E3 2012: A little more refinement to the Wii U controller asymmetric co-op, and this game could really be terrific.

Rayman Legends, the upcoming Wii U successor to last year's Rayman Origins, has the potential to be a really special game. It maintains the same sense of visual whimsy and terrific 2D platforming that made Origins so great, but on top of that it layers in a genuinely unique form of co-op where one player gets to run and jump in traditional platforming style while the other helps out in an entirely different way with the Wii U touch screen.

The second player in Rayman Legends is basically there to help the first one collect more items, discover hidden rooms, and dispatch enemies when the situation calls for it. They're not the one platforming around; in fact, they're ignoring the physical buttons on the Wii U controller entirely.

The second player focuses on the touch screen. They can do things like swipe at lums (Rayman's version of coins) to turn them from yellow to pink, at which point they become worth twice as much as a currency for unlocking later levels. They can also manipulate the world to let the first player reach previously unavailable areas, whether it's dragging a giant carrot out of the ground to act as a wall-jumping platform or actually twisting the controller 360 degrees to move a giant spiky wheel of death out of the way of the first player.

It's a concept that allows for some truly unique and exciting co-op gameplay, a fresh new means for two players hanging out on the couch to play a game together. But we're not quite 100 percent sold on it yet.

There's one thing Rayman Legends needs to figure out before it achieves the potential that game is flashing all over E3. This is a game that--in its current state, at least--needs to do a better job of explaining what's there for the second player to interact with, and what's just the window dressing for the lush, richly detailed environments.

As the second player, you spend so much time swiping at objects to change the environment that you develop the habit of swiping hazards away as a matter of instinct. So when you encounter a sequence where you're shown special icons on your touch screen that tell you whether a platform about to extend from the wall is going to be safe or covered in spikes (icons the first player can't see on the TV), you immediately think you need to tap the "This one's safe!" icon. But you don't. Those icons aren't interactive; the game wants you to verbally communicate with your teammate which platforms to jump on.

At other points you're uncertain which enemies the second player needs to swipe away from the first one, and which are just critters crawling around the level to provide some ambient life to the gameworld. In most games you wouldn't bat an eyelash at this sort of thing, but in a fast-paced platformer like this, when your running and jumping come to a screeching halt so you can examine what you need to interact with, it can really throw things off.

So as long as the final version of Rayman Legends is able to establish a clear and consistent logic about what the second player needs to interact with and effectively communicate that, this game is going to be terrific. The core platforming and delightful art style are both great, and the co-op is an absolute blast when the two players are in a rhythm with what the game wants them to do. It just needs a little bit more effective visual language to get there.

We're really looking forward to this one. Rayman Legends has a metric ton of potential, and we're hoping to see Ubisoft deliver on it.

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E3 2012: We get a quick look at the new Vampire Lord in this upcoming expansion to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

With some creative modding, you will finally be able to reenact your favorite True Blood episodes within The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim thanks to Dawnguard, its upcoming expansion. At this year's E3 we got the chance to take a quick, hands-on look at this game and played as the new Vampire Lord. This special transformation was similar in concept to the werewolf transformation, complete with giant leathery wings. Vampires (and werewolves) also enjoy their own unique perk trees, letting you dive deeper into the customization of your supernatural gift.

Our character was already equipped with the perks Power of the Grave (+50 health, mana, and stamina when transformed), Vampiric Grip (an ability that pulls targets toward you and deals damage), and Summon Gargoyle (exactly what it sounds like). As the Vampire Lord, our first impulse was to put those wings to work and take to the skies. However, we couldn't muster more than hovering a few inches off the ground. Our brief adventure revolved around a mother and daughter arguing over a deadly prophecy and the need to prevent it from happening. Unfortunately, their conversation encompassed the bulk of our limited time with the game and was all but impenetrable.

The content in the Dawnguard expansion was estimated at taking as many as 15 hours to complete, and if playing as a new character, you can access the content at around level 10. It was noted that the Dawnguard content can get very challenging, so going in at such a low level might not be ideal. Hopefully we'll have the chance to see more of this game soon as the show continues. In the meantime, know that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Dawnguard arrives later this year.

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A new multiplayer mode reveals a familiar take on cooperative gaming.

Journey and Resident Evil 6 couldn't be any more different, but the latter is borrowing a major idea from the former and games like Demon's Souls: their multiplayer functionality. Capcom calls it crossover gameplay, but it breaks down like this: There are three pairs of characters in Resident Evil 6--Jake and Sherry, Chris and Piers, and Leon and Helena. At various points in the game, these characters cross paths for both narrative and gameplay purposes. Much like in Journey and Demon's Souls, if Resident Evil 6 knows that your friends (or strangers, if you select that option) are at a point in the game that would put them on the corresponding "opposite" side of your current game, they will automatically join in and take control of the other characters. The new four-player team can then coordinate via prefabricated AI commands or through voice chat, and though Capcom said it isn't currently working, the plan is to make these kinds of multiplayer matches support four-player voice chat.

It's an interesting feature that should prove itself useful in boss battles, particularly the new encounter we saw during the show that featured a grotesque, mutated creature named Ustanak. Aside from his hulking size and powerful mechanical arm, Ustanak can pick up individual players and place them in a cage on his back, forcing other players to coordinate attacks to free their imprisoned comrade. Working as a team also makes it possible to distract Ustanak so that other players can move around the area and make use of environmental objects that might aid in the battle.

We didn't see what happened at the end of this battle, so it's hard to say how much time you'll be spending with another pair of players, but it seems all but certain that cooperative boss battles are a major part of Resident Evil 6's multiplayer.

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Be careful in this first-person shooter; the most beautiful things are often the most dangerous.

You have to be careful in Far Cry 3. It's not so much that you're trapped on an island full of dangerous criminals, or that said island has some bizarre mental force slowly digging its tendrils into your brain--though that's certainly not something to ignore. No, you have to be careful in Far Cry 3 because when it comes to survival, the beauty of this island can often be your worst enemy.

The demo Ubisoft brought to E3 this year provides plenty of examples illustrating that fact. You begin by swimming pristine, gorgeous tropical waters en route to a camp occupied by the game's archvillain, Vaas. As you approach the docks--staying underwater to maintain a low profile--you'll probably notice a sea turtle or two swimming majestically nearby. Do you continue your mission, or just hang out for a bit watching that sea turtle do its thing? You choose the latter, then suddenly realize you're still underwater and should probably get some air before you drown. Damn adorable sea turtles.

Tiger, tiger, burning bright.

Once on land, you're able to creep toward the guards patrolling the walls of the base. It's a dense jungle flanking the base, letting you approach your targets from a variety of angles. But which weapon do you choose to eliminate the men standing between you and your destination? An assault rifle from afar? A knife if you can creep up behind them?

Well, if you're anything like us, you choose the bow and arrow. Far Cry 3 lets you go tribal on your enemies with a hunting bow for quiet and lethal ranged takedowns. Even better, you can choose from a few special arrowheads, be they flaming or explosive. We elect to take care of the first cluster of guards with the flaming arrowhead, which basically looks like an arrow with a miniature Molotov cocktail affixed to the end.

We loose the arrow and watch it fly straight into the group of enemies. They shout a bit, fire their guns, and suddenly remember that they should probably die now and proceed to oblige. But then something magical happens: the wind spreads the flames farther toward the camp and engulfs a few more guards that we hadn't even intended to kill. At this point, we've got magic on our hands.

We hop over the wall into the camp. Inside, it seems that Vaas was expecting us, as he's got a courtyard full of his thugs ready to start shooting away at us. It's a frantic scene as we try to stay alive, zip-lining from building to building, firing away at moves, and watching as each precarious bit of cover chips and crumbles away when we try to catch our breath.

Then we notice a wooden cage housing a tiger. We fire at the door and set the beast free. It thanks us by proceeding to maul Vaas' henchmen, taking down one armed thug after another and saving us the trouble of having to deal with them.

Oh, what a lovely sun--HURGH OH I'VE BEEN SHOT

A moment later we spot a group of enemies we didn't see before and remember we've still got one of those flaming arrowheads. We fire away and let the flame do its job, but only a half-second before noticing that our new best friend (whom we've nicknamed Tony the Tiger) also happened to see those enemies. He dashes toward them in tragic sync with the flaming arrow, arriving on the scene just in time to be set ablaze alongside the very thugs he was trying to kill. We refrain from shouting "Nooooooo!" but we're certainly thinking that as we gaze at his charred tiger corpse.

But that's Far Cry 3. The very things you fall in love with about this island are also the sort of things that will either break your heart or, worse, kill you outright. Because let's be honest for a moment. If we hadn't set Tony the Tiger to that great big bowl of Frosted Flakes in the sky, he almost certainly would have mauled our face off two seconds later. It's tragic that he had to go out in a literal blaze of glory, but it's probably for the best. He was a damn tiger after all.

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E3 2012: We get a closer look at the Watch Dogs stage demo, and a brief glimpse of an app that lets you turn the city against your friends.

Ubisoft debuted its upcoming open-world game Watch Dogs during its stage show here at E3 2012, and that showing easily established it as one of the standout games of the show. Yesterday at the Ubisoft booth, we had a chance to take a closer look at that same demo. Far more interestingly, we also got a brief glimpse of a mobile app that looks as if it could expand the Watch Dogs experience in some innovative ways.

The non-playable demo was commented on by Kevin Short, lead story designer on the game. He described protagonist Aidan Pierce as a man shaped by violence and obsessed with surveillance. We noticed that Aidan's target during the demo has been acquitted of murder--presumably a murder he actually committed, which left us wondering if Aidan is something of a city-hacking Dexter, a man who doles out death to people who have killed others.

As Aidan entered the club in which he tracks his target during the demo, Short stated that fully realized interiors like the club aren't limited to mission-specific locations and that you can enter and investigate these interiors at any time, not just when dictated by a mission. Different locations draw different kinds of crowds, and hacking into the personal information of people outside of missions can lead to other opportunities and benefits.

Speaking of that personal information, this closer look at the demo let us better appreciate just how personal the info displayed for characters you approach is. One individual was revealed to be HIV positive, for instance, while another was shown to be the subject of a restraining order. Other personal details like annual income were also displayed, and Short suggested that your access to this kind of information could enable you to blackmail people.

But it was after the demo wrapped that the biggest revelation occurred. Short pulled out a tablet that displayed a 3D map of Watch Dogs' version of Chicago. He showed that using this app, he could track the movements of in-game characters and access dossiers of personal information about them--just the sort of thing that protagonist Aidan might himself make use of. You can also access information about locations, including schematics that might help you work out advantageous ways into and out of buildings you need to infiltrate.

Most intriguing were the social aspects Short hinted at. He indicated that you could see how friends had completed missions, perhaps giving you ideas on new techniques you might employ. Even more exciting was the competitive aspect he described. The app will let you challenge your friends, and if they accept your challenge, you can use the app to hack the city to make their lives more difficult. For instance, if your friend is driving down a road toward a mission objective, you might be able to hack traffic signals using the app (not unlike how Aidan does during the demo), attempting to cause collisions that hinder his or her progress.

Unfortunately, our glimpse at this app and its features was brief and left us with many unanswered questions. But it also left us more excited about Watch Dogs than we were before. Apps that tie in to games are nothing new; Mass Effect 3 had an app that let you send agents on missions to improve your galactic readiness level, and a Batman: Arkham City app helped you find and acquire the trophies the Riddler had scattered around town. But this looks as if it could be much more than a handy little app. It could be a meaningful and fun augmentation of Watch Dogs' surveillance-focused gameplay.

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E3 2012: Most Wanted feels a lot like Burnout: Paradise, and that feeling of sameness saps away much of the thrill.

Last Month, former Bizarre Creations developer Gareth Williams said that racing games, maybe more than any other genre, need new technology to thrive. He argued that it's harder to convince people to buy a sequel to a racing game, even great ones such as Dirt and Project Gotham Racing, without a new physics engine and graphical overhaul, something only next-generation consoles would be able to provide. It' a bold and certainly controversial claim, but after spending a bit of time playing Need for Speed: Most Wanted, we now understand exactly where Williams was coming from.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted is a reboot of the original game of the same name, although now that Criterion has taken over development duties, it's ignoring the so-bad-it's-good story that was one of the defining characteristics of the Xbox 360 launch title. After a brief description about the core features of Most Wanted (open world, multiplayer Autolog, licensed cars), we fired up a multiplayer game so we could get behind the wheel to see how it ran.

The resemblance to Burnout Paradise was stunning. After spending a minute or two driving around the open-world city to familiarize ourselves with the controls, the screen switched to a black-and-white display to announce that an event was taking place. Following the green marker on the map, we made our way to the designating starting area along with seven other players, playfully crashing into each other as we waited for the race to begin. Once the checkered flag dropped, we sped toward the goal. Because it's an open world, we could drive down alleys or take ramps to hidden shortcuts, all while muscling each other into walls and trying to cause as much chaos as possible.

Once that event wrapped up, we started two more with different objectives. In one, a ramp leading to a suspended bridge lay in a dirt-covered parking lot, and whoever got the most air off of this structure would win. In another, top speed is all that mattered, though getting your speedometer up is mighty difficult when seven other players are trying to halt your progress.

Most Wanted controlled exceptionally well and was definitely fun, something you would expect from a Criterion-made game. But it was so familiar that it was far from thrilling. Keep in mind that we saw only a brief demo of an incomplete game, but what Criterion chose to show was so similar to Burnout: Paradise that it could have been another piece of downloadable content if it didn't carry the Need for Speed name.

Criterion is fighting an uphill battle with itself. Its previous open-world game contained most of the features we've seen so far in Most Wanted, and with excellent track design and precise controls, it was just as fun to play as well. And though Paradise is more than four years old, it was so loaded with content that those who enjoyed its destructive pleasures could easily sink a hundred or more hours into that glorious oasis. Remember, not only did Paradise ship with a huge world to explore and tons of events right on the disc, but Criterion heaped on oodles of free content during the life of the game that added significant changes.

More of the same isn't an inherently bad thing, but Criterion showed little that made us excited for spending more time in an open-world experience that's remarkably similar to its previous game. Though Autolog, an asynchronous multiplayer feature that debuted in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, will return in Most Wanted, we didn't get a chance to see how it would change our experience given that the demonstration focused on head-to-head multiplayer. Considering Autolog gives you easy access to your friends' times and lets you set up your own challenges in Hot Pursuit, it could offer a significant change in Most Wanted, but there's no evidence of that now.

Instead, we saw events ripped straight from Burnout: Paradise, and it's simply not as fun to compete in the same racing types in a similar-feeling city with similar controls. There's no telling if better technology would make Most Wanted a more interesting game, as Gareth Williams argues. But it's hard to deny the deflating familiarity of Criterion's latest entry in the venerable Need for Speed series. We look forward to seeing more aspects of this game in the coming months, but for now, we're left with a feeling of deja vu.

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E3 2012: We jump into one of the maps featured in the Close Quarters DLC.

Fans were surprised at Operation Metro's debut as the first map that anyone was allowed to play for Battlefield 3. It lacked the traditional strengths of the series--large maps, vehicles, and a level of strategy higher than just man-on-man gunfights. After getting in a good hour on Scrapmetal, the new Close Quarters map being shown at E3, it's leaving me with the same level of disorientation.

Scrapmetal is a small map consisting of two warehouses linked by a series of enclosed walkways. Flag captures happen much faster than on larger maps, but players can only spawn on squadmates or randomly. I managed to get my hands on most of the new weapons, but the standouts seemed to be the SPAS-12 shotgun and the LSAT light machine gun. The inadequacy of other weapons on the roster became apparent after a few short rounds. The ranges at which firefights are taking place in CQ negate the design of most class-specific guns. Engineers are armed for medium range, assault for long range, support for camping, and recon for super long range.

The main idea of Battlefield 3 is that when any of these classes play outside their role, they are at a disadvantage. When you bring everything into CQB, all weapons do their maximum damage and suffer little from weaknesses like recoil. The result is that all classes are forced into using powerhouses, like shotguns, or weapons with high rates of fire. Having all classes play virtually the same way, instead of inside their individual roles, negates the reason fans chose this franchise over competitors. The new mode Gun Master even appears to be a direct lift of the Gun Game from COD.

I also had time to test HD destruction and was left feeling the claims to be exaggerated. Many strategically placed walls either were indestructible or left an impassable skeleton behind when blasted with C4. At one point I found a good overwatch position overlooking a flag on a walkway. The window available to fire through was too narrow, and I planted C4 to widen the hole. The C4 detonated uselessly, both doing me no good and attracting a lot of enemy attention.

It’s clear that Close Quarters has also affected the vanilla game in ways that might not make sense on larger maps. After an interview with developers, it became apparent that claymores were recently patched to no longer persist after death because it broke the balance of Close Quarters. Unfortunately, there are many larger maps where persistent claymores are both fair and useful.

Battlefield has always been a strategic game with a rock-paper-scissors approach, and Close Quarters seems to be making everyone use scissors. Ultimately the success of Close Quarters will come down to fans' willingness to stop thinking so strategically and just shoot opponents. It could be fun, but there's one big question: Is this Battlefield? Operation Metro eventually won over a large fan base, and there's plenty of room in the game for people who might not like heavy strategy. We plan on getting into the other new maps next week to see if there are more elements in Ziba Tower or Donya Fortress that bring back the strengths of the Battlefield 3 franchise. At the end of the day, Close Quarters has a bit of an identity crisis. Is it actually Battlefield, or Battlefield chasing a competitor's market share?

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E3 2012: UK studio Playground Games is expanding Forza's horizons, putting the Xbox flagship racing series on the open road in Colorado.

After the launch of Forza 3 in 2009, Turn10 was itching to expand its Xbox racing franchise. So it was at the following year's E3, with Forza 4 in the pipeline, the keepers of the franchise met with a British startup without a single finished product to its name: Playground Games.

"We wanted to ratchet up our ambitions," says Forza creative director Dan Greenawalt. "We needed a partner, more capacity." And though Playground Games had no track record itself, it had racing game expertise in spades.

Founded in 2010 by UK industry veterans and with a staff roster that has surged from 19 to 108, Playground grew out of a rocky period for the British development scene--in particular, a spate of studio closures that left experienced racing game makers at a loose end. Out of that upheaval, Playground drew together staff from shuttered studios Bizarre Creations and Black Rock, as well as former Rockstar North, Ubisoft Reflections, and Codemasters developers.

"Condensing UK talent into a super studio," Greenawalt calls it, standing in the converted Regency townhouse where Playground has set up shop in Leamington Spa, England. It's nearly two years after that initial E3 meeting, and Ralph Fulton, Playground design director and co-founder, formerly of Codemasters himself, is ready for his studio's first game to meet the press.

The game is Forza Horizon: an open-world racer set in Colorado, combining race events and free-roam driving, and centred on a fictional festival named Horizon. "It's an auto show meets a music festival," says Fulton.

In and around the show, you vie with other festival-going car lovers to become Horizon champion by winning races and special events, but also by increasing your popularity with show-off driving. When you drive, whether in a race or on the open road, you accrue popularity points for impressive or risky manoeuvres such as drifting, drafting, skilful overtaking, near misses, and jumps.

It is unmistakably a Forza game, not least because it looks glorious. With Forza's own tried-and-true engine as a graphical foundation, there are shiny cars and pretty lighting to beat the band, and to those Playground adds a dynamic day-night cycle and wide-open vistas. It can have been no mean feat blowing the limited draw distances of the franchise's usual racetracks out to these distant rocky horizons at Forza-grade quality, but Playground has done just that.

The physics and car handling also lift the tech from Turn 10's games. As Fulton says, to do otherwise would have been madness. "Starting a racing project with a car that already travels best in class, that doesn't happen every day," he tells us. "So we started on a really firm footing."

That footing makes for a sweet driving experience in a Viper GTS 13 for our hands-on--handling is tactile but drifty and, again, recognisably that of a Forza title. (Though Playground isn't talking the specifics of its licensed car lineup, Fulton says not to expect any "low-end" cars better suited for shopping trips or Le Mans prototypes--sporty circuit racing machines designed for the racing circuit tracks, not the open road.)

The gameworld is an abridged map of Colorado, with discrete zones arranged around the festival hub to form an expansive, diverse network of road types. Among these are foothill roads with fast, soft curves; winding mountain passes; switchbacks around the state's red rock canyons; and dirt tracks across Colorado's open plains, marking Forza's first foray into off-road driving.

At first blush, Horizon fares decently in comparisons with other open-world racers like Burnout Paradise and Test Drive Unlimited 2. Though it doesn't have the massively multiplayer functionality of the latter, all events can be played competitively online, and you can likewise hook up with friends to tool around Colorado in a spot of free-roaming action. Exploration will be rewarded with collectable barn finds: rare classic cards waiting to be discovered and restored. Asynchronous multiplayer--the lure of the leaderboard and friend stat tracking--features as well, appearing in the shape of speed-trap-like points that capture and compare you and your offline friends' speeds as you whiz through.

The hands-on demo involves a race from a diner to the festival grounds, where fireworks flicker over the huge crowds assembled around tents and stages for the start of the show. It's a show put on in part by British Radio 1 DJ and festival magnate Rob Da Bank, who has curated the game's three genre-based radio stations: one featuring dance music, one indie, and one heavy rock. Three is a modest spread besides the likes of a Grand Theft Auto game, leaving certain genres out altogether, but them's the breaks. Licensed tracks will include songs from Friendly Fires, The Hives, and The Black Keys.

As in earlier Forza games, the player is given a suggested racing line, which is colour-coded red or green for braking or accelerating, and an instant rewind function, letting you take back a botched corner for another shot with a press of a button. New among its features is a Kinect-enabled, voice-based GPS navigation system that lets Kinect owners call up travel instructions with voice commands (those players without Kinect will use a pause menu to request directions on the world map).

Despite the briefness of the demo, this is an assured and revealing first encounter with Forza Horizon. Turn 10's faith in British talent (at an untested studio) looks well placed. "I think it speaks volumes for the UK they had the confidence to go to a startup, with no track record of their own, and trust this enormous task to them, says Fulton.

And if there is an upside to the upheaval in UK racing game development, he says, it might be the alignment of conditions that allowed Playground to flourish. "If there is a silver lining [to the studio closures], and I'm at pains to point out not everyone from those studios works here, they all went all over the place, but what I keep saying to people is: although those studios themselves have gone, the talented people who made those games are still around, and are still really passionate about making triple-A games."

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E3 2012: Arkane's steampunk assassin game gives you the tools to terrorize your enemies in broad daylight.

Playing Dishonored for the first time, you can't help but feel sorry for Sam Fisher. The hero of the Splinter Cell franchise has probably spent half his life lurking in the shadows, going from one stealth operation to the next desperately trying to avoid being seen. Poor Sam. He probably could have gotten out into the sunlight once in a while if only he had supernatural powers.

Then again, not everyone can be like Corvo, the stealthy assassin you navigate through Dishonored's dystopian world of eerie technologies and royal corruption. Corvo is an assassin with access to exotic weaponry and even more exotic supernatural abilities. Using these tools, you realize that actively deceiving your enemies is every bit as important as hiding from them. In other words, creeping through the shadows isn't always the most effective tactic.

The mission that gives us our first hands-on experience with Dishonored is one called Kaldwin's Bridge. We're out to kidnap the royal physician, a guy named Sokolov whose knowledge of medicine has earned him a slightly nicer fate than Corvo's other targets. We begin by sneaking through a decrepit side street, with alleyways and crumbled buildings offering a number of pathways toward Sokolov's safe house atop the bridge. We immediately get the sense that this place has seen better days.

As we creep along, we emerge onto a street overlooking the harbor, taking in a pre-sunset view of Dishonored's steampunk city of Dunwall. It's a nice view, but all that daylight means we have to get creative with our pathway around the guards patrolling the street. Perhaps that's for the best. Dishonored uses a first-person perspective, making it tricky to tell when your entire body is cloaked in shadow even if it's dark out. Rather, this game encourages a more active approach to stealth where you're constantly soaking up details about the environment around you. You've got basic tools like the ability to poke your head around a wall or peek through keyholes, as well as more subtle aids like contextual audio clues. Indeed, sound is very important to your exploits as a crafty assassin. If a guard's voice is clear and natural, you know he's somewhere close. If that same voice turns soft and muffled, however, that's a sign that the guard has walked into another room, giving you the chance to breeze on by.

Our first guards don't do us the favor of stepping into the next room. Fine by us; that's just one more reason to dip into Corvo's toolbox to create our own route around them. We equip the blink ability and instantly teleport up to a high ledge, sneaking right above those hapless guards and onto the entrance of the building containing Sokolov's office.

Two more guards are stationed near the front door, each watching a different approach. We pull open our radial menu to see which tool to try next. The sticky bomb filled with razor blades seems fun, if a little impractical. We consider the ability that summons a horde of flesh-eating rats. Probably overkill. Ultimately, we settle on a simple approach: we cast the ability that lets us possess one of the guards, then excuse ourselves for a moment to walk inside for a quick break. Once through the door and into the building, we hop out of the possessed guard's body, watch him stumble forward wondering what just happened, and then plant a knife in his throat.

Inside, we survey our new surroundings. Dishonored is a game that rewards patience and observance. You might overhear a guard chatting about your target's location, or casually mentioning how a certain pathway might open up under the right circumstances. Looking around, we see a few different options. It's a big open space that resembles an empty factory, with stairs leading to an office up high and guards patrolling the wide-open bottom level.

We pick up a glass bottle and hurl it across the room, creating a quick distraction that lets us dash up the stairs. Up top, we spy a doorway that leads where we want to go, but with one minor problem: it's curtained off by a sonic wall rigged to kill anything that crosses through it. Well, almost anything. Some careful observation reveals that guards can easily pass through, but the one we want slips past and doesn't return. We search around a bit more and find a maid dusting some furniture. She's no guard, but we're hoping that she's also got the security clearance to pass through that booby-trapped doorway. We possess her, hold our breath, and amble through the door. It works. We thank her by letting her live.

All of these abilities, whether it's possessing a guard or summoning a powerful gust of wind to knock multiple foes backward, draw from a finite pool of mana. The more we play, the more we realize that's where one of the major challenges lies in Dishonored: pushing these guards from a tall balcony with a gust of wind might solve this problem, but it'll eat up a massive chunk of mana--and who's to say what's lying in wait around the corner? So like a spell-caster in a role-playing game, you always need to keep an eye on that blue bar and never, ever miss the opportunity to pick up a mana vial when you see one lying around.

Eventually, we make it onto Sokolov's rooftop laboratory. We peek in the window and see him working along, but before entering we survey the perimeter to ensure no guards are nearby. One happens to be standing all by himself at the far end of the balcony. If we're delicate, we can possess him and then leap out from his body, letting him awkwardly stumble forward just enough to tumble from the high ledge. But we suddenly realize we haven't used the hoard of flesh-eating rats ability. We cast it and let nature run its course. Nature is a pretty terrifying sight, as it so happens.

Inside, it's just us and Sokolov. He pleads for his life, but he's just wasting breath: we're here to kidnap him, not kill him. We pull out a rather impressive looking contraption that fires glowing green tranquilizer darts and proceed to discharge one right into his face. When we pick up his body to escort it back to the boatman hiding at the dock below the bridge, we spy a girl locked up behind bars in the corner of Sokolov's office. As it turns out, our target was keeping his own personal guinea pig for his latest experiments. She pleads for help. We know we need to get a move on, but we run over and release her anyway.

Releasing the girl doesn't grant you any immediate bonus or morality swing. It's simply an option the game gives you, letting you figure out what you want to do. It's a nice little metaphor for the game as a whole: Dishonored may not be an open-world game, but it sure is a sandbox game. Each level houses a branching network of pathways and approaches for you to consider, never hitting you over the head with suggestions for which to take. It's a stealth game that doesn't banish you to the shadows; rather, you're given a diverse toolset and the freedom to kill as many or as few of the human obstacles standing between you and your target as you wish.

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E3 2012: You're not the only predator in this stretch of wilderness.

One of the most impressive things about Assassin's Creed III is that you immediately see the game's hero as a product of his environment, a Native American raised far away from the Colonial cities of early America. Whether he's stalking a target from high up in the trees or defending himself from the wild animals that roam the early American frontier, Connor comes across as an assassin who knows the wilderness inside and out.

A lot of that comes from how Connor moves through the world, or more specifically, his world. Assassin's Creed III features Colonial versions of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, but it's the game's large tracts of wilderness where Connor seems most at home.

"We've gone from a very rigid environment made of buildings into a space that's trees and slopes and cliffs, and all of them are organic, unusual shapes," says creative director Alex Hutchinson. "It's a different climbing puzzle for the player, a different combat puzzle for the player."

An overhauled animation system gives the impression that Connor has spent plenty of time getting familiar with those puzzles. When he's running up a steep hill, you see him lean forward slightly and keep his hands just above the ground lest he slip and fall. In the trees, he's able to leap from branch to branch and quickly sidestep any thick trunks in his way. Connor just doesn't seem bothered by what nature throws at him.

Other times, he uses those obstacles to his advantage. One mission in the game involves Connor sneaking into a British camp situated on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. Rather than head right through the front door, Connor can explore the sides of the camp and discover a steep slope leading down to an unguarded rear entrance. He braces himself and slides through the dirt and snow, ready to quietly ambush a camp full of redcoats.

The way Connor exploits his surroundings isn't always pretty. From up in the trees, Connor can throw a weapon that latches onto an enemy's throat, and then instantly yank him upward so that his dangling body attracts the attention of those around him. At this point, you are ready to pounce on those remaining targets, tomahawk in hand.

Watching Connor stalk his prey in the snowy frontier, you almost get the impression that he's a little too talented at what he does. Where's the challenge for the player? According to Ubisoft, there's one simple answer to that: the frontier has plenty of predators not named Connor.

At various points throughout Connor's journeys, he'll encounter wild animals such as bears or wolves--each following different behavioral patterns. A pack of wolves, for example, might circle Connor, forcing you into a tense standoff where you're eyeing the moving pack and trying to figure out who will be the first wolf to strike.

"We wanted you to feel as though it's you versus the wilderness," says Hutchinson. "So we worked a lot on how to make you feel that emotion. That included the behavior of the animals. Do you hear them before you see them? How do they attack you? What's the player fantasy of that?"

For Ubisoft Montreal, it's all about balance. Connor is a talented predator, using the contours of the rugged American frontier to his advantage as he seeks out enemies venturing outside cities and camps. Yet he's hardly the only predator in the gameworld, so at any moment you need to be conscious of your place in the wilderness. A wolf or a bear doesn't see a talented assassin with a hidden blade; it sees its next meal.

But don't worry: not every animal in Assassin's Creed III is a vicious killing machine. "We have a turkey in the game, and I think our turkey AI is phenomenal," jokes Hutchinson. "I believe in our turkey when I look at it."

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