There was just the one bloke dressed as a Jedi. Considering this was opening day of the final Star Wars prequel, I was disappointed that the other fans didn't make the effort the day deserved (I'm too cool for that sort of thing). Still, the atmosphere was buzzing with excitement. There was barely a vacant seat in the cinema, as the crowd sat in anticipation, simultaneously losing lower bowel control just a little bit as the iconic score blasted our objectivity away. Once the credits rolled, we all spilled onto the street for mock lightsabre battles (because we're sad bastards) and were in agreement that what we had seen was an awesome masterpiece of sci-fi pop culture.

A second viewing, however, yielded some truths that were blurred by the opening day hype and grandoise of the occasion. Turns out the film is just above average.

The point of this tedious anecdote? That it's difficult to form a proper critical reaction to anything when you're stuck in the middle of it. Everything's all blurry, like having your face stuffed into some women's chest and being asked by your mate is she good looking or not. How are you supposed to answer that in anything more than a half-hearted muffle? Similarly, commenting on E3 while having to endure the onslaught of coverage is precarious business, and that's why it has taken me this long to write an E3 editorial (and if you don't buy that garbage, it's because I'm lazy and take forever writing anything and have rewritten this piece twice because my other attempts were shit).

It is nice, though, to write about E3 retrospectively. It's striking how strange E3 actually is. It is a time so far removed from the normal course of the video game calendar, existing in its own glitzy, neon-coloured space, when normal sensibilities are dropped and the notion of restraint is lost on forumers with caps lock on. And for a show billed as The Greatest Show On Earth, this year's edition was surprisingly meek and distinctly familiar.

On the eve of the next generation, a time of dizzying possibility, we were treated to a vision for the next five years that we've all grown used to by now. All three console manufacturers, rather than trying to do anything tremendously radical, played along the same lines they'd been following before. Despite expectations for earth-shattering revelations (E3 has the tendency to remove people of their sanity), it appears that very little has changed since before E3, the show playing up to the industry's worst characteristics and, at rare times, the best.

The conferences were great examples of the attitudes of the Big Three, magnifying their usual behaviour to almost caricatural proportions.

Sony's showing consisted principally of their usually irrelevant technical statistics and colourful charts designed to convince us their console would so outperform their rivals (as if that really matters anymore). Maybe they were hoping we'd be lulled into a sleep, so obviously staged nature of the tech demos would go unnoticed.

Microsoft's conference, in turn, was a hilarious example of the empty hype they've grown fond of. The company's bullish confidence (read: arrogance) in the Xbox 360 (a pretentious name to go with the attitude) was disastrously over-inflated. J. Allard and his mate's speeches read like some parody of PR-talk, littered with pointless and entertaining catchphrases. The "Zen of gaming" indeed. The irony of backing up their claims of attracting all walks of people to the console with, erm, more shooters and sports sims was apparently lost on them. The "1 billion consumers" claim was just throwing ammunition to their critics while screaming "Mock us! We're idiots!"

Nintendo, as ever, had some good ideas but buried them in clouds of awkwardness and poor decision-making. It's hard to see what the business rationale behind the Game Boy Micro is, for example, and the decision to keep most of the Revolution information under swaps for the time being is classic Nintendo pride/stupidity (delete as appropriate). The Revolution looks to be an exciting console, if only because it's Nintendo at the helm.

This ordinariness about the show, this sense of treading worn ground, was masked by exclamatory, premature reactions. Yes, it was disappointing that Nintendo didn't show off more of the Revolution, but the idea of going online with games like Super Smash Brothers and Mario Kart in our living rooms is getting me excited. Even more promising is the thought of raiding twenty years of Nintendo history all our ease. Mark noted some of the possible benefits of this earlier, and he was right. With the Revolution and the DS, Nintendo look to continue their 'different in a good way' attitude, broadening gameplay borders with games like Electroplankton and Nintendogs and providing an alternative to the staple genre games we'll see on PS3 and Xbox 360.

Technical prowess, at the expense of creativity, is still the apparent top priority, with both Sony and Microsoft showing off more and more detailed games, with little regard to crippling developer costs. More sequels, more numbers, more technobabble and more scantily-clad women with self-esteem problems. And the games fans continue to lap it all up with undiminished enthusiasm, reacting with a delightful mix of scorn, euphoria and mockery.

So it's more of the same then. But maybe that's not such a terrible thing.

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