DS @ E for All 2008

After the many announcements coming from Nintendo’s press conferences just a few days before this year’s E for All expo, nobody expected anything out of the ordinary for the show, and that was the case. Although Nintendo themselves didn’t go, the Target booth carried DS systems and a few games for sale, as well as four DS units with demos of Madden 09, Kirby Super Star Ultra, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and Lego Indiana Jones.

Other than that, it was up to third parties to carry on. A few DS units had Japanese demos of in-the-works titles that might make their way to the West, including Ragnarok DS Online, and the good people at NoWay Studios had a few games up for play as well, including a surprisingly polished classic FPS titled C.O.R.E.. In the game, your task as a special agent is to infiltrate an underground laboratory built to carry experiments after a meteorite crash. When communications from the lab suddenly cease, it’s your job to figure out what’s going on. So far the game features a very decent engine, with smooth graphics and well-implemented controls in the style of Metroid Prime Hunters and Dementium: The Ward. As expected, the game will feature several areas to explore, enemies to defeat and weapons to use. What’s more, the title promises various multiplayer options using a single copy of the game. C.O.R.E. is expected to hit store shelves by the end of the year.

Aside from the nice surprise that C.O.R.E. was, and a few neat but overpriced DS imports, E for All offered little to DS aficionados. However, with the recent announcements of DS hardware revisions and upcoming games, we have little reason to complain.