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CDV
German publishers CDV had a few noticeable titles on display. All there was to see of the promising Massively Multiplayer FPS Neocron was a previously released rolling video, although Breed from developers Brat was looking pretty good. Comparisons will no doubt be made with Halo as they both share marine character types, expansive terrain and buggies that bounce around realistically as you drive them. However while not quite up to the standard of graphical loveliness of Halo, let's just say that after Bungie showed their hand early on with Halo a few games are doing a good game of playing catch up now the graphical standard has been set, and Brat are one such developer. Particularly impressive was how you can descend from orbit and then eventually land on ground that only a minute ago was a spec of an island visible from space. Time will tell if the gameplay can match the visuals as I didn't get a chance to play around with the title.
Ubi Soft
Surprisingly, I'd have to say the best PC lineup at the show came from Ubi Soft. Surprising because in the past I've never been overly enamoured of their games such as Rayman and POD. Pool of Radience: Ruins of Myth Draynor was at the Ubi Soft stand and it looks pretty impressive for a D&D RPG. Sure, it's no Never Winter Nights graphically, but the pre-rendered backgrounds mean they can get more detail out of the various areas, and the 3D characters looked very nice, predictably outclassing the Infinity engine characters since they animated more smoothly and were much more detailed. The interface looks simpler than previous D&D RPGs too, especially the old gold box titles. Most actions can be done by right clicking on a character and choosing a spell or action from the drop down menu or sub menu. There are no character portraits, characters instead being represented by different coloured health bars in the bottom right of the screen. As with all games at ECTS it's hard to draw any conclusions about how good the final game will be but with the attractive graphics and simple interface I can't spot anything wrong with it so far.
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