired of) though, Velvet Assassin stresses stealth-action as opposed to the run-n-gun/stop-n-pop action we’ve come to associate with the battle worn theme.

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We had a nice time here at E3 playing with Lucy Liu - or at least a character that looks frighteningly similar to her - in Mirror’s Edge, a new “first-person action” game coming to the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC later this year from developer EA DICE. Overall, the quick-n-dirty demo was pretty fun and gave me high hopes for when I’ll be able to sit down with it for a longer period of time and play through it more casually.

The controls are rather simple, with no crazy button combinations required in order to perform fairly complex actions, which makes the sense of immersion established by the first-person perspective all the more effective. I personally didn’t have any issues with motion sickness during my time with the game, both playing and watching, though I might feel differently after a longer session and in a more intense situation within the game (I was just hopping around on rooftops all by my lonesome this afternoon). It definitely felt like a game that would be fun to just wander and mess around in, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it again for a more extensive playthrough.

Earlier we posted some screen shots from the game and initial hands-off impressions from the EA press conference, so be sure to check that out in case you missed it.

This afternoon, while strolling the main floor of E3, we ran into eponymous creator of “Shawnimals” (and ex-EGMer) Shawn Smith who was here to show people his latest creation, Ninjatown. If you’ve been keeping up with your regular dose of QP lately, you’ll have seen some screens and read a (very) little bit about it, though little could prepare you (nor us) for the thoroughly cutesy joy that comes with actually playing Ninjatown.

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Apogee and Deep Silver announced yesterday that they will be teaming up to co-publish the new, previously mentioned, Duke Nukem Trilogy. The announcement confirmed that the three new Nukem missions will be released on PSP and Nintendo DS beginning in Summer ‘09.

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The absolute, hands down, without a doubt, dumbest part of E3 is it’s lack of free wireless internet. We encountered the same problem this morning when attending Nintendo’s Press Conference at the Kodak Theater and felt it was only right to share it, albeit late, with you through our gaggle of pictures. And so here they are, in all their unedited glory for you, right after the break.

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How do you make the President of Airtight Games, developer of upcoming shooter/jetpacker/ufo flyer Dark Void, frustrated immediately upon meeting him? Easy! You ask him about another game made by another developer, like say for instance, Dead Space (EA, not Capcom! Jeeez!).

And so this is how we walked into our hands-on with Jim Deal, the man tasked with showing us, two very tired QP writers, his latest project. You may be asking yourself “Hmmm, I know I’ve heard of that developer, but it’s been a while? What’d they do again?” Remember that excellent flying game that launched with the Xbox, Crimson Skies? Yep, that’s them. And while this certainly ain’t another flying game, influences from Skies can be felt solidly throughout. Hit the break for more of our hands-on with Dark Void (minus the embarrassing anecdotes).

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We had a bit of time playing Chrono Trigger DS today, as well as a talk with Square Enix about some of the features and changes in this latest iteration. Fans of the original will be pleased to know that not a whole lot has been changed, aside from the addition of some touch-screen controls and a changed menu system (as well as a wireless multiplayer mode that they couldn’t talk about much beyond mentioning its existence). We were told that these new features could be disabled though, letting you play through the game in its original, touch-free and one-screen format, though we didn’t have any hands-on time with those settings as of this post. More details after the break.

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