E3 2007: The Top 10 Showstoppers

6. Rock Band hits all the right notes.

We knew something big was coming when the stars aligned around EA, MTV and Guitar Hero developer Harmonix, but the result of their combined musical prowess, Rock Band, literally blew everything else off the stage. Sterile meeting rooms became sold out arenas as waves of journalists waited patiently to test their "metal" on the guitar, bass, vocals and - drum roll please - uh, drums. Without question, it was the talk of the show.

But the game itself is just the beginning of the jam. During the show EA announced heavy-metal powerhouse Metallica's contribution of not only the seminal track "Enter Sandman," but also access to a selection of other songs from the band's lengthy catalog. Those will be distributed digitally alongside hundreds of other tracks.

And that's not all. Fresh from his questionable death on The Sopranos, Little Stevie Van Zandt (otherwise known as Tony's consigliore Sil) has signed on to chair the newly formed Rock Band Music Advisory Board, which will help guide the selection of weekly downloadable songs and, for the first time, full albums.

Will this groundbreaking partnership between industry giants pay off? If the incredibly fun, accessible gameplay is any indication, take our word for it and don't stop believin'.

7. The PS3 comes home.

One of the main highlights of Sony's showing this year was Home. Introduced in March at the Game Developer's Conference, the online service is, in some ways, Sony's way of combining The Sims and Xbox Live. Now in beta with many user suggestions and comments reflected weekly in updates, Home is becoming a very interesting take on the online social space.

The basics are simple: visualize your Home space through powerful graphics tools that build high-tech mountain retreats or serene Japanese structures for your digital avatar to occupy. It's a 3D version of the basic online space Microsoft has dominated with Xbox live, and theoretically PS3 users will be able to interact not only with each other, but seamlessly with their digital worlds.

For instance, you can now gather friends together in your digital pad instead of an online game lobby to start a multiplayer session. Game titles can be launched directly from the Home interface. You can also access digital media like photos and video clips.

Another neat feature of Home is the ability to snap a photo with your cell phone and upload it directly to a virtual home environment. Unfortunately, you'll have to have a compatible Sony Ericsson phone to do so, but in the future perhaps we'll be able to download a client for other cell phones that will interact with Home.

It's not such an outrageous idea. Phil Harrison (Sony's head of worldwide game development) and Sony have obviously taken the popularity of MySpace and FaceBook to heart. With the option to create your own 'social networking' web page based on your Home content they're very keen on creating not only a virtual space for your PS3 games and media, but through which you could keep in touch with anyone via the web. It's a much more ambitious project than Xbox Live. Now we just have to see if Sony can follow through, and if the masses take to more complex digital living.

8. Quirky is the new cool.

When we first saw the original Katamari Damacy at E3 several years ago, we knew immediately that it would have an effect on the American game market. In fact, the runaway (or is that rollaway?) success of the Katamari series and games like Loco Roco has created a whole 'quirky' subgenre. This year's E3 sees the small but influential corner of gaming populated by many offbeat new titles hitting a variety of platforms.

Surprisingly, Sony's PlayStation Network is the home for several of the standouts. We've loved LittleBigPlanet from the moment we first encountered it at GDC. Now that we've had a chance to play the irrepressibly cute and bouncy game, it's obviously more than a physics showcase, and with the ability to endlessly customize characters and create worlds, it's one of the coolest game building tools to arrive in a long time.

The PlayStation network will also host Echochrome, which looks like the old-school classic Lode Runner crossed with M.C. Escher's art. You rotate worlds drawn in simple but attractive black and white lines to help a little hero navigate physically impossible puzzles. Everyday Shooter, meanwhile, is a brilliant mix of Geometry Wars style shooting, vibrant line art and music.

Dewey's Adventure for the Wii may be a pretty obvious take on Sony's Loco Roco, but it's still fun, and offers a kid-friendly game space with a focus on an intrepid drop of water, which can be frozen, liquefied or changed into gas to navigate levels. If you want a more legit follow-up to the blobby PSP game, there's Patapon (another PSP title) which in a short introductory video looks like Loco Roco infected with Worms gameplay. THQ brings the fascination with goo home in De Blob, which mixes Katamari Damacy gameplay with a coloring book -- roll up colored characters then literally paint the town to restore vibrancy to a black and white world. Quirk has finally come full circle.