Genre: First-Person Shooter
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Valve Software
Release Date: November 17, 2009

When Left 4 Dead 2 was announced at Microsoft's press conference last week, cheers went up from the crowd to celebrate the arrival of the sequel to the phenomenally successful zombie-smasher on the Xbox 360 as an exclusive title. It turns out that exclusivity had only extended as far as the console space because on the first day of E3, I managed to get a taste of the gory zombie-slayer on the PC.

A mission from the main campaign was available, and this

Brink is an immersive shooter that blends single-player, co-op, and multiplayer gameplay into one seamless experience, allowing you to develop your character across all modes of play. You decide the role you want to assume in the world of Brink as you fight to save yourself and mankind's last refuge for humanity.

Genre: Fighting
Publisher: Atlus
Developer: iRem
Release Date: June 30, 2009

Steambot Chronicles has become a significant series for Atlus. It's not a massive property that defines the company, like Shin Megami Tensei, but it's certainly a nice series that has a significant fandom. If what I saw was any indication, the PSP release of Steambot Chronicles: Battle Tournament should turn out to be fairly satisfying for fans.

Steambot Chronicles: Battle Tournament is slightly smaller in scale than other games in the series; it only encompasses one very large town and the areas around it. In a

Genre: Puzzle
Publisher: Atlus
Developer: Blitz Game Studios
Release Date: June 2009

Atlus Software is starting to break into the casual space with several of their recent releases, such as manic puzzler Puchi Puchi Virus. However, one of their latest works breaks into the grand tradition of slow-paced, ultra-casual games meant to relax and inspire just the right amount of thinking. I spent some time at E3 demoing the PlayStation 3 and iPhone versions of Droplitz, but it's also coming to the Xbox 360 and PC.

Droplitz is a fairly basic puzzle game, somewhat reminiscent of PopCap's

Genre: First-Person Shooter
Publisher: Phantom EFX
Developer: 8Monkey Labs
Release Date: TBA

Time travel and its paradoxical twists have always been popular tools for fiction to use as convenient foils in wrapping up loose threads or in creating new ways in which to create the same. The adventure game Timequest, from now-defunct developer Legend Entertainment, casts you as a time agent sent back to pivotal moments in history in order to correct subtle changes that another renegade agent had left behind. The Journeyman Project series had also explored the same approach, and in both, you could screw

Genre: Role-Playing
Publisher: Atlus
Developer: Chunsoft
Release Date: Q1 2010

Mystery Dungeon: Shiren The Wanderer was a roguelike for the Nintendo DS, with most of the trappings thereof (when a character dies, all items are lost, etc.) The game has had several console releases in Japan, and now the third is coming to the U.S. for the Wii. At E3, they were showing attendees a demo of the Japanese game and explaining everything to those who were interested.

The basics of Shiren the Wanderer are your standard roguelike. The game even features two difficulty levels, with a hardcore mode

Genre: Role-Playing
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Release Date: October 2009

Stealth and adrenaline-soaked action are part of the spy genre's hallmarks, whether it is in trying to stop nuclear annihilation in Metal Gear or in slipping past enemy security by climbing along the outside of a cruise ship in Splinter Cell. Obsidian Entertainment is now set to shake up these conventions with a spy-based RPG that includes the combat, stealth, and plenty of options to allow a player to mix James Bond and Jason Bourne into the ultimate black ops agent.

While most spy games only have

Atlus U.S.A. has secured the North American publishing rights for Demon's Souls, a groundbreaking PS3 exclusive action RPG experience. Beautiful, compelling, and unforgiving, Demon's Souls is the hardcore RPG experience PS3 fans have been waiting for.