Best games on show at E3

There are thousands of new games on show at E3 across all platforms from role playing games to first-person shooters. Marc Cieslak separates the digital duds from the electronic elite in order to bring you his pick of the games at E3 2008.

FALLOUT 3

At first glance, Fallout 3 might look like a straightforward first-person shooter. But look a bit closer and this post-apocalyptic adventure is in fact a fast paced role-playing game.

Fallout 3 is a role-playing game set in a post-apocalyptic world

The player must venture outside the safety of a 1950s inspired nuclear bunker in search of their wayward father.

The action takes place in an enormous radioactive wasteland which was formally Washington DC. Encounters with what look like extras from the Mad Max movies are common here.

Combat with these foes can include the use of a limited number of action points which freeze time allowing the player to take out enemies with ease.

The game's developers, Bethesda Softworks, claim there is up to a 100 hours of gameplay. But all of this detail takes a long time to bring to the screen.

"Our sort of design and development philosophy is great games are played and not made.

We play the game a lot and then say what we think is working, what do we want do more of, what do we want to do less of and what we want to take out. It's part of the reason our games take three or four years to make," said game director of Fallout 3, Todd Howard.

PRINCE OF PERSIA

From a game set 200 years in the future to a title with a rich history, set in the ancient past.

The first Prince of Persia game was released 19 years ago

The acrobatic adventurer the Prince of Persia returns and its developers have given the latest iteration of this platformer franchise more than just a visual overhaul.

First making an appearance on PCs and Macs in a sidescrolling adventure back in 1989, Prince of Persia received a reboot in 2003, as a 3D adventure courtesy of Ubisoft.

The 2008 version of the Prince can swing, run up walls and jump across gaping chasms accompanied by an artificial intelligence companion called Elika, as he does battle with bad guys on a quest to defeat an evil deity.

In a marketplace packed with sandbox titles, which allow the player free reign to explore huge environments, this title tips a nod and a wink to games of old.

"I remember originally we tried to literally do it like Assassin's Creed - very, very free. We started play testing it and these advanced POP [Prince of Persia] players didn't know what to do. They would jump and they would stop and they would try and look around. They were overwhelmed by possibility, there was a platform there and there and there and there and it was just too much," said the producer of Prince of Persia Ben Mattes.

"So we had to iterate on our level design to make sure you are going to be able to get that acrobatic flow, that rhythm of run, jump, swing off the pole, wall, jump, grab that column," he added.

MOTORSTORM PACIFIC RIFT / KILLZONE

For the Playstation there is more off-road racing in buggies, bikes and monster trucks courtesy of Motorstorm Pacific Rift.

Motorstorm Pacific Rift is set on a Hawaiian island

This time the action is transplanted to a Hawaiian island and courses are littered with obstacles both natural and man made which will ruin any unwary racer's day.

Sci-fi, first-person shooter Killzone also returns. It has been visually upgraded from the PlayStation 2 original, although the environments do seem to suffer from an abundance of grey buildings, subtly highlighted by grey enemies who no doubt live in grey futuristic apartments.

Would a splash of colour beyond muzzle flashes and night vision goggles be too much to ask?

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Basically, it is business as usual for the games industry, which increasingly relies on sequels. And while gamers keep snapping the latest versions of favourite titles, the games industry will keep churning out sequels.