Rock Band 2 clearly commands a great deal of attention at E3 2008, but the unsung heroes of the game are its peripherals. Of course, being a hardware guy, I feel that way about all doodads. But in this case, the guitars, mics, and drums really do contribute to the feel of the game. So when we found out that Harmonix partnered with Mad Catz for peripherals, we were totally thrown for a loop.

Most of us know Mad Catz for their budget oriented controllers. However, both companies stated in no uncertain terms that all products related to Rock Band will be made with the utmost quality in mind. We were told that around eighty percent of Mad Catz's resources were thrown at perfecting Rock Band related products. The folks at Harmonix also said that there had been lots of back and forth between the companies. Mad Catz plans to release an entire line of premium Rock Band peripherals, and even some totally new designs that are exclusive to them.

Mad Catz decided to utterly blanket the Rock Band franchise with products. You'll find bass guitars, guitars, portable drum kits, premium guitars, and premium mics in their stable of products. We got to see a few of the products, but we couldn't play with them.

The company partnered with Fender to make full size replicas of the guitar and the bass. Both will be made from actual Fender bodies, and will have the full heft of a real guitar. The bass guitar will also feature dual strum bars to replicate the manner in which bass guitarists actually play. The over engineering of these guitars became readily apparent when we were told that these guitars were meant to handle up to 2.5 million presses before failure; standard Rock Band controllers fail after 1.5 million presses. Expect these full size replicas to cost a few hundred dollars.

We got to take a peek at the wired Portable Drum Kit. The kit doesn't have a stand, but that's what makes it portable. The four drum pads have suction cups on their backs to keep them stable on table tops and level surfaces. Mad Catz states that the drums should be good for up to one million hits. The accompanying kick pedal also folds up flat for easy transport. The company even thought to include two collapsible drum sticks.

The Premium M.I.C. adds a much needed control interface to the microphone. The wired microphone has a full set of Xbox 360 related buttons that run vertically along the side of it. Playing any other game with the microphone would be ludicrous but it's perfect for navigating the menus in Rock Band. There's even a switch that locks the buttons to prevent accidental presses during play.

Mad Catz will also be the only producer of cymbals for the Rock Band drum kits. You'll be able purchase a single cymbal for $15, or a set of three for $30. The cymbal kits will come with extension poles, clamps and colored wingnuts to match the color of the drum kit.

With any luck these products live up to our hopes. We're pretty sure they will after the level of trust and commitment we witnessed from both Harmonix and Mad Catz.

At E3 2008, Novint came to show off their new Pistol Grip for the Falcon controller. We covered the Novint Falcon in depth a little earlier this month. If you're not familiar with the Falcon, the realistic tactile feedback is its biggest selling point. The controller simulates the kickback of guns so you know if you're firing a shotgun or a Magnum. The controller even does a great job of simulating different walks, runs, and jumps, amongst many other effects.

Our preliminary experiences with the Pistol Grip made us rethink the product greatly. As the name suggests, the Pistol Grip is indeed shaped like a gun. It has a working trigger button, as well as three side buttons. We got to try out the grip on Half Life 2 and really got into the game's feel and movement much more so than when we tried out the Falcon with its default ball-like grip. The pistol shape better fit our hand which made turning and aiming much easier. The Pistol Grip will be available for $20, or you can opt to purchase a bundle that includes the Falcon, the Pistol Grip and Valve's Orange Box for $150.

Logitech already has the Driving Force GT Wheel for the PlayStation 3, but sometimes you just don't have the space or the budget to handle the official wheel of Gran Turismo. PS3 racing fans looking for a more affordable wheel with fewer wires will want to consider Logitech's new Driving Force Wireless.

The Driving Force Wireless takes up far less space than the GT because Logitech has pared down the controller to a single wheel that sits in your lap. The wheel still has force feedback, so you'll need to plug the unit into an AC outlet though the wheel itself doesn't need to be wired to the console.

The wheel works with both the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation 2. You just need an open USB port for the wheel's 2.4 GHz wireless receiver. The wheel has a small compartment in the back to hold the USB wireless dongle when it's time toput away the wheel.

The Driving Force Wireless will be available this August for about a hundred bucks.

Thank you for visiting the Restaurant du GameSpot. On today's mid-afternoon menu:

• Chocolate-covered strawberries
• Cookies
• Brownies
• Ice Cream
• Sorbet
• Chocolate Sauce
• Cream
• Nuts
• Crumbled Oreo biscuits

One of the most interesting areas of the E3 show floor was the Indie Games Showcase. We headed over to see some of the new ideas on offer.

If you're a fan of original and interesting concepts, then E3 has a section for you. The curators at the Indie Games Showcase collected a sample of games that all had something novel or interesting to them, and we spent some time checking out some of the best. With many major publishers circling the show floor, there's every chance that some of these games could be picked up for services such as Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network.

levelHead
Put together using Ubuntu Linux, a webcam, and a printer, Level Head is a neat new puzzle game from Spanish artist Julian Oliver. The game works via image recognition, using coloured cubes printed with 3D bar codes that are interpreted by a connected webcam. When the software reads the image, it turns it into a 3d maze onscreen, and you tilt the cube itself to move a man inside. Once you've made it through a series of doors, you move on to another coloured cube, and you keep going until you get through all of the blocks.

Less of a game and more of a digital art experiment, the software is open source and distributed under creative commons. This means that people are free to use and adapt every part of the project as long as Oliver gets a slice of any profits made. It's still in beta and currently under development, but the finished product will be playable on Linux PCs, and the maps for the "fufdicial blocks" can be printed out with standard colour printers. The puzzles themselves were fairly simple, but the concept certainly has some promise.

Ibb & Obb
Created by Richard Boeser from The Netherlands, Ibb & Obb takes the Unreal 2004 Engine and makes a side-scrolling platformer out of it. Not the most obvious use of the engine, we have to admit, but the game works in co-op and uses some of the gravitational principles of Mario Galaxy. Certain gates will flip you upside down, whereas others will be colour-coded so that only one of Ibb or Obb can make it through.

We played through the one level on show at E3 in co-op, and the interplay between characters and the gravitational puzzles are certainly a lot of fun. The game is still rough around the edges (the Unreal logo even appeared during the loading screen) but the characters are charming and the cooperative elements work well. Boeser is hoping to have the game published on a console and made available for download, and in the meantime he's talking about the possibility of making a Flash version too.

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom
This mind-bending puzzle platformer is the brainchild of former USC grad student Matt Korba. He created the game as the thesis project for his interactive media class, and now it's being handled by Korba's indie studio called The Odd Gentlemen. Along with producer Paul Bezzella and lead engineer Asher Vollmer, they're now shopping the The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom to the three big digital-distribution markets: Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and WiiWare.

The main character in the game is the titular P.B. Winterbottom--a man who, to quote Bezzella, loves two things: "pie, and distorting time and space to get pie." You can record your movements in the game, which creates a running loop of your actions for that period of time that you can then interact with. It's basically your current self cooperating with your own clone. Depending on the difficulty of the level, you can do this a number of times. You then help yourself out by trying to reach every pie in the puzzle. In a simple level, you might record yourself swinging your umbrella and then let your clone smack your current self up to a higher ledge that you couldn't reach on your own. In a tougher level, you're confronted with an elaborate series of teeter-totters that you need to record several clones running and jumping on with precise-enough timing that each clone works as a domino with the other. It's a difficult concept to grasp without playing it, but once you get your hands on a controller, it quickly makes sense. You'll enjoy a thrilling sense of reward with every completed level.

But that's just one game mode, a puzzle section called Ticking Tarts. The other game mode presented in the demo is called Dangerously Delicious. The core mechanics are the same, but with an intimidating twist: Every clone becomes an enemy that will kill you on impact. You start with a pie across the level that you need to collect. Once you start moving, a recording is made that will continuously loop over and over. After the first pie, you need to find a second one on the other end of the level, being sure not to cross paths with your original loop. These are then layered on top of each other to present a web of danger that you yourself created.

The concept is a lot of fun, and the presentation is also quite charming. The game is presented in a silent-movie aesthetic with humorous captions flashing across the screen, sarcastically congratulating you for a job well done. Winterbottom and the backgrounds are all in black-and-white, with a very Victorian-era feel to the surroundings. The whole package adds up to a delightfully artistic and twisted-in-a-good-way experience that we're hoping to see available on one of the major digitial-distribution platforms soon.