After my nice, easy going day on Monday with only four appointments and a couple parties, Tuesday felt a bit more harsh. Waking up much earlier, at 7AM, I started my day by going to the GamesBeat Conference, held by VentureBeat, which focused more on back-to-back speakers and discussions among four or five people up on stage.

Dean Takahashi, the guy in charge of Media and Digital Entertainment at VentureBeat, got me a chance to show up and cover the Conference for a couple/few hours (Which I am truly indebted to!). GamesBeat showcased some of the top-notch movers and shakers of the industry, and discussed more business and economy among the round-tables. All-in-all, GamesBeat allowed networking outside the large auditorium and served breakfast, which I am also indeed grateful for. Best line of the day is from John Smeadly, President of Sony Online Entertainment: “We all know Yugi-mon and Poke-oh... errr... I mean...”

I left, trying to make it to a meeting with Team17 (Best known for the fabulous work on the 2D-viewed, war game, “Worms”), but was hindered by the lack of cabs near Mission Bay Conference Center. So, after a nice mile-long hike towards civilized territory, I caught a cab and made it to the French-run, “Games Connection”, where Team17 found something to do for a half hour and moved my appointment slightly ahead (Which I thank them for!).

Worms 2: Armageddon is great! Very nice controls, exquisite visuals, and some of the best British humor this side of Monty Python and Douglas Adams. The worms watch rockets fly by their heads, and scream if one is about to hit them. The fan-favorite terrains and weapons are brought back, including the Holy Hand Grenade. New weapons, games, and features galore. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the Worms iPhone game with them, but expect full reviews soon enough.

Also demoed with Team17 was Alien Breed, a remake of one of Team17’s older IP’s, which I got to demo with them. Amazing retro-style game play brings back fond memories of childhood. It’s a top-down shooter with a survival-horror tendencies. Your main source of light is a single flashlight on each player’s helmet, as well as random lights on a broken down space station, limited ammo, and ****-loads of aliens in each room surrounding you on all sides. It’s retro-shooter meets Dead Space meets Alien.

After a nice stroll to the Press Room for fuel, I headed on over to the TriplePoint PR office for my meeting with Mind Fuse, who showcased their new Steam Punk-themed, free-to-play MMORPG, “Gatheryn”. The game is designed to allow casual gamers to transition easily into a massively multiplayer game. There is absolutely no violence in the entire game, but all conflicts, quests, competitions, issues, and processes are done through casual game-styled mini-games, very reminisced of going to PopCap Games, which is really neat looking, minus the fact of ZERO violence.

Soon after, I met with Paradox Interactive to be shown an entire slew of games in progress. The Swedish developers each sat down with me to give a ten to fifteen minute look at each game. Elven Legacy was the first game to be shown, which is a very tactic-styled game, similar to if Warhammer 40K’s figurine game was directly ported to be a computer game. Majestic 2 was next up, which seems to be a SimCity-style environment, mixed with Real-Time-Strategy components to be more of a “Defend the Base”, than “Go burn and pillage other bases”.

As a fan of the board game Risk, Hearts of Iron 3 holds a deep excitement, becoming an RTS-style, over-achieving, intricate form of the Risk board game, while sticking to a very well researched World War II theme, having nearly 14 thousand provinces around the world to conquer and become the ruler of the entire world, and still having to deal with alliances, economy, politics, and how much your own people like you. Next up was East India Company, which is a very unique ship-battle game, where you can either be in third person to control your entire fleet, or zoom in to actually be on a ship during a major battle, giving great detail to each person’s expressions and emotions on the ship. I was probably most impressed with the water effects, which looks like they were picked up right out of the Pirate Of The Caribbean movies.

Next is a showing of the expansion to Mount and Blade. M&B seems to be a much simpler version of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, with more of a storyline to become king through any means you find necessary, but applying RPG, strategy, and sandbox elements to present a finely-tuned game. The final game I saw was probably my favorite: Stalin Vs. Martians. SvM is a humorous RTS game aimed to be among the Soviet Army during an alien invasion. The music is European, high energy, funny music that tops off an already funny game. Voices and visuals present a game very well worth buying when on shelves, if you’re a fan of European humor. Just remember: “My name is Ivan and I love you!”

Paradox wouldn’t let me go without all of the games available for review, as well as two others, Restaurant Empire 2 and Penumbra Collection, as well as their eternal gratitude and friendship. Very genuinely enthusiastic group. Expect more detailed reviews on each game as I get a chance to play them (This could be a while, since many of them are in pre-Alpha stage).

After a rest stop at the hotel to drop off swag and relax for a bit, I made headway to the Deep Silver party, which was massive. Deep Silver is best known currently for making the Duke Nukem Trilogy for the PSP and DS. The theme of the party was Duke, all the way down to the coasters, napkins, and Wanted posters on the walls and columns. The party was rockin’, meeting up with Shoe and Raychul (BitMob and GameGirl, respectively) yet again and watching a horribly comedic performance by the Hip Hop Gamer Show, which is a rapper who raps about specific videogames and gaming, in general. It wasn’t too bad once everyone got used to it and even had some good beats that could make someone get jiggy wit’ it (Please don’t sue me, Mr. Smith!). The food was fresh from Popeye’s Chicken, the snacks were composed of Twinkees, Ho-hos, and Candy ropes, and the bar was fully open and free. All in all, the party wasn’t too bad.

I left, snagging a few of the posters on the wall, and made my way to the Outspark ****tail Party, which was held at a bar. Nothing of large interest happened, seeing as it was later in the evening when I got there. I met the owner of Digg and the CEO of Fuel Games, who showcased some of their games to me on his iPhone (Expect a review of several Fuel Games sometime soon!), which included a “Don’t touch the wall”-style labyrinth game and an official Vans Skateboarding game, which is small, but easy to get in to, if you’re a fan of the Tony Hawk series.

After a long day’s night, I made my way to the hotel for a good night’s sleep (after sorting the swag of the day) in preparation for the longest, most filled, day of the week, Wednesday.