Fables of Amalur

Ea's pushing a new RPG, and honestly it's totally innovative. Kingdoms of Amalur:Reckoning is a visually enthralling interesting verson of a game that's kinda already been done. I know almost evey game has already been done before, but for some reason, I couldn't shake the feeling that KoA was a reimagining of a game I've already played.

The demo is out right now for both PC and console, and if you've played it, you know that you are a reborn "choose your race" and the only success of an experiment that primarily focused on combating an immortal race. Fan fiction aside, The game feels like it could be an extension of a story in the WarCraft universe. Perhaps that's because everything (everything) is vivid, and perhaps it's because of the large armor, dwarfs, and elves.

It's not bad to be honest, and copying a successful source is sometimes a good start.

The game also goes into an large "open" world that allows you to explore and quest. Penny arcade seems to draw a parallel between Amalur and Skyrim, but I think comparing the combat and exploration to Dragon Age 2 is far more accurate.

Similar to Dragon Age and Bioware levels in general, you can expect a fairly straight-forward level design, and your map will show you the road through. Don't expect alot of branching paths so far, from what I played it fairly linear. Now linear isn't always bad, but it definitely limits replay.

Secondly, Combat is fun and frustrating at the same time. Now yeah Dragon Age 2 had a similar real time combat, but here Amalur really felt like it was inspired by the Fable Series. We don't have Peter Molyneux hyping a concept that never reaches execution, but you do have a fairly fun action based combat with an interesting class based system. You'll need to pay attention, but there is the occasional (if by occasional I mean regular) desire to pull the camera back just a bit to see my other attackers.

Both Fable and Amalur suffer from that last sentence. I did however find that in playing the demo I was fairly able to get my block timing (which has a difference between blocking and timed blocking) and that helped when being attacked by groups.

The model for the world were pretty. That much I can say, and while the armor seemed to be fairly bulky all around, when you have Todd McFarlane involved, it's just something you expect.

Get More: GameTrailers.com,

If nothing else, it's worth it to jump into the demo since you get armor unlocked in Mass Effect 3, and even a weapon unlock if you play completely through the demo.