Last year's Electronic Entertainment Expo was primarily the "Year of the Consoles," as both the Xbox and GameCube made their E3 debuts. This year's theme seemed to be the "Year of the Sequel" if you're a PC gamer, or perhaps the "Year of the Online Game" if you're a console gamer getting your first look at Sony's and Microsoft's online strategies.

While there's a lot that most of you reading our coverage probably won't care much about or can at least read about elsewhere, there was still some good news for adventure gamers. LucasArts announced a sequel to Full Throttle, but they did little more than show a nice-looking trailer. Details will have to wait at least a few more months, and a LucasArts representative said that the game still wouldn't be ready until after the next E3, in May 2003.

Also, UbiSoft, whom you may know as the publishers of Myst III, announced that they'd signed the Myst Online game scheduled for 2003. Ports of Myst III to Xbox and the PS2 are also nearly complete. The console versions should be nearly identical to the original PC version, except with minor interface tweaks for console controllers and higher-resolution animation to take advantage of the standard DVD support on both systems.

DreamCatcher has announced several sequels as part of their new Adventure Company division. A sequel to Riddle of the Sphinx was on display, as was the next Cameron Files title, Pharaoh's Curse. DreamCatcher also says that they're working on the sequel to their best-selling adventure, The Crystal Key, but they didn't say much more about it than that. Their non-sequel titles include Curse of Atlantis: Thorgal's Quest and an arcade-adventure called Auryn Quest.

Most promising, however, was their recent signing of Syberia for US distribution. I'd seen a few screenshots that the developer Microids had previously sent out, but the actual game that DreamCatcher had running was still very impressive. Microids is also developing on Post Mortem, another adventure due out later this year.

Arxel Tribe is also working on a sequel to its earlier Ring. Finishing up this year's coverage are a taste of console adventures and Black Isle's role-playing games.

-- Jason Strautman