If you remember one thing from E3 2012, it's probably the neck stabbing.

Over three days, attendees watched game after game showcase increasingly creative methods of murder. Press events were so bloody that Gameological began publishing an "E3 Murder Report," detailing the body count of Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo's events. "Between Microsoft, Sony, EA and Ubisoft's shows on Monday," wrote Fred Dutton of Eurogamer, "we counted roughly 78 throatstabs, 63 snapped vertebrae, 57 exploded heads, 27 shattered knee caps, a brace of disembowelings and, courtesy of Far Cry 3, a couple of immolated jungle cats." Even fans of shooters or other comba …

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E3 is loud. Whether you're in a press conference or on the show floor, the audiovisual spectacle is overwhelming. You can barely hear the games you're playing, let alone enjoy them. Announcements at press conferences are drowned out in noise - music, laughter, cheers, and oh so many hoots and hollers.

Horizon was different. Billed as "an alternative press conference showcasing a lineup of incredibly beautiful games," the event was tucked away in the basement of the Museum of Contemporary Art, far away from the bright lights and booming bass of the Los Angeles Convention Center. There, a number of developers spent about an hour talking about …

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This November, the Xbox 360 will be eight years old. The PlayStation 3 will be seven. At the 2013 Electronic Entertainment Expo, we finally got acquainted with their successors. The new Xbox One and PlayStation 4 represent a new generation of consoles, the fabled "next generation," and with them comes the tantalizing possibility of "next-gen" games. Why else would we spend upwards of $399 on a new game console?

What does a next-gen game look like, though? What does "next-gen" even mean? Going into E3 2013, we had no idea what to expect. So on Monday morning, we made it our mission to answer this question. We tracked down the most advanced g …

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Nintendo's booth at E3 contained nothing unexpected. There was a new Donkey Kong Country, Mario Kart, and 3D Super Mario, and a version of Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS that we weren't allowed to play. Meanwhile, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is getting a sequel, and Wind Waker is getting a remake. The lack of surprises is in no way surprising; people buy Nintendo consoles and handhelds to play Nintendo games.

But with each successive generation, the company is losing any semblance of a supporting cast. The NES and SNES each had a huge range of amazing third-party games to complement the likes of Mario and Metroid, but since the N …

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Nothing says "welcome to the most important trade show in the world" like a horde of zombies screaming and attacking you from behind a chain-link fence only to get bored and go back to gnawing on a blown-apart torso. If you survive this living diorama from Dead Rising 3 at the foyer of the South Hall, you're left to explore the fantastic shitshow that is E3: It's got all the giddy neon chaos of Blade Runner wrapped in the human density of a Martian Coachella, and navigating the floor requires a fundamental shift in experiential awareness.

All senses redline as you're assaulted by interactive sculptures from some of the most creative and pro …

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In the upcoming video game Watch Dogs, you play Aiden Pierce, a rogue hacker in a seemingly dystopian future Chicago - a city where every piece of technology is controlled by a supercomputer, where every citizen is monitored by a citywide operating system. It's a surveillance state which wormed its way into place by providing Wi-Fi as a basic human right, and where the government claims it can use surveillance to stop crime before it happens.

Ubisoft announced the game nearly a year ago, when its ideas seemed plausible but perhaps slightly far-fetched. But in light of PRISM, the US government's alleged internet surveillance program, Ubisoft …

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