2k games has some really great stuff coming out. I got to see sneak peaks of both The Darkness from Starbreeze studios and Bioshock! from Irrational Games. The Darkness is shaping up to be an interesting first person shooter that's based off the comic series of the same name. In the game, the character is a mafia hitman who is possessed by this demonic force called ‘the darkness’ after this point he then gets special powers from shadows. This provides the player for an incentive for shooting out the lights. The light then changes dynamically and you get access to a multitude of powers ranging from tentacles that can lift heavy objects like cars then allow you to hurl them at the enemy and a small seeker type shadow creature that was able to go through a ventilation duct and attack a swat team type guy. One thing that caught my eye is that the character uses two pistols, unlike most games where both pistols shoot at the same place on screen, the pistols had two separate laser sights that where a bit of a space apart, a small thing yet cool and I think worthy of note - they said they were placing an emphasis on the use of guns to make the gameplay cool all around so the player would do a bit of everything.

Bioshock! is more or less System Shock but rebuilt as a new intellectual property. Replace scary space ship with crazy ai, mutant monsters, and dead people with crazy 1930ish underwater city (called Rapture) and a mystery as to what happened, different mutant monsters and dead people. Much of the gameplay elements from system shock have returned such as the hacking of security panels and the ability to use vending machines, to the use of audio logs to try and piece together the game’s story. If you’ve played system shock you really have an idea of what to expect and who better then the guys who created system shock 2 to reinvision the same style of game.

If I had to place a finger on the one real impressive part of Bioshock!, it’d have to be the water. The water reflects the world around it, is transparent enough to to see through while refracting the things below it’s surface, and also scatters light as it drips and pours off walls. It even interacts with characters by moving around them and splashing off as it drips onto them, it was really impressive.

So far - so good. Tomorrow I’ll get to see what EA has to offer as well as hopefully more information on what Konami will be bringing to market soon.