Assassin's Creed 4
When it all kicks off, there's a pleasantly jovial atmosphere to the tree-swinging and ship-captaining. Awkwardly, the Assassin's Creed 4 demo crashed out completely during the E3 showing, which is why we often get pre-rendered and scripted sequences instead of fluid footage of someone actually playing the game. Still, it looks like Assassin's Creed, and the ship combat looks just as good as it felt in Assassin's Creed 3.
The Walking Dead: 400 Days
This extra episode for season one of the terrific Walking Dead series should tide us over nicely until the inevitable arrival of season two (what happens to Clem???), but has an ambitious format that makes it more than a convenient stop-gap. Five stories in one episode. How will they juggle all those dramatic arcs? How will they make us like all these new people, when we're so used to the cast of season one? We can't wait to find out.
Batman: Arkham Origins
More assault and battery from the Batman, a younger and more vicious take on the series started by Rocksteady, and continued in this prequel edition, by Warner Bros. Games Montreal. It's fun to watch the series' features escalate in spite of the backtrack in setting. The bat-plane, the new gadgets, the fancier detective mode. The premise is commendably simple, though. One madman offers a lot of other madmen a cash reward for the madman who happens to dress as a bat. It's out in October.
And also...
Tom Clancy's The Division
The Division was one of the most exciting showings at the conferences this year. An online survival game that encourages small scale teamwork, allows for seemingly organic movement between PvE and PvP, and is set in a gorgeous replica of a New York devastated by an unknown pox. How will it work in practice? The move to extract before they're encountered, and the camera pull out suggests that New York will be divided into zones owned by one faction or another. We have many questions about The Division, not least "is it coming to PC?" The developers, Massive, say theyre "not ruling out any platforms for the future."
