I am not dead! But I have probably worked harder in the last few weeks than I’ve ever worked during the same time period before. I attended both WWDC and E3 in the last two weeks (and it looks like I might get to go to Comic-Con next month, which will be another dream come true, and will leave the Toyko Game Show as the last big show on my list to attend), and here are some good posts from all of that:

• I got to interview Warren Spector, gaming developer legend behind Deus Ex and Thief, about his new game Epic Mickey. What a smart guy, and what a dream job he’s landed working on this game.
• I got to meet up with the folks from Riot Games again — they’re quickly moving up the list of my favorite game developers, and I’m really enjoying jumping into some League of Legends matches lately.
• I played Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood again a few times, and still enjoy it a lot.
• I got to play the great Scott Pilgrim game, which is my second-most anticipated downloadable title this year, the first being Puzzle Quest 2.
• And I got to play Rock Band 3. In fact, let the story be told: I was in the second band in the world outside of Harmonix to play the game. I wanted to be in the first band in the world, and so after the presentation to the E3 judges a couple of weeks back, I unashamedly ran up to the stage and grabbed the lead guitar and lead vocals. We were just about to choose a song, making me the first lead guitar player in the world outside of Harmonix to play the game, when I heard a song start from the second demo setup in the back of the room. So I missed it by just a few seconds. But oh well — the game is brilliant, and I expect to play it even more than I’ve played Rock Band 2, which is a whole heck of a lot.

So that’s E3. Actually, a lot more stuff happened (I took some of the Joystiq staff out to an amazing curry place near my house in LA, and took the two guys from Massively.com out to Pink’s Hot Dogs, the legendary hot dog stand out here. I didn’t get in on any In n Out runs, but I can do that anytime myself these days, so it’s not so big a deal), but there’s so much I don’t have time to share it with you now. I’ll probably portion out all of the stories in the future. There was a particularly good story (Burrito of Fate-level, I might say) told by Joystiq’s own Justin McElroy that you should look forward to.

WWDC was in San Fran the week before, and not only did I have the best Chinese food I’ve ever had in my life (at a restaurant called Fang) and another Beard Papa creme puff, but I also wrote about:

This very fun game called Chopper 2.
• This cool game company called Imangi, a husband and wife team of developers, and their latest title.
• Square, a company that’s made a credit card reader for the iPhone. These guys are going to be billionaires, and they’re doing it by being legitimately good, or at least as good as you can get in the credit business. They’ve had some technical issues, but I believe they’ll work them out.
• An app by Kyle Kinkade called Bartleby’s Book of Buttons. The app immediately reminded me of the book from The Diamond Age, and I told Kinkade so, but he’d never actually read it. I told him to buy it in iBooks immediately and read it on the plane home, and unless he’s been lying to me, he’s really enjoyed it.

And a bunch of other things that you can find in the usual places. What fun, eh? It’s been interesting to say the least — met tons of people, heard tons of stories, and done a lot of what I think is hopefully insightful interviewing and writing. This week, I’m back home for a while, and I’m looking forward to things being calmer, but it won’t be long, I’m sure, before I’m itching for the road again. I really love covering stuff like this, and after all of the back and forth about moving to LA and taking on a whole new environment, things seem to really be paying off so far.

Oh, and while most of my E3 writing has already appeared on Joystiq (so go there if you want to know what I thought of what I played), here’s the top five games I played at E3:

Game of the Show is Enslaved. Great game — feels great, looks great, very well written, and even though I’ve only played it for a few minutes, I’m already in love with the characters and their relationship. I’ll admit, last year I was big on Brutal Legend, and that game disappointed to a certain extent. But I was also big on Batman: Arkham Asylum, and that game turned out to be great. I think Enslaved will be one of the best original titles of the year.

Rock Band 3, of course.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light — there were quite a few great co-op experiences in the show (Portal 2, was great, I hear), but this one was my favorite of the one I played. Lots of puzzles, not so hard that they’re unsolvable, but just hard and “teasy” enough that they get inside your head and you want to experiment with them and figure out a solution.

Puzzle Quest 2. They had to drag me away from that one. I thought it was coming out tomorrow on XBLA, but apparently I have to wait another week.

Scott Pilgrim. It just brims with retro goodness — I couldn’t stop smiling while I played it, and I had to really pay attention to try and keep up with all of the little references to both the comic book and just great old NES games. I’m a little disappointed there’s no online co-op (there is supposedly four-player offline, and online seems like a must), but otherwise the game is just amazing. Will probably be a day one PS3 purchase.