Dead Space: Hands-On Impressions

EA Redwood Shores was on hand at last week's EA Label gathering to show off a bit of Dead Space, the deep-space thriller that, until last week, left me feeling rather cold... and not in a good way.

Leading up to last week's event all of the stuff I saw about the game made me feel like it was another shooter, albeit one set in space, but one that didn't seem to offer anything new or interesting to the formula of scary shooters.

But after spending ten minutes or so watching a demonstration and then a few minutes controlling a hapless space engineer, I've got a taste for the game.

The EA Drinks: From The Cachaca Left 4 Dead to the Mass Effect Lotus Vodka

When Electronic Arts takes over a bar, they don't just throw up a bunch of gaming kiosks and a couple of Communist slogan-themed logos, they also come up with their very own list of game-themed drinks.

Here's the breakdown:

Battlefield: Bad Company: Herradura silver tequila, cointreau and fresh squeezed lime served on the rocks.

Battlefield: Heroes: Hendrick's gin, fresh rasberry, cucumber, shaken and strained, served up with a splash of kumquat dry soda.

Left 4 Dead: Fresh muddled lime wedges, mango puree, cachaca, shaken and poured over rocks.

Warhammer Online: Oronoco rum, freshly squeezed lime, simple syrup and muddled cucumbers, shaken hard poured over ice.

Dead Space: Maker's Mark, carpano antica sweet vermouth, disaronno amaretto, served up with a cherry.

Rock Band: Drink like a rockstar, Skyy citrus, fresh lemon and lime, served sparkling in a tall glass.

Skate It: Jameson, fresh lemon, ginger beer, a touch of blood orange bitters and pomegranate.

Mass Effect: Fresh basil, Lotus vodka and fresh lime juice served straight up.

Before the whole shebang took off last night and Electronic Arts kicked off their Spring Break Games Day, I managed to sneak my way onto a computer loaded up with Battlefield Heroes to check out a bit of gameplay and mess around with the game's interesting customization settings.

DICE's free-to-play upcoming shooter features Team Fortress 2-like graphics and a definite Battlefield Lite feel, but what really captured my interest was the game's use of customization.

Skate It Wii Hands-On Impressions

Standing on the tiny white stage set up in front of the back bar of Supperclub last night, a drink sloshing nearly out of its glass in one hand, Skate It executive producer Scott Blackwood promised not to use the phrase "built from the ground up" while explaining his game.

Boo me off the stage, he insisted, if I do... and then he proceeded to use the phrase.

"If it's not built from the ground up, is it a port? Not really."

Blackwood explained that before Black Box started their work on the Wii and DS versions of Skate, they had to figure out if the controls would work.

"It we couldn't get that great flick it feel, we weren't going to do it," he said.

Later on, while trying out the Wii version of the game for myself, I was told the team spent three to four months working on getting those controls right and for the most part, it felt like they succeeded.

Battleforge Impressions

At first blush Battleforge appears to be an amalgamation of Magic the Gather and Warcraft, a PC game that combines the strategy and pacing of a well put together real-time strategy game with the collectible nature and infrastructure-free feel of a trading card game.

During last night's EA event Richard Leinfellner, executive producer of the game and video president of developer Phenomic, walked the press through a quick co-op battle.

While Battleforge has single player and versus modes, it appears that it's really, at its heart, a cooperative game, supporting up to 12 players.

To play, players first build a deck from the cards they've collected by working through the campaign, which rewards gamers with new cards, trading online or buying booster packs.

Once the deck has been built, players use these cards to summon their armies, there are no production buildings or resource management, instead you fight to capture territories, which gives you the ability to summon larger and larger creatures.

Left 4 Dead Hands-On Impressions

Valve was on hand at last night's EA festivities to give attendees a chance to check out zombie survival shooter Left 4 Dead. In the game you play as one of four characters co-oping through a city ravaged with a plague of zombies, trying to shoot, melee and run your way from safe room to safe room.

The game starts off with your and three other players on a roof top behind a locked door. A nearby table is stocked with a selection of weapons, ammo and health packs. In the map we played, the first room had molotov cocktails, submachine guns, pistols and shotguns. Each player can equip a health pack, molotov cocktail, handgun and primary weapon: I went with the submachine gun.

Staying true to the zombie formula, your ammo is very limited, so survival isn't as much about clearing a room as getting through it.

Electronic Arts Gets "Back to Basics" with Gamer's Day