At Natsume’s booth I spent a while talking with Adam Fitch and playing Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar and Rune Factory 3 on the NDS. I had not played previous games in the series but these newest iterations, I was told, carry on the established tradition of the previous titles which should make them very interesting to their audience. The new Harvest Moon game is all about resurrecting the bazaa...[Read More]

Much like our Fable 3 session with Peter Molyneux, our time with Gears of War 3 wasn’t spent playing or watching a demo reel, but rather talking with members of Epic Games. Rod Strickland was happy to answer an onslaught of questions from an assortment of different outlets. A question I had been dying to ask revolved around Gear’s narrative, or, to put it blatantly, whether the team was interested...[Read More]

While LittleBigPlanet 2’s revamped creating tools will undoubtedly be the star of the show, there was still a lot to love with the prepackaged content on the floor. The level on display turned out to be the perfect showcase for one of the hotter mechanics, the grappling hook. Fired with a shoulder button (not unlike the paintball gun), the grappling hook stuck to any surface almost instantaneously...[Read More]

My time with Fable 3 wasn’t along the lines of a traditional show floor demo. Though I had yet to play the game, I took advantage of an opportunity to sit down with lead designer Peter Molyneux for a nice chat over a few of Fable 3’s finer details. This will by no means be an all inclusive preview, but I think it will shed some light on some of the game’s underlying features. In our group of three...[Read More]

Heavy Rain might have been last on the list of games I expected to demo at E3 2010, but the allure of added Move support couldn’t be denied. Random thoughts in the character’s head were detached from buttons and replaced by pointer controls, and actions bolted to analog sticks or sixaxis waggle were transferred to pure motion control. The point of all of this (or at least the one Sony kept trying ...[Read More]

Thrusted into the Transformers universe in Activision’s Transformers: War for Cybertron single player campaign, I immediately sensed the immense scale that the developers were trying to portray. As the Autobots mobilized, it quickly becomes apparent how much is actually going on as you progress through the mission. Progression was relatively linear; the battle-drive-battle-drive formula works quit...[Read More]

Ah, Kane and Lynch, what fine pair of upstanding gentlemen. Judging from the original game, there was no doubt that Kane and Lynch would likely still be a couple of criminals who apparently have secret agent combat training and wear wife-beaters made of Kevlar. These dudes are utter greaseballs. Right down to the gritty video filter, everything about the presentation of Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days ...[Read More]

Straight out of nowhere, Nintendo elected to strengthen their case for franchise reinvention this E3 with the announcement of Kirby's Epic Yarn, a wonderfully inventive platforming title that breathes new life into a series which, while typically creative and enjoyable in its own right, hasn’t seen a lot of fresh action in the last few years. The result is what was certainly one of my favorite tit...[Read More]

I haven’t heard anything coming from Konami in a long while about a new Contra game since their awesome return to the series back with Contra 4; that was until last month when I first heard wind of their latest entry in the franchise, Hardcorps: Uprising. Despite not having the Contra moniker in front of it it is still a Contra game at heart, and from what I played during my time with its de...[Read More]

Ever since Bionic Commando ReArmed was released by Grin almost two years ago I’ve been wanting a sequel to get me back into that nostalgic realm of side scrolling. I mean, there’s just something about not being able to jump and having to use your grapple hook to get from place to place that makes you think strategically about your every move. Alas, Bionic Commando ReArmed 2 has surface...[Read More]

I was unfortunate to not have played Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes before this year’s E3, despite the fact that the game came out on the DS last December. Due to my interest in the game, I was more than willing to check out the XBox Live/PSN revamped remakes of the title at Ubisoft’s booth. And, after talking to the delightful developers from Capybara games, I’m quite convince...[Read More]

Sorcery excluded, I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to a Move demo. While I hadn’t seen it up close, the buzz on the tech failed to excite me. It seemed like a wiimote with added fidelity and presented in the glorious high definition. In other words, the handful of Move demo’s I had seen didn’t seem too interested in bringing anything new to the table. It was content to reproduce what we d...[Read More]