It feels like it's E3 time again: various gaming sites are posting articles about game that are shown at the German Convention. Ubisoft is trying to generate a lot of hype about Dark Messiah, and journalists appear to be impressed by the game so far. A preview at 1UP talks about melee combat: "A few sword-fighting scenes were shown where the players and the opponents swords locked together and this made for some intense melee struggles. There are over 40 different weapons and the usual Might and Magic assortment of bestiary to hack to pieces." According to 1UP, the game will benefit from high-dynamic-range lighting, a feature that Valve developed for the new Half Life 2 episodes.

There are more descriptions of combat at GameSpy, and they sound quite interesting: "We shield-bashed an orc, then kicked him off of the cliff where he plummeted to the rocks below. Next, on the platform, we fought sword-to-sword against another orc, sparks flying. Using a special combat move we ripped away his shield. Then we grabbed his neck, plunged a sword into his gut, and kicked the body off of our sword and over the edge of the platform. By now, more orcs had rushed toward us to investigate the noise. We ran inside the room, which was filled with barrels and a side of beef hanging from the ceiling. As we fought tooth and nail with these guys, barrels fell over and smashed or rolled around the room. At one point we kicked the side of beef and sent it hurtling toward our opponents. It was as vicious of a fight as you could get: the camera even goes to slow motion for spectacular killing blows."

Dark Messiah is going to bring hordes of cool kids into the community. So you will excuse me while I alert the moderators of our forums...