Well, we’re all a little burned out here. I mean, you all saw the media deluge last week, didn’t you? The countless trailers, the hours of presentations, the Brütal Legend lawsuit . . . it’s just exhausting.

So, we failed to deliver on the E3 commentary we promised, and I wanted to personally apologize. We weren’t sure how we were going to discuss the event as it raced by, and thanks to each member of our bustling staff of three having something major come up, it just didn’t happen.

If you’re still with us, I want to thank you for your patience and understanding. All three of us have busy lives, and I know that it’s been a constant struggle for me at least to have a full-time job and keep up the quality and consistency in blogging that I aspire to.

We’ll be getting back on track shortly. In the meantime, excuse our flakiness.

Now, let’s talk about some games, shall we?

Nick:

I’ve been rounding up notes on about a dozen games to start discussing them on the site. And while there are a couple of standout titles among the bunch — InFamous and Red Faction: Guerrilla in particular — I’m eager for a nice, carefully structured linear experience. All this open-world exploration is great, but we all need some variety now and then.

And in about ten minutes, I’m going to be playing resent Apple for announcing something cooler than my iPhone 3G while I follow the Worldwide Developers Conference. It’s a little ridiculous of me, of course, but let’s be realistic. I play games on my iPhone more than any other platform at this point, and I’m gonna feel a little snubbed when people start buying something way cooler than the thing I’ve got. Oh well. That’s simply the way of things — especially when Apple is involved.

Aaron:

E3 slightly cut into my gaming capability for part of the week, but since Tuesday I’ve been enjoying Red Faction: Guerrilla. It’s really a slow start, but the destruction-based gameplay builds on you over the first few sectors in need of liberation. After awhile you’ll be bringing down buildings strategically by targeting their weak points (go for support beams!) and discovering your favorite combination of weapons (I’m fond of an upgraded rocket launcher, an upgraded nanomachine rifle and max demolition charge capacity). It’s really an amazing title overall, but I still see it being a sleeper hit despite THQ having saturated various media outlets with marketing for the game.

Oh, and multiplayer is ludicrously fun. More on that when we post our review sometime next week.

Doug:

It’s all Fallout 3, all the time. Hoo boy — time to go find a doctor and get injected with some pre-war stuff to clear out the addiction. I think I’m only about a third of the way through the game, but I’m still completely hooked. I’m to the point where I feel comfortable with the controls, how to get around the Wasteland, and how to fight. Not being at level 1 or 2 also helps — I’ve customized my character through weapons and skills. Unfortunately, though, the enemies don’t get any easier. I do look forward to kicking ass with the Brotherhood, though, as I’ve got the Broken Steel DLC installed too.

I got a bit of time to play a few other games, too — NCAA 09, FIFA 09, Mass Effect, Super Street Fighter II HD Remix — and hooked them up in HD, too. That was a situation I could get used to.

Now let’s be honest: every other website has some kind of intimate E3 coverage planned for videogame fans and followers of the industry. You have your liveblogs, live video, exclusive interviews, previews, hands-ons and podcasts. We, a fresh and puerile (but not juvenile?) website without access to E3, can’t provide the coverage like bigger media entities can. However, what we can do is offer our analysis and summations of big E3 press bombs and try to cut the fat the best we can.

So stay with us throughout E3 and think of our content as the delicious Andes mint after a filling dinner — a complement to a main course of news from the hundreds of other videogame journalists doing the real work this week.

We’ll be posting our recaps of each big press conference and attempting a few interesting things this week in terms of  feature articles. Next week you’ll see more thoughtful content, as post-E3 lends itself well to in-depth analysis and status reports of individual genres — even the consoles themselves.

I’ll leave you with the times and dates for the five major press conferences.

Enjoy E3…we’re besieged like this only once a year, or twice depending on how interesting the Tokyo Game Show will be come September.

Press conferences for Monday, June 1st:

• Microsoft: 10:30 a.m.
• Electronic Arts: 2 p.m.
• Ubisoft: 5 p.m.

Press conferences for Tuesday, June 2nd:

• Nintendo: 9 a.m.
• Sony: 11 a.m.

Unless this is the greatest prank Hideo Kojima has pulled in his life, it looks like the konami.jp teaser site that's been counting down for over a week is working toward a Metal Gear announcement next week at E3.

The big pieces of news have come from Kojima Productions and Rockstar, respectively. Starting with the Japanese developer, its teaser site – which has seen multiple countdown clocks on top of ever-changing imagery, all the while focused on a field during a thunderstorm – has now left little question as to what Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima will be working on next. Today, the image of a young Big Boss – replete with eye patch – joined the flashing numbers and letters that have been on the site for well over a week, seeming to imply that a new Metal Gear game of some sort is due to be announced soon.

The other piece of news related to the teaser site and Kojima’s next project comes from scans of a leaked copy of the newest issue of Japan’s Famitsu Magazine, the TIME of Japanese gaming. There’s a feature story with lots of self-editing by Kojima, and accompanied by another image from the countdown that hasn’t been seen yet: Raiden, circa MGS4. It’s good news for Metal Gear fans and, with a bit of elementary math, it looks like the timer will run to zero early next week.

Oh my. The logo for the next piece of GTA IV DLC, "The Ballad of Gay Tony," looks appropriately fabulous.

A week ahead of E3, Rockstar made the other big news of the day by announcing the first details for the second piece of DLC for last year’s Grand Theft Auto IV. “The Ballad of Gay Tony” will release this fall both on Xbox Live and in a disc-based compilation along with “The Lost and Damned,” and puts players in the shoes of Luiz Lopez, who works under Liberty City night-club owner Tony Prince.

After Rockstar has cast players as both Baltic badasses and leaders of a motorcycle gang, it’ll be interesting to see what sorts of situations the club owner’s assistant gets into. It’s likely that more details will be revealed next week at E3, possibly as soon as Monday at Microsoft’s keynote press conference, so stay tuned.

Bioshock 2, the anticipated shooter set in Ayn Rand’s (very) wet dream land, has received a release date – and count it as a win for the old country. In a change from the usual conventions, Bioshock 2 will debut first in Europe. The game will be released on Friday, October 30 in Europe; it will hit stores in the United States on the following Tuesday, November 3. Curiously, publisher Take Two still lists the game as “to be determined” regarding which platforms the sequel will appear on; the original arrived on the Xbox 360, PC, and PlayStation 3. Perhaps that situation will be cleared up by next week.

Some more news briefs to close the day’s recap:

• 1up editor James Mielke has an interview with former members of Team Ninja, including Ninja Gaiden creator Tomonobu Itagaki, marking the first time they’ve really broken radio silence since splitting off from Tecmo last July.
• Two more pieces of Sony-specific PS3 news: Joystiq reports that signs suggest there may be a new “value-added” bundle of the 80 gig PS3 at Best Buy after E3 (keeping the price the same but adding two Greatest Hits games), and safari photography game Afrika is finally due to be released in the United States on the PS3. Pokemon Snap and Toto fans, rejoice!
• Lastly, and quite possibly most awesome-ly, Tim Schafer will be conducting an E3 interview for Brütal Legend over Twitter next week. Submit questions at 6 p.m. PDT on June 2 to @BrutalLegend, and read at 7 p.m. to see Schafer’s answers — #E3BL tag optional, but helpful.

"Awesome!" indeed

So, we want to extend a ginormous gracias to those of you who read Silicon Sasquatch daily and continue to direct your comrades to our corner of the web. We promise to keep bringing you things of a decidedly awesome and videogame-related nature.

Now, it’s time for the real news: Atari gets cold feet, the telenovela that is Midway’s financial woes gets juicier, we get to know Modern Warfare 2 a bit better and Valve’s Team Fortress 2 team takes a “bow.” (You’ll get the pun in a bit.)

Let's hope Atari backing out of E3 doesn't mean advertising for Ghostbusters: The Video Game or Champions Online will suffer

Despite having a very capable line-up of releases coming out this year, Atari has suddenly decided to skip E3 2009, citing a desire to explore “other selling and marketing initiatives.” Joystiq seems to believe the company’s change of heart is due to a lack of sufficient cash flow to pay the Entertainment Software Association‘s fees. That’s possible, but without up-to-date financial analysis available it’s hard to be certain.

Our cursory research implies that Atari has seen significant increases in business-related performance over the last year in comparison to its stock delisting ordeal last May. Things might not be so bad at the company, but without knowing for sure that’s quite the guess.

Maybe Atari is actually going to pursue alternative methods of marketing its Ghostbusters and Champions Online titles as their announcement said. But with E3 2009 supposedly returning to its old tricks of cacophony and neon light insanity–which always made the event a great place to get a game noticed and hyped–this could be the makings of a huge mistake for Atari.

These financial issues are totally getting in the way of a sequel to Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy

Gamasutra has a fantastic post on the developing story of creditors who are suing Midway Games‘ former big-wig board members for running the company into the ground to allegedly benefit themselves.

Sumner Redstone, quite the controversial name as far as Midway’s current situation goes, is singled-out along with daughter Shari Redstone and former investor Mark Thomas, among others.  Two of the suit’s many claims center on the Redstones intentionally investing $90 million into the struggling company to then recoup it under claims of “debt,” and also using Midway’s $700 million in tax losses to later obtain a beneficial refund.

It’s a great if depressing read, and goes to show once again that money is quite the motivator when it comes to personal gain. No one wants to see any development studio go under thanks to fraudulent actions of insensitive businesspeople. But, yes, I suppose it’s “just business.”

Digital war has never been so cover-worthy, until now

Infinity Ward‘s Modern Warfare 2 is getting a blowout piece in the next issue of Game Informer, and multiple websites have posted some of the initial details. What’s known so far sounds both promising and unfortunate at the same time. Taking place years after the last game, “Soap” MacTavish–the main character throughout the British SAS missions in Call of Duty 4–is now a captain who will serve as the new character’s mentor as did Captain Price the last time around. It’ll be interesting to see a former protagonist in a different context.

Unfortunately, Infinity Ward won’t be including a cooperative campaign option, although Treyarch managed to include the feature in Call of Duty: World at War in a very polished manner. Also, MW2 sounds like it might be shorter than CoD4′s already short campaign.

Knowing Infinity Ward’s track record, the title will likely turn out to be superb. It’s just a shame to see the team once again won’t add co-op, an ironically modern gameplay feature, into the so-called Modern Warfare 2.

While this picture isn't related to the Sniper update, I think we can appreciate an engineer in mid-burn

And because they’re just so sweet to their fans, Valve has teased its impending Team Fortress 2 Sniper update with details on one of the new unlockable weapons: The Huntsman–it’s a bow and arrow!

The extremely old school weapon will actually pin its victims to surfaces upon a killing shot; even if the target lives through a direct hit, they’ll still have an arrow protruding from their bodies. Groovy.

Valve has consistently supported Team Fortress 2 with new maps, unlockables and achievements since its 2007 release, all for free, and it’s a real testament to the company’s belief in PC gaming.

Now we eagerly await the inevitable Zelda mod using the new bow and arrow’s physics. Get to work!