Some games journalists will be packing their bags this weekend, checking reservations, passports, power adaptors and Duty-Free websites in preparation for the E3 Expo, the biggest item on video gaming’s annual calendar.

Not us.

Gameplanet's team flies out to the States tomorrow in order to get on the ground ahead of the ambling herd and bring you the most extensive two weeks of LA gaming reportage in New Zealand.

We’ll be providing the in-depth coverage you’ve come to expect, bringing you news from behind closed door presentations, interviews and insights. Already we’re privy to information that we cannot wait to let you in on!

Telefrag host James Burnett will show you the spectacle that is E3, talking you through hands on previews with future titles as you watch, and introducing you to the people who make the games you want to know about.

What to expect

Microsoft and Sony will properly unveil their respective forays into the casual gaming market with two new controllers: “Project Natal” and PlayStation Move. Natal captures the player’s motions, gestures and voice commands to control games; many believe that Move will be able to transform the PlayStation 3 into a kind of “Wii HD” and back again. Will they revolutionise console gaming or be relegated to the waste heap?

Then there are the games: 2K Czech’s Mafia II will chronicle the criminal rise of Vito Scaletta. Mafia II will recreate post-war New York (“Empire City”) a 10 square mile map. Writer and director Daniel Vávra promises that the open world third-person shooter will be a “grittier, real, a darker world, and the effects are based in reality.”

Obsidian and Bethesda will be showcasing Fallout: New Vegas, a spin-off from blockbuster RPG Fallout 3. Set in Las Vegas after the nuclear apocalypse, players will negotiate warring factions and dangerous mutants in the Mojave Desert and on The Strip. New Vegas will introduce a new “Hardcore” mode that features dehydration, delayed healing and ammunition weight.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is the biggest capital project EA has ever undertaken. It is developer BioWare’s first foray into the MMO market and comes on the back of runaway successes Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect and, of course, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Set 300 years after that game, the Sith Empire, the Old Republic and their protectors, the Jedi, have established a tenuous peace that’s about to crumble. Some pick it as the first title that could credibly shake a stick in the direction of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft.

First announced at the 2009 Spike Video Game Awards, Batman: Arkham Asylum II is a sequel to one of last year’s biggest hits. Details are thin on the ground, but we know Gotham is burning, The Joker and Harley Quinn are back, Two-Face is in, so too, Mr. Freeze and Talia al Ghul. More details next week, no doubt.

Treyarch have stepped up to the plate after the furore between Activision and Infinity Ward and will be showing off the next installment in the Call of Duty franchise, Black Ops. Set during the Cold War, players will control an elite operative cleared to carry out his objectives by any means necessary. It’s a game that could finally dispel the widely-held sentiment that Treyarch are the Call of Duty B-Team.

Bungie has filled the hole left in Activision’s roster with the departure of ex-Infinity Ward executives Jason West and Vince Zampella. At E3 this year, they’ll be showing off more of Halo: Reach, their final game in the Halo series. We’ve seen the multiplayer in the beta last month, now we’ll see Noble 6, a Spartan defending the human planet of Reach from the Covenant in the years before the first Halo title.

Peter Molyneux does a lot of talking. Now he’ll have to step up and demonstrate what Fable III has to offer. Molyneux’s Lionhead has moved the world of Albion into an industrial revolution. A Royalty Sim, players will command the king or queen of Albion, and they’ll have to decide whether they’re a saint or a tyrant. The character morphing that has defined the first two installments in the series is expanded to morph locations: A corpulent, wealthy king may reign over a destitute kingdom, and vice versa.

Cliff Bleszinski is in gaming headlines as much as Peter Molyneux. Epic’s Gears of War 3, he says, “will answer the majority of the questions that players have about the history of the world and what’s going on.” We do know that Gears 3 will include some role-playing elements as the media hungry “CliffyB” believes that this is the future of FPS titles. Gears 3 will also feature four player co-op.

Killzone 3 will include full destructible environments optional stereoscopic 3D. In development at Guerrilla Games, the studio promises levels ten times larger than those in Killzone 2, including nuclear wastelands, steaming jungles and deep space. Players can negotiate these worlds with jetpacks. And guns.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood will introduce multiplayer to the stealth franchise as Ezio takes the fight to the Templars in renaissance Rome. Will it be a half-step in the series or worthy of a full retail release?

Danny Bilson, president of THQ, has revealed that Saints Row 3 will make its début at E3 this year. The game is set to take the series in a new direction, with hints that the protagonist’s hunt for Dex Jackson could take him far from the city of Stillwater, featured in the first two games.

Set in New York City, Crysis 2 will feature more freedom of choice, expanded gameplay options and more tactical combat. Soldiers will be decked out in new Nanosuits that can deploy multiple powers simultaneously before restricting. Developers Crytek have stated that they intend to surpass the first game graphically with an offering that is “catastrophically beautiful.”

A survival horror with action adventure and roleplaying features is an awfully long descriptor. Usually, that would have us concerned, but Dead Rising 2 sounds very promising. Set five years after the original, the number of zombies that can be displayed on the screen has increased from 800 to roughly 6,000. The game will also include a cooperative online multiplayer. Head to head multiplayer is to be based on a reality TV show called “Terror is Reality,” where up to four players compete to kill the most zombies in an arena.

Dead Space 2 and F.E.A.R. 3 are another two survival horror titles soon to be strutting their stuff. We know very little about Day 1 Studios’ latest: In F.E.A.R. 3, players will control both Point Man and Paxton Fettel. More details will follow.

In Visceral’s Dead Space 2, Isaac will take the fight to the necromorph on a space station called Sprawl. Visceral plan to do away with pure survival horror to ensure the game features better pacing. Isaac will even be able to indulge in passages of play where he’s at a significant advantage over the necromorph. Happily for PC fans, the game is back in development on that platform.

SEGA and the Creative Assembly will be showing a sequel of their own, Shogun 2: Total War – a reimagining of the game that revolutionised strategy gaming. Some impact was taken out of their scheduled E3 announcement by some sloppy public relations, but frankly, we just want to check it out.

That’s hardly the half of it and it all starts on Sunday night. Let us know below the titles you’re most anticipating and we’ll do our best to get recording device, laptop, microphone and camera all over it.

Stay tuned!