While a lot of the games on display at eGames this year are already on the market, a slew of pre-release titles were still available for me to get my hands on, and you can trust that’s what I did. Gathering from around the globe, publishers from Ubisoft to Activision, EA to Atari, Microsoft to Nintendo and so forth; the event served as a worthy insight into gaming over the next few months.

Super Mario Galaxy - Wii (Nintendo) – Two games had close rivalry for the most attention at eGames this year, Super Mario Galaxy and Guitar Hero 3. While every opportunity to rock out was sufficiently rocked, it was never rocked without a mass of people crowding the Mario booths in the background, and with damn good reason. Previewing two stellar levels of the famous plumbers next intergalactic outing, the taste of Galaxy was enough to satisfy this gamers hopes.

Super Mario Galaxy is proving to be the expansive exciting title the Wii needs, with a bright colourful universe packing the best graphics I’ve seen on the Wii yet. The levels on preview hosted a fun outing through the next dimension of platforming, while potentially a lot more entertaining without the infuriating Nintendo staff (I should say – dancers with Nintendo shirts) barking commands at me. Ignoring attractive yet ditsy Nintendo women, the preview available also showed off the 2 player options within Super Mario Galaxy, an option seeming to be more useless and intrusive (why could some other guy make my Mario jump?) than entertaining, but it gave the guy behind me something to do while I flew bee Mario around a few planets. SMG is bright, colourful, expansive and proves an excellent outlet for a limitless amount of potential worlds, dimensions, characters and experience.

Uncharted – Drake’s Fortune – PS3 (Naughty Dog, SCE) – While I was always quite certain Super Mario Galaxy would never fail to impress, my expectations for Uncharted were high yet questionable as Naughty Dog branch into a serious world we haven’t seen before. Starting a new game into an attractive action scene of smooth fluid shooting led into controlling a new hero of mobility to rival Altair or The Prince, levels later I had no question of where this ruin roaming action game will lead. Uncharted has shaped up into a solid and polished experience, one I can’t wait to explore more. The environment is interactive and expansive, with lush vegetation and detailed ruins creating a wonderful world to adventure through.

God Of War: Chains Of Olympus – PSP (Ready At Dawn, SCEA) – Straight from fluid action to fluid action, Chains Of Olympus mainly impressed by how impeccably this amazing action title has been brought to PSP. A whole new world of Kratos brutality, the hardware held no barriers as the PSP presented a God Of War experience of no different to that of the PS2 titles. Perhaps a disadvantage of how Chains Of Olympus seemed to have little difference to the PS2 titles is that it’s essentially creating more of the same, but it’s hard to complain about the same epic mythological violent battles we’ve come to expect from God Of War all in your ever so portable hands. The visuals this time around seemed to be a bit smoother than the previous grittier titles. This by no means represented a lesser or higher graphical experience, but something that felt a bit modern against today’s console titles.

Haze – PS3 (Free Radical, Ubisoft) – Coming from the developers of the famous console shooting Timesplitters series, I expected a little more from Haze. Littered with annoyances, obvious clipping issues and poor graphics, Haze was one of my main disappointments at eGames this year. If the horrible clichéd dialogue doesn’t get to you first, the incessant high pitched beeping of the low health signal will. As mentioned the graphics were quite shoddy for a recent PS3 title, to the point of me questioning how well the PS3 was set up on the monitors provided. Perhaps Assassins Creed showing off amazing visual quality mere metres away proved no help for Haze. Considering all this and adding in terrible enemy AI, I’m hoping somewhere within the many hours of Haze I couldn’t play, something great is hidden.

Beowulf – XBOX 360 (Ubisoft) – While the first level of Beowulf merely presented a timing sequence similar to rhythm games, it was the epic dialogue and presentation of this Nordic adventure that impressed me. Several levels in the feeling didn’t stop, Beowulf is a great experience for atmosphere driven by a high quality of setting, dialogue and Nordic brutality. A few levels in I found myself getting into a pretty repetitive cycle of action hack’n'slash combat so I’m hoping later levels provide a few more abilities or weapons. At this point the humorous dialogue and brutal presentation would be enough to keep me playing Beowulf for a while.

Assassin’s Creed – XBOX 360 / PS3 (Ubisoft) – While I’m hoping to have my hands busily reviewing Assassin’s Creed within the week, I didn’t actually get those gaming mits behind Alastair throughout the eGames weekend. In close rivalry for most popular eGames title, I certainly got a lot of time to watch Assassin’s Creed be played and a visual treat it is. The blend of futuristic character against ancient Holy Land was amazing, the combat expansive and varying with impressive sword fighting and many exciting stealth/action elements. Expect a lot more on this title.

Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronics – Wii (CAPCOM) – Lastly, another title I didn’t actually get my hands on seemed questionable. I wasn’t worried about not actually getting behind Nintendo’s new Zapper light-gun styled attachment, watching Umbrella Chronicles for quite a while throughout the weekend felt enough. While the graphics for this zombie shooter were impressive (for the Wii) the zombie interaction looked unsatisfying. Enemies seemed to react as if a pebble had been thrown at them, followed by falling to the ground. At first I thought violence was toned down somewhat for Nintendo, until a rare head shot managed to quite gorily decapitate a zombie head. Why then, when shooting the majority of enemies did the screen feel as though Chris Redfield may as well be using a water pistol? Interaction annoyances aside, Umbrella Chronicles seemed a fun on-rails shooter. I hope there’s a lot of levels and content in this, as zombie hunters could find themselves with one short experience they may not look back to.