The fall video game season is always hectic, and I’ve been experiencing the run-up firsthand with ample coverage opportunities. First up was a Medal of Honor press junket that EA held in San Francisco. I flew there, checked into The Clift hotel and walked down to the Marines’ Memorial Club, a historic building built in 1926 and bought by the nonprofit Marines Memorial Association in 1946 as a living memorial to veterans. The Marines’ Memorial has a hotel, theater, restaurant, library, museum, military history bookstore and of course a memorial. This was the perfect venue for the reboot of EA’s Medal of Honor series, which is looking to incorporate a more true-to-life military hero’s story compared to rival Call of Duty.

At the Marines’ Memorial Club, I was also to interview DICE senior producer of multiplayer Patrick Liu.

I also got a chance to chat with Medal of Honor creative director at Danger Close, Rich Farley, and talk about the developer’s commitment to authenticity.

I flew back to Los Angeles for the weekend to spend a wink of time at the beach, then flew to San Francisco again on Monday (this time staying in the W Hotel) to play a game from THQ called Homefront. Also a military first-person shooter taking aim at Call of Duty, Homefront uses speculative fiction in its 2027-set story. By then, North Korea rises to the top of the Axis of Evil and threatens an economically devastated America on its own soil. Much of this intriguing “What If” plot doesn’t seem too far off. You can read my preview of Homefront and check out the interview I did with Erin Daly, lead multiplayer designer at developer Kaos Studios.

I flew back to LA on Wednesday to attend an event on the Disney lot in Burbank, where the movie studio was showing off a nearly complete Tangled and 20 minutes (non-consecutive minutes) of Tron: Legacy as presented by the director Joseph Kosinski. I liked Tangled – it had a good cast and memorable songs, and the story of Rapunzel is one fairytale that Disney hasn’t touched for this generation. To top it off, there were some unfinished seconds in which scenes would turn into either primitive CG or moving sketches. It was pretty neat to see how things progress in the art department with these work-in-progress rough cuts.

Tron: Legacy looked stunning as well, even though it’s further from its debut compared to Tangled. Director Joseph Kosinski cautioned us on the unfinished nature of his movie and the fact that he hasn’t gone to the Skywalker Ranch yet to complete the audio. No matter, I liked what I saw and even got a picture in front of a Tron lightcycle before moving on to the after-party (and playing the Tron Wii game – why I’m there in the first place) on the lot.

It started raining on the Disney lot, so the event wrapped-up unexpectedly and the life-sized Tron statues were covered with plastic. Looks like Tron has lots of high-tech capabilities, but comes with an “I Cannot Get Wet” label. I snapped a photo of the before and after.