Lego Soccer Mania

Lego Soccer Mania looks like a ton of fun, with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game doing a great job of emulating the old-school arcade experience. The game looks like it will do what its predecessors do well, and it definitely looks like it will give the gamer some light-hearted and breezy action in the vein of the Virtua Tennis series.

Players can choose from four different heroes to play as, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The demo we saw gave us a look at some of the five sports that will be available in the game. These include such a legendary player like Adam Cruse and Al Makar from Virtua Tennis. These characters are split into three classes. You'll be able to select from The Brutus (a veritable walking mech), The Swampy (a slug-like baby that looks like a giant lice), The League of Villains (a totem with a tentacle on it), and The Forest Gardener (a sidekick that looks like a baby version of Puss in Boots).

For the sake of simplicity, the main character in Soul Reaver 2 is the head of a colonist's farm, but you can still alter the appearance of the titular Rei in the game, if you like. Rei's new character model also has some unique moves, and the hair can be changed to give her different hair styles. One area of the game we saw seemed to be quite lively. The level used a pink flower aesthetic to change the path the colony took--we were able to illuminate it using the L2 button, which turned the grass around so that it looked like it was on fire.

The story is structured out fairly well, but Soul Reaver 2 does have a few new twists. For one thing, you can actually switch between Rei and her past self, Nezha, at any time. A soul reaver that Rei has left can be played as her present self, and she can use her high psychic powers to instantly switch places with her other characters. You can also switch between Rei and Nezha on the fly by pressing the left bumper. You'll have to keep moving both characters when one dies, and these characters can make it easier for you to finish them off by making use of special abilities that may not be immediately obvious to everyone, but can help your point-blank escape. The game also has a much wider variety of environments than before. In addition to the dense forests of Ishigo, which were introduced in the first game, Soul Reaver 2 has a bunch of completely unique environments. The indoor ones are broken up into different levels, each containing a different set of objectives and enemies to defeat. While the indoor ones are pretty standard, we were also able to take in the underground ones, which were fairly intense and had some of the wackiest looking enemies we've ever seen. The ambient ones are actually quite a bit more colorful than the indoor ones, and will feature some cool environmental effects. The eerie ones are a creepy tunnel for you to wander around in, and the dark ones will definitely make you scared off about entering. The levels were still pretty generic, but were a lot more detailed than before. The indoor areas will feature a whole lot of ambient stuff, as well, including an atmosphere that mixes real and horrible. The only real exception is the surface environment, which features a lot more characters and enemies, as well as enemies that don't come around very often.

In terms of gameplay, Soul Reaver 2 is pretty much the same as the original, except the levels will have slightly different objectives and enemies. In fact, they'll be a lot more open-ended than in the first game. One of the great things about the first Soul Reaver was that you could get a lot of opportunities to do some pretty cool stuff in each level.

Soul Reaver 2 will have the same storyline and a few other new features, such as a new game plus mode that will let you choose one of four unique characters for each of the different character classes.

We were able to visit a demo level in San Francisco where we were able to go to the Warrington Institute. The level started off in the flat hallway on the left side of the street, and it actually looked pretty cool. We were able to move the camera up to see the big fight between Death and the dreaded Reaper, the man who started the entire game by shooting a dart gun at him. You can see Death in action in one of the video clips from the game. The Reaper's twin pistols are also featured, and we also had a chance to play around with the necromancer's lightning powers, which are some of the more powerful spells in the game. In the demo level, Death had to destroy a bridge to a bunch of mining supplies, which took him to a huge canyon. The level featured the same mix of combat and exploration as the previous Battlefield games, but we were able to check out some of the vehicles that were featured in the level and also take part in one of the single-player modes.