Nicholas Bale
Sitting in a comfortable and quiet room in Activision's booth, I checked out a pre-alpha demonstration of Prototype 2. No longer playing Alex Mercer, you are now James Heller, a man who lost his family to the protagonist from the first game and is out for revenge. Read More.
I wasn't sure what to expect when I walked into the booth for Prey 2. The first game, a linear corridor shooter with some cool portal mechanics, but otherwise a standard shooter. Prey 2 looks to change, well, pretty much everything about the first title, adding in an open world to explore, a mission-based story structure, and first-person climbing mechanics that I've never seen before. Read More.
In one of the most popular booths and games of the show, I watched a developer play through a few areas of the newest chapter of the Elder Scrolls series. After the smash-hit Oblivion, I was curious to see what Bethesda could do with the series, and the answer was fairly clear: more. Read More.
At Atlus' booth, I was given the opportunity to play their new action-adventure combat game, Cursed Crusade. In this title, you play Denz and Esteban, two crusaders in the middle ages, two crusaders cursed to die, unless they can find a way to stop it. Read More.
Sitting down with Atlus in a quiet room gave me the chance to check out Catherine, the action/adventure puzzle title that you could call 'odd' the same way you could call the sun 'mildly warm'. Describing it isn't exactly an easy task, so here's my shot: Read More.
The Witcher 2, (or Wiedzmin 2, for the Polish-speakers out there), is an excellent RPG that came out on May 17th of this year. A self-proclaimed "hardcore RPG", a title it deserved, it's full of choices, character depth, huge areas, numerous quests, and an impressively high difficulty. Read More.
In a small booth, I got to see the sequel to one of the most enjoyable action-RPGs of two years ago – Demon's Souls. Announced a little while ago, Dark Souls continues the tradition and style of the first, placing the player in constant peril with little hope of escaping alive – but making it feel so much better when you do. Read More.
The first Torchlight came out at the beginning of last year, a fairly unexpected title full of good art, simple but fun gameplay, and loot. It was your basic dungeon crawler formula, polished to a bright sheen. Its biggest flaw, however, was the lack of multiplayer, instead forcing people to play through adventures on their own. Read More.
From the masters of strategy comes the sequel to the 2004 strategy title, Crusader Kings. I was given the chance to take a look at Crusader Kings II at Paradox's booth, checking out what it's like to be a ruler in the medieval ages, accumulating power, plotting, inheriting, and in general seeing how far you can get in the world of medieval politics and war. Read More.
Having been privy to the game at E3, I was interested to see what more Eidos Montreal would be able to show the assorted media gathered in their studio. While they told us that we would be seeing that same gameplay, they also promised a new level that would show off the choice-filled multi-path design of the game. Read More.
Homefront was quite the surprise at E3, coming from seemingly nowhere to grab a number of awards (including a couple game-of-shows), putting developer Kaos Studios in the limelight. Earlier, we were able to get some multiplayer hands-on time with the game for a quick preview of what was to come with the online gameplay. Read More.
Getting a chance to see and play Fable 3 brought a lot of memories back from when I played its predecessors. For obvious reasons, too, since at first glance it looks and feels a lot like Fable 2. Once you start poking at the gameplay, looking through the menus, and figuring out what you have access too, this quickly changes, and it's apparent that Lionhead is trying hard to create a refined experience that still brings the same feeling from exploring Albion. Read More.
The Call of Duty series, still going strong, is coming out with another title early this November. Call of Duty: Black Ops is set in the late 60s and early 70s, and is about a group of people who don't exist. You'll be playing as part of a special forces group during the Cold War that does things no one knows about, becoming heroes that no one's heard about. Read More.
I got a chance to get some hands-on time with Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions at Microsoft's X'10 event. This meant playing through four different worlds of Spider-Man, including some I'd never heard of, all with varying playstyles and visual flair. Read More.
At X'10 I was able to get behind some closed doors (well, really more of a curtain) to see what the newest (and, says Joseph Tung, the executive producer, the last) Halo game to bring us back into the world of the Spartans and the Covenant. This game serves as a prequel to show us the final days of Reach, the last bastion of defence between the Earth and the deadly forces of the Covenant. Read More.
