Three days ago Bliz­zard announced the final Dia­blo 3 class dur­ing the open­ing cer­e­mony of Bliz­zCon: The Demon Hunter. The final class seems to be the most gadget-oriented of the five. The Demon Hunter brings a pair of dual cross­bows and quite an arse­nal of arcane gad­gets to the bat­tle­field. While the Demon Hunter def­i­nitely is a ranged char­ac­ter it’s not your typ­i­cal ranger arche­type. The new class uses knives, bows, cross­bows, and dual-wielded one-handed cross­bows as well as lots of gad­gets like traps, grenades, or bolas.

Here’s a video of the Demon Huntress in action:

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Almost a month ago, the in-game trailer from GamesCom made it into the net. I know, I’m late but I nearly destroyed my blog and I was on vaca­tion so I was quite busy with other things than con­tent. Any­ways, I’m back and Deus Ex 3: Human Rev­o­lu­tion is one of my most antic­i­pated games next year. For more infor­ma­tion on the game take a look at a pre­vi­ous post. The ‘new’ trailer looks very promis­ing and I def­i­nitely like the look of it:

In related news, there’s also a book planned, set in the Deus Ex uni­verse. Pub­lisher Del Ray announced in July that Deus Ex: The Icarus Effect, writ­ten by James Swal­low, would be released in 2011. The novel is about Anna Kelso, a Secret Ser­vice agent, and Ben Saxon, a special-ops sol­dier, who draw too close to the truth in a world filled with con­spir­a­cies. Of course, the pow­ers that be must silence them so that their intri­cate plans come to fruition. Infor­ma­tion is scarce at the moment but accord­ing to the offi­cial press release some char­ac­ters and story ele­ments will over­lap with the game. Accord­ing to Jim him­self, the novel serves as a “side-story/prequel”  to the game’s plotline.

I’ve never read any­thing by James Swal­low – sounds more like a porn name than a seri­ous writer, eh? (sorry Jim, I couldn’t resist) – so I’m try­ing to stay open-minded about the novel. His work record doesn’t look bad either and he’s already won the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion of Media Tie-in Writ­ers Scribe Award for Best Orig­i­nal Spec­u­la­tive Fic­tion. Addi­tion­ally, he has been work­ing as a core writer on the video game itself, so that should def­i­nitely make an inter­est­ing read. I’m not usu­ally into video game tie-ins but what the hell. I’ve recently aquired Matthew Stover’s God of War, so DX:TIE won’t be a first, right? Right!

At GamesCom 2010 Bliz­zard revealed how crafters will be able to cre­ate their own gear. In Dia­blo II, you had the assis­tance of the mys­ti­cal Horadric Cube to cre­ate new items. In Dia­blo III, Bliz­zard intro­duced the Arti­san, a new char­ac­ter who does the work for you. You just need to enlist an arti­san and pro­vide some mate­ri­als and he sets out to cre­ate your new gear.

To add an Arti­san to your ret­inue you have to help him out – usu­ally by doing a quest for him. After you gained his trust he will fol­low you on your trav­els. They will set up show in the near­est town and you will be able to inter­act with him there. There are three types of Arti­sans that will be avail­able to your hero: black­smith, mys­tic, and jeweller.

• You can sell and repair items at the black­smith, as well as have him cre­ate weapons and armor for you. He can also add sock­ets to any weapon or armor.
• The mys­tic cre­ates mag­i­cal imple­ments like scrolls, potions, runes and charms, and enchants items.
• The jew­eller is an inter­est­ing fel­low: He cre­ates gems for you and allows you to com­bine gems to cre­ate one of higher qual­ity. This Arti­san can also remove gems from items.

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A few days ago, the E3 trailer for Deus Ex: Human Rev­o­lu­tion made it into the web. The third install­ment actu­ally is a pre­quel to the orig­i­nal Deus Ex pub­lished in the year 2000. In March the first trailer was shown to the pub­lic. The E3 trailer expands on the for­mer and drops a few hints of the pos­si­ble plot. Before I start ram­bling, do your­self a favor and enjoy the trailer:

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I bought Prince of Per­sia: The For­got­ten Sands dur­ing my stay in Lon­don over the extended week­end. Today, I had noth­ing to do so I put it in the PS3 and had a go at it. After roughly seven hours I was done. The real play­time is about one hour less and six hours of game­play aren’t all that good for a game like this. The pre­de­ces­sors took me longer. Any­way, let’s see if I can sum­ma­rize my expe­ri­ence a lit­tle better.

I won’t tell you any­thing about the plot. Let’s just say that the sto­ry­line is weak and you surely won’t be absorbed by the nar­ra­tive. The acro­bat­ics and plat­form­ing is up to the Prince of Per­sia stan­dard set by The Sands of Time. The first two hours are pretty easy going but it get’s more chal­leng­ing later on. The prince unlocks new pow­ers like freez­ing water or mak­ing por­tions of ruins seem like they did before they were destroyed. You have to com­bine these pow­ers to get through the later lev­els and this is def­i­nitely more chal­leng­ing than the begin­ning areas. Thanks to the abil­ity to rewind time you improve the odds to beat tricky plat­form­ing areas.

Com­bat is more bor­ing because it mostly con­sists of but­ton smash­ing. The first ene­mies are easy, the later ones are a bit tougher and some­times quite big. With the pow­ers the prince unlocks with his expe­ri­ence points everything’s easy, though. Using these pow­ers requires the same resources as does rewind­ing time so you may  have to be care­ful, depend­ing on your play­ing style. Dur­ing nor­mal game­play you can’t max­i­mize your pow­ers so you should play the game’s chal­lenge modes.

The visu­als of the game aren’t impres­sive at all. The game had poten­tial, though. Some­times, TFS looks really fan­tas­tic which is unfor­tu­nately negated when you arrive at dull look­ing areas. Some areas even look a bit unfin­ished. Seems like the devel­op­ers had a lot of pres­sure fin­ish­ing the game in time which results in this unre­fined game.

Funny side­note: You can unlock addi­tional stuff via Uplay and the devel­op­ers added an Ezio cos­tume (Ezio is the lead char­ac­ter in Assassin’s Creed II).

So, what’s my con­clu­sion? The game is nei­ther bad nor awe­some, but good. It has a solid base but there’s quite a bit of untapped poten­tial hid­den deep within. That makes it bet­ter than the 2008 Prince of Per­sia but that’s it. It’s got good voice act­ing and some inter­est­ing plat­form­ing but com­bat is a dull affair. If I had to rate the game, I’d give it 6 out of 10 points.

Finally, we get to see more than just a few screen­shots.  As Eidos Mon­treal boss Stephanie D’Astous tweeted a few days ago a ‘sur­prise’ has come this way. Nat­u­rally, the sur­prise is noth­ing more than a trailer albeit a nice one. I already burn to have a copy of the game in my hands. The first install­ment was spec­tac­u­lar, the sec­ond one I found not that well made. Any­way, have a look for yourself: