Day two kicked off with a bang as we hit up the Crackdown 2 booth before the general public was able to get into the show floor. The demo on the floor is multiplayer which will have a variety of different modes. The one we had the opportunity to play was called Rocket Tag. Rocket Tag is basically kill the man with the Orb, much like in Halo’s Oddball variant Rocketball, players attempt to capture the orb and hold onto it for as long as possible while seven other people try to blow them to bits. The game has a nice feel to it and relies heavily on the special powers of the agent meaning this is a very vertical and fast paced game mode. It is also completely insane due to all the explosions going off.

After Crackdown I personally hit up Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and waited a bit to get onto a demo kiosk. When I did I was pleasantly surprised. The game looks beautiful, which I believe I said yesterday, but based on my play time with it I can soundly say the game controls just as you would expect a Prince of Persia title to do. The game has nice long stretches of platforming action mixed in with some intense combat sequences where you are put up against insurmountable odds. I have to say, I went into the Prince of Persia demo a bit skeptical of the game, being as it seems like it is just a movie tie in, but this is a real Prince of Persia game and it is now quite the anticipated title for me personally.

We made our way to The Death of Print Panel where some of the most respected names in games journalism set up shop to talk about the death of games magazines. Guys like John Davison and Jeff Green, two longtime industry vets, shed quite a bit of light on the subject. While the conclusion was that print is not actually dead the approach and model for games magazines does have to change and only those that can adapt and find their niche will survive.

We personally had a private demo of the upcoming RPG, Two Worlds II. The first one had a lot of promise but was effectively broken. The devs spoke openly about this and said the game was very much rushed the first time around. This time around the game is not being rushed and it is looking very good. The new Grace Engine looks quite impressive with some interesting uses of dynamic lighting including heat distortion. There story itself seems like it will be quite linear but the game will have quite a bit of free range to explore for players that want to do so. The build we saw was a few weeks old and not entirely polished, with some screen tearing and frame rate issues, but we were assured that the game will be cleaned up before it releases later this year. If they can pull off everything they are promising Two Worlds II could surprise a lot of people.

The last thing we saw yesterday was Green Day: Rock Band. It looks nice. The note tracking looks good with some difficulty I was not expecting. The game will support the Harmonies that The Beatles: Rock Band introduced last year. And honestly that is about it for impressions on Green Day: Rock Band. If you like Green Day and you like Rock Band, this game will probably get you going otherwise, it is a band themed game so…

After Green Day: Rock Band we headed out to the IGN/Rebel FM party off-site and the place was insane. We drank quite a bit, IGN was kind enough to hand out some prizes and then the dancing to Lady Gaga started. It all resulted in a drunken mass of people moving through the streets of Boston to another bar only to be sidetracked by .99 cent pizzas. At this second bar which was also the bar where the 1UP after party was going on we got a chance to talk with Anthony Gallegos for a bit about the IGN layoffs, specifically his move over to IGN proper from Gamespy, and his own show Rebel FM. Good times had by all and now it is day three so I leave you with these pictures.