After last years monster E3 coverage I was more than thrilled with how the show went, however it did not seem that everyone was as pleased with the show as I was. Shortly, after last years E3, there came the announcement that the E3 that we were all used to would be no more. No more extravagant booths, no more mile high video screens playing the latest trailers, no more running of the nerds.

To say that I was disapointed was an understatement. However, E3 wasn't on the chopping block. The show was instead supposed to be changed into something new. After reading the news stories and learning how much E3 was supposed to be scaled down I became worried. Would it still cause the same level of excitement as the old E3 did, would there still be mammoth announcements made there, would anyone still care about E3?

Well now this years E3 is right around the corner and I'm feeling that same level of excitement as years in the past. This years show has me excited for a few more reasons than the previous E3s. I'm really interested in seeing how this years show comes together, how the different game companies present new games, and generally how everything will run now. Seeing the first pics of the Gamespot E3 shop on the Santa Monica boardwalk has jacked up my excitement levels a ton also. I can't wait see who drops by Gamespot and what they bring with them. So heres to Gamespot and all the hard work they're putting in to make this the best E3 for the Gamespot users. Cheers, and lets hope this years E3 is a blast like all the others.

No I'm not talking about the PDA you get in the Fallout series or that little British kid on South Park(what ever happened to him anyway?), both are awesome in their own rights but that’s not what I'm getting at. The PIP I'm talking about is the PIP function on my tv. For those who may not know what PIP is, it stands for picture in picture. So essentially I can view two things at once on my television. I can watch a movie with a small picture in one of the corners of my tv tuned to my favorite television program, and switch between them when one or the other is more interesting.

Thanks to Dead Rising I've grown to love this feature that my television holds. Not to say that I've grown bored of Dead Rising, on the contrary I love the main story mode and have been having a lot of fun with the game. It's the Infinity Mode that Dead Rising holds that has made me grow so fond of my tv's PIP function.
The Infinity Mode in Dead Rising is survival mode for the game. Unlike say, a fighting game's survival mode, where you gain a little bit of health back after each match, in Dead Rising your health is constantly dropping. Your experience bar turns into a timer and as soon as it is completely emptied you lose a health square. Cool, this makes sense, you are trying to survive in a mall full of zombies and over time you are going to get hungry and lose energy. So your objective is to hoard as much food as you can, eat some when your health gets really low, and survive as long as you can. Anyone you see is a threat, even friendlies from the story mode like Brad or Jessi. You see another survivor; you kill them, take their food and any useful weapons and move on.
So now that you have all this food and possibly the right combo of books to make the food’s healing effect three times stronger, you go find a safe place where the zombies can't get at you. For instance, standing on top of the blue overhang at Cam's Cameras in Paradise Plaza is a pretty safe place. This is the easiest and safest way to go if you’re trying to get the 5-day and 7-day survivor achievements. Periodically you'll have to go scavenge for food because there is no unlimited supply in this mode. The drink bins in say, Colombian Roastmasters in Paradise Plaza don't have infinite supplies of juice you can just reach into and get. It has two bottles of juice in front of it, and once they're gone, they're gone and you have to search elsewhere for food.
Now that you have all the food you need, you face the true enemy in Infinity Mode, the waiting. That’s right you now have to wait around until Frank's health is real low and then eat food to replenish it. Granted this takes a little while to do, about 20 minutes if I observed right, to go from a fully charged 12 square health bar(if you’re lvl 50 when you play this mode) to 1 health square. Now you eat food, charge you health all the way back to full and continue waiting in your safe place. As I’m sure you’ve guessed already this can get very boring. Getting a little tired of Infinity Mode; well let’s go save it and come back to it later. Oh wait, we can’t save it. There is no save function in Infinity mode, you just have to tough it out. So if your goal is the 7-day survivor achievement and its unlockable your going to have to play Infinity mode for roughly 14 hours straight of real time, or pause the game, go do what ever you may have to for the day and come back later.
One hour in Dead Rising equals about 5 minutes of real time, so one day takes two hours of real time to get through. That’s a lot of sitting around to do. So this is where PIP comes to the rescue for me. I’m at my safe spot, I have a ton of food, and now I throw Dead Rising on the small PIP so I can watch tv or perhaps play one of my other consoles. This gives me a chance to do something besides watch Frank look at the viewfinder of his camera every once in a while. I can play some Guitar Hero all the while monitoring Frank’s health in the corner, and not worry that I may have forgotten to check back with Dead Rising just to find Frank has dropped over from starvation.
I know this has been a really long blog, and to anyone that has stuck with me so far you really have my deepest thanks for reading all of this. This is sort of a venting/thanks post. I’m venting since I started this mode yesterday and as of right now I’m at around 5 days game time, and my 360’s been running for close to 36 hours straight, luckily its in a well ventilated spot in a nice air conditioned room. Now finally I get to the real purpose of this post, a deep heartfelt thank you goes out to whoever came up with the idea of PIP. I salute you sir or ma’am! Thank you for being a life saver in a real tedious moment of points acquisition.

Well that may not be the case in a workplace sense, but me not having much to do today certainly has led to some promos. Having so much free time today has got me pretty restless. So I've decided to dig up a bunch of commercials and promo videos and share them with the Gamespot community. I'll probably be making another sizable video upload in the next few days or so. Till then I hope you guys enjoy the videos I upped today.