Following our First Day ECTS Report from yesterday, Myrthos has sent us more of what he saw on the second day of his visit:

Today I've payed a visit to Fishtank and took a look at Call of Cthulhu. Which is actually more an adventure than a RPG, but still worth it. The game starts with you hanging at the end of a rope, by your neck I might add. If you ever read any of HP Lovecrafts novels then you should know that there never is a happy ending in them. So why should there be in the game, after the
rather gloomy sight of your character on the rope, you are taken back to the 1920's when everything started. You are a PI falsely accused and trying to clear your name. The game is in 3D and uses a dark setting, which fits the game actually. It has no controls on the screen so you get a full view of everything. You will pick up items by walking to them and the items will be used automatically. The game is capable of driving your character insane, which you should prevent from happening as long as possible. I'll try to get back to this one at a later time.


Also at Fishtank was Etherlords, a 3D strategic oriented game mixed with a card game, like Magic. To fight you use turn-based magic combat. You can summon creatures to do the damage for you or throw one of the many spells at your opponents. Besides creatures you can also summon heroes to aid you in your conquest for new territories. The game is now in some sort of
public beta and looks really good.
´

Archangel was also on display, but only in a movie form. Archangel is about you being brought back in time by a god to help purify the world from all the evil being. The game is heavily action oriented and is fully rendered in 3D where you can choose to play in 1st or 3rd person view. You can use all kinds of weapons and magic to aid you in the purification process. There are several levels in the game, each bringing you to another era in the history of mankind and each with their own vile creatures.

Then there was Arx Fatalis. Well it would have if the demo was working. Like yesterday, again one of the demos was not working. Well, there was not much difference from the demo Garrett already saw, so it's not so bad I guess.


Another meeting was set at CDV, where I looked at Nomads. A 3D action/RTS which was labelled as having some RPG as well, but it was hard to detect it. Besides that it was awarded with a best game of the show award and it was a great game to look at. It features a flying wizard engineer who can fly around on his island in the sky. Yep! There is no world, only a whole lot of islands floating around. You can use magic to create structures for the defense of the island and for attcking others, to conquer a larger island. It's a game with a simple interface just targetting to be fun and it looks like fun indeed.

Now I wouldn't visit CDV without looking at Divinity again. Even though not a lot has changed since the last visit 2 weeks ago, I didn't want to miss the opportunity to play it again. There were some slight changes, like the warrior skills that were all implemented but for the rest it was just great to play  it :-). We'll have more on Divinity later this week.

In other news, I can say that I wasn't aware of all these user interfaces that exist for the PC. I've seen a dancing game, where you needed to dance on a footpad in the right way. A golf interface, where you can actually take a swing. A tennis racket for a tennis game and a bicycle, allowing you to actually getting tired playing a bicycle simulation game. And for those who like fighting games, you can use two large sensors and a footpad. They can kick and punch and with it they control the character on the screen. There is no feedback however....
Then there was a hunting game, with interfaces for a bow, a handgun and even a kalashnikov. I wonder when they'll invent a sword interface, allowing you to play an RPG and actually swinging a sword in front of your PC :-) ...