Look, we get it. There are not many women who attend E3. And our industry is stereotypically dominated by nerdy, unathletic men. This isn't the national expo of attractive people.

But embodies those uncomfortable stereotypes we don't want to confront. The developers of Mafia II sadly could not come up with a better way to sell its game than to appeal to the sexual fantasies of attendees. It's bad enough when Nintendo hired two hundred beautiful women and then tethered them to 3DSs. It was regrettable to see so many women dressed in practically nothing handing out literature about a game they couldn't care less about. But unless the Playboy Bunnies secretly can discuss the merits of Mafia's II's sandbox gameplay and context-sensitive controls, the relevancy of their appearance must be questioned.

Still, Mafia's II exploitation of sex was only slightly more shameless than Microsoft giving away Xbox 360s to everyone who attended its presentation.

Mashing buttons on a fake plastic toy guitar isn't cool. It doesn't make you any better at actually playing music. Just because you're flawless on "Through the Fire and Flames" doesn't mean you even know what a riff is in real life. But Rock Band 3 changes all of that with its new guitar made by Fender. Made in the style of a Squier Stratocaster, the guitar has MIDI support, is playable outside the game, and best of all, your string strumming is detectable in the game. During the demonstration, while his bandmates mashed on their plastic instruments, one of the guitarists plugged his game guitar into an amp and played alongside the band while playing the game. What was coming out of the amp? Real music.