The games we have in the office so far are Ridge Racer 7, Resistance: Fall of Man, Lair, Genji: Days of the Blade and MotorStorm.
Ridge Racer is a pleasant surprise. It's slick and slippery like a greased-up seal and the bright, chunky arcade visuals look stunning in HD. When it first arrived we almost flipped a lid the menu was full of options! Woo! But, typically, you can only select one game mode (arcade) and one track (a jungle thing with lovely misty waterfalls). But what a track it is, with a shockingly-beautiful section going through a damp cave. The reflections are so good, you can almost see your own face in the puddles.
Resistance is punishingly difficult, but we like a challenge and the balls-out action and gorgeous set-pieces make it feel like a kind of sci-fi Call of Duty. The first level takes place in York town centre, leading eventually to a leafy area of Nottingham. Weve always wondered what alien-besieged middle England would look like, and now we know messy, covered in rubble and dotted with explosive barrels.
Lair plays a lot like ancient fantasy shooter Panzer Dragoon, but with tilt-sensitive controls. You have to jolt the pad towards enemies to attack them which is strange, but overall we're impressed. The dragons look magnificent. But, if were honest, its more of a graphics demo than an actual game at the moment. The lightweight tutorial involves barely any play and you spend most of your time floating about admiring the lighting effects, shadows and realistic-looking rocks.
Having played the original Genji a Hell of a lot, we felt instantly at home with Genji 2. Remarkably, despite the 'giant crab' horrors of E3, it's actually really fun to play. Amazing, fluid animation and a trio of varied characters you can switch to at any point during the level. Briliantly, THAT giant crab is in the demo we have, although we couldnt figure out how to flip it over for massive damage. Dang.
But our favourite is MotorStorm. We've had three versions of the demo and every time it gets better. The latest is absolutely mental, especially when you're crashing through squads of bikers in your buggy sending bodies flying everywhere. And the mud effects... crivens! The original demos looked great, but the latest one has added lots of nice touches including crowds of people on the tracks, more mud, more dynamic animations, better ragdoll physics and a much smoother frame rate.
