Rage may already be the best Id game ever. After spending three hours exploring, I found that the things that separated this game from previous Id titles (aside from sunlight and a diversity of colors) were the little touches that add personality and a sense of artistry to the game. I've listed my five favorites below.

1) Jackass Vehicle Physics

Driving plays a big role in Rage. You'll be driving around from town from one enemy hideout to another -- just watch out for sudden stops. During my time with the game, I looked away for a brief second to compare my PC build with the Xbox 360 build beside it (they look damn near identical), and turned back just in time to see my ATV hit a rock. My character went flying off the vehicle and met an untimely demise on a canyon wall. It was a nice little touch that had me chuckling. I respawned seconds later right next to the ATV.

Let me get this out of the way first: there is no news about the Diablo 3 beta. Sure, I've played most of the beta's content (basically, the first half of Act One, up until the player defeats the Skeleton King who, for lorehounds, is the resurrected King Leoric from Diablo), so I know it exists in some form. But beyond letting us play it, and talking about some other announcements, Blizzard personnel wouldn't discuss the timeframe for the playable beta.

Still, the developers provided a very detailed presentation for each of the playable character classes, in addition to the auction house and our own beta playthrough. Before leaving, I took note of a bunch of questions from the 1UP Community Q&A; Thread, and can now answer them through either directly asking Blizzard on some, and from my own experience. If there are any major lingering concerns, you can either ask in the comments or a new blog I posted here. Also, I mostly play as a Demon Hunter, since ranged classes are my thing; but I also dig the Witch Doctor, if only because he can fill a screen with frogs.

This may seem a bit odd to you, dear American readers, but the European release of Monolith Software's Xenoblade Chronicles is a thoroughly weird and unsettling experience for me.

Allow me to elaborate. I'm a long-time importer of American and Japanese games. Starting in the good old days of the Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis, as you American folks refer to the system), importing was always the way to go. Sometimes import games were cheaper than official releases; sometimes they came many months earlier; and most often the games I imported never made their way to Europe at all. The list is long -- at first, I imported mainly shooters like Musha Aleste, Gleylancer, and Thunder Force III. Later I took an interest in RPGs like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Final Fantasy Tactics, Lunar, and many, many more -- none of which were ever released in Europe.

For a series always focused on flash and mainstream tastes, it's weird to look at the latest Need for Speed game (and especially EA's laser honed messaging at E3 on its new Hollywood-caliber story) and not feel a little confused. Haven't most NFS games developed by EA Black Box dabbled in delivering movie-style action experiences to players? You'd be kidding yourself if you didn't admit that Need for Speed: Underground was inspired by the illegal neon-lit street racing scene depicted in Hollywood's The Fast and the Furious, and each subsequent NFS game seemed to follow similar inspiration.

Need for Speed: The Run tries to take the story concept one step further by upping the intensity, and pushing players out of the car and into scripted action sequences. "For the first time, you can get out of the car and actually play as a character, and [at E3] we showed how we're going to bridge that gap," explains producer Alex Grimbley. "That's still less than 10-percent of our game, so this [demo] is really just to show you the other 90-percent. And obviously it's all about the racing because we're a racing game."

It doesn't happen very often, but every once in a while I come across a game that seems so similar to what I'd design for myself if I had the time and talent that it's almost unnerving. Sega's Aliens: Infestation is one such game. In fact, it hits pretty much all the sweet spots I look for in an action game.

1. It's by WayForward

I don't need games to be developed by WayForward specifically in order to like them, but I always appreciate when a game's design is perfectly matched to the creators behind them. So it is with WayForward and Aliens Infestation: This is a portable action game that will rely heavily on atmosphere and setting. Who better to create a believable 2D rendition of the classic film series than WayForward, a company known for infusing ridiculously high production values into licensed properties that have no business being decent, let alone good? This is a developer that made The Scorpion King for GBA kind of cool, for crying out loud. Imagine what they can do with something like Alien.

To be honest, my simultaneously complimentary yet sarcastic description for the original Darksiders would be, "one helluva cover band." There is nary an original element within it -- its skill lies not in innovation, but in execution. The developers at Vigil simply wanted to make, "a badass version of The Legend of Zelda," and for the most part, they succeeded -- as well as mine from the likes of Devil May Cry, Prince of Persia, and Portal. So when I get a chance to see a demonstration of Darksiders 2, I take it mainly to see if the developers again follow the, "do what's been done before, but well" path.

So I get a bit of context -- how the story takes place concurrently (rather than subsequently) with the first game by focusing on earning War's freedom during his 100-year imprisonment. About how you play as War's brother, Death -- who resembles an amalgamation of Soul Reaver's Raziel, He-Man's Skeletor, The Darkness' Jackie Estacado, and creative director Joe Madureira's design sensibilities. Yet I'm already noticing a callback to another game: Death, unlike his burly and armor-clad brother War from the previous title, moves much faster. He doesn't bother blocking -- he prefers to dodge or evade. Rather than wield a large sword, he brandishes a scythe in each arm. His speed, evasion maneuver, and dual-wielding of bladed weapons instantly echo Kratos from God of War. It's while watching this combat demonstration, and writing, "moves and fights like Kratos" in my notes, do I hear a Vigil representative talk about RPG mechanics like a loot system; which is certainly different than the last game.

In recent times, EA's FIFA franchise has become the unquestionable forerunner in the battle for soccer supremacy. A lot of this is due in part to incremental tweaks and refinement of core gameplay mechanics -- whereas before FIFA was known solely as the presentation powerhouse. A man who's played a crucial role in retooling the game's ethos is Lead Producer David Rutter. We sat down with him recently to chat about why FIFA 12 will redefine what you've come to expect from the series.

1UP: You've played at this whole "evolution/revolution" moniker quite a bit, how exactly would you define each word and their connotation in this instance?

David Rutter: When I look at previous features, we had incremental pragmatic things we needed to do to improve the overall game. This year for FIFA 12 we are actually taking steps; rather than to just fix problems, [but] actually transcend them. The reason we say "revolution" is the fact that precision dribbling and tactical defending totally change the way you play the game, and then with the player impact engine totally changing the outcomes from the interactions between those two things and it all working in perfect harmony. Plus the EA sports football club, plus the stuff we've not told you about yet that's coming in July and August, [and] that entire package is ridiculously big, massive, and totally changes the game.

This year's E3 stage demos were a particularly excruciating lot. Their wretchedness had nothing to do with the presumed quality of the games themselves, mind you. I mean, Battlefield 3 looks nothing short of excellent, but watching some guy drive a tank in a straight line through the desert for two minutes was quite possibly the most boring thing I've ever been forced to watch at a video game press event. Yet no press conference demo missed the mark quite like the one Microsoft hosted for Tomb Raider, next year's reboot of the series that catapulted heroine Lara Croft to fame. It's not that the demo was technically poor or that the game looked bad; rather, the five minutes Microsoft dedicated to Tomb Raider gave an incredibly poor impression of what the team at Crystal Dynamics is hoping to accomplish with the game.

In the course of the Tomb Raider stage demo, Lara Croft was bound, burned, dropped, injured, assaulted, and generally abused by unknown (and seemingly violent) stalkers. Unlike the fearless Lara that most gamers know, she was clearly terrified out of her mind by the situation she found herself in and spent most of the demo trying to soothe her own anxiety by nervously talking to herself. There was no combat in the E3 stage demo for the game. Lara could only struggle desperately to break free of her captors, screaming in fear as filthy-looking men leapt from the shadows to drag her away to an unknown fate.

I'll admit to being somewhat intrigued by the Vita's rear touch screen; after all, it was the main reason I stood in line for over two hours just to try out Sony's new handheld. While none of the demo stations at Sony's press conference made much use of this feature, a few days later (and with far less waiting) I had the chance to play a demo of Mr. Ink Jet, a collection of bizarre mini-games that rely entirely on the Vita's backside. Much like DS launch title Feel the Magic: XY/XX, Mr. Ink Jet seems to shy away from substance in favor of showing off some new technology, while at the same time training players how to use it. Unfortunately, coming to terms with the Vita's rear touch screen takes far longer than the handful of minutes allotted to me.

The demo began with a character creation process where I used the Vita's camera to create both a head and body for my paper doll persona; after snapping a pic of a cartoon bunny girl's torso from a book generously provided at the demo station -- as well as my own head for a touch of creepiness -- I was thrown into three separate mini games that each used the Vita's rear touch screen exclusively.

The first, a take-off of Mission Impossible, involved placing my index and middle fingers on both sides of the rear touch screen, with each of these digits controlling a different limb of my character. As my onscreen counterpart descended, I used my fingers to contort his body to avoid laser fields, dodge bombs, and grab important documents. The second mini-game had me flicking my fingers upwards to fling my character from building to building, and the demo session wrapped up with a level very similar to the first one, with enemy agents and billboards replacing the lasers and bombs seen before.

Walking into my demo for War of the Worlds at E3 last week, I didn't know what to expect and I had plenty of questions. But my biggest was this: How can developer Other Ocean adapt a literature classic by H.G. Wells into a 2D adventure game? After a brief preface by Mike Mika, head of development for Other Ocean, I got to see War of the Worlds and better understand what the game actually is -- and why the creators of Dark Void Zero chose it as their latest project.

I got the chance to play a little bit of Dead Island's multiplayer at E3 this week. There were four of us taking on a task of plastering up some posters of a missing person around one part of the island.

The first thing you do before starting up a mission is to buy and upgrade a variety of weapons. After-all, you wouldn't want to walk around a zombie-island empty handed.

Most people picked machetes and knives, while I chose to go with a few bats, clubs and some brass knuckles. Guns and ammunition are scarce, so even if you do come across some at a shop, it won't be cheap.

Star Wars: The Old Republic's genre doesn't make it the greatest game to be demoing at an event like E3. It usually takes hours upon hours before one can even start to get a feeling for what an MMORPG can offer. Well, it was here at E3 and I played as a level 26 Imperial Agent for the short 20 minute hands-on demo. Here are a few thoughts from my brief time from the game:

• The demo takes place on Tatooine in the Judland Wastes and my character has the capability to ride a speeder across the desert, giving me a very brief tour of how large this planet will be for the game. It seems like a single planet is roughly three times larger than some of the basic zones in World of Warcraft.

• Even at level 26 there is still some rudimentary quest design in place. For this demo our group had to kill 20 Tuskan Raiders to fulfill one of the quests that was assigned to us before the demo began. Keep in mind, the demo was designed to give players a very brief and quick taste of the game so the next round of people could be shuffled in for their turn. I was never able to play the main quest due to my time limit with the game; I just kept killing Raiders instead.

• Having killed so many Raiders it gave me a chance to play around the with Sniper's abilities, such as deployable cover. This is an ability that the Sniper has by default, allowing them to deploy a small shield and instantly be able to take cover behind it and dish out damage from relative safety -- until an enemy gets a little too close.

• The Sniper class itself works best at range and relies on their companion to deal with enemies that may get too close. If that doesn't work, a simple grenade with some AOE damage will take care of any nearby foes.

• Picking up a quest related item does not appear in your basic inventory. Instead you could find this item in the "quest tab." It's an idea that's good in theory but many of the other players (including me) couldn't find where the quest releated item went to -- it had to be activated in order to continue the quest. Having this tab flash when a quest related item is picked up can easily remedy this minor interface gripe.

• I still don't want to play as a Jedi. Even though my time with the Sniper class was incredibly brief, I know I will enjoy playing as one of these agent classes instead of a Jedi or Sith. I feel more attached to characters that are not bound by a code or by ethics, but are designed to use tech and other weapons to gain an edge in a fight.

Other than the planet and the class there wasn't anything new here that we haven't explored in previous demos of the game. Hopefully we'll have a more in-depth hands-on session later in the year to give us a proper updated impression on the game's development in a galaxy far, far away.

We were treated to a brief demo of Mass Effect 3 at E3 this week that showed off many of the elements EA displayed during their conference presentation. Mechanics such as moving from cover to cover, melee attacks, vertical level design, and a range of new movements for Shepard like leaping across gaps and traversing ledges were all on display. In addition to that we were treated to something that wasn't revealed until now: The beginning of the game.

Before the demo starts it's explained to us that Shepard is back on Earth trying to warn the world about the impending Reaper threat. Of course that means the Reapers decide to attack and Shepard is forced to spring into action. Throughout this segment we see Shepard paired with Captain Anderson as the two characters move through the erupting battlefield around them.

Tina: As an avid, Modern Warfare gamer, I took a great liking to Spec Ops mode in Modern Warfare 2. And I'm glad to see it's returning in Modern Warfare 3. Activision showcased Survival mode, a brand new addition to the Modern Warfare series. Mike Nelson and I had the pleasure of witnessing, nay, engrossing ourselves in an experience that kept us asking, "wait, did that dog have C4 strapped to its back?"

Mike: I know right? It was this kind of absurd component but at the same time I get it. Since you kept surviving waves and waves in this mode, the enemy has to start trying just about everything it can to take you down. If it means strapping C4 on the back of a dog, well, I guess that's how it's going to go down. Perhaps if you kept surviving C4 would start dropping from the sky because there are an infinite number of rounds in this mode. So beyond the C4 being strapped on the back of dogs, what else stood out to you?

It's no secret that Star Trek video games have a very checkered past. There have been a few gems like Judgement Rites or Bridge Commander but these are diamonds in the rough. This new game -- known simply as Star Trek -- intends to bring a lot more of an action-focused approached, a genre that Trek hasn't been involved in since Elite Force II. At E3 this week we had a chance to see this proof of concept in action.

Seeing the game in action will no doubt conjure up memories of Mass Effect's shooting mechanics. The difference for Star Trek will be its ability to make a consistent co-op experience, one that allows you to play as either Kirk or Spock with the characters having their own unique approach to the battlefield. Kirk is designed as a very brash and bold character, designed to charge into action and appears to have the most firepower. Spock on the other hand will have more tech and stealth-related abilities like being able to put enemies in stasis.