Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

My job for E3 2011 was pretty straightforward: I code and post the articles and images that our Ten Ton Hammer crew sent back from the con. While Ethec, Ben, and Sardu were busy partying after hours with hot booth babes, enjoying luxurious accommodations, and being wined and dined by industry bigwigs, yours truly was sitting in his home office (by office, I mean desk in my bedroom) posting away at odd hours. (The con was on the West Coast and I live on the East Coast.)

While sifting through the myriad images and articles, a few caught my eye and piqued my interest. While everyone is looking forward to games like Star Wars: The Old Republic or TERA, there were quite a few games shown at E3 that looked extremely fun and interesting which made me go, “Damn. This sounds really cool and I’d love to play it. When does it come out? Fourth quarter of 2011 if I’m lucky? Argh!!!” However, future release dates don’t deter me as they can only add to the final thrill of the game’s release. Anyway, let’s look at the five games that really grabbed me from E3 2011.

PAYDAY

Developed by Overkill and being published by Sony, PAYDAY is a co-op game of bank heists and doing mischief. With six different scenarios at launch and more planned, it looks like there’ll be lots to do robbing banks, prison transport hijacking, and robbing a corporate party ala Die Hard. I’m stoked about this game because co-op gaming has come back in a big way in the last couple of years and I’m a huge fan. Games like Left 4 Dead and Borderlands allow you to play with a core group of friends with the focus on action. PAYDAY seems to follow in Left 4 Dead’s footsteps in that you’re part of a four man team, which can be filled out by your buds or the computer. In addition, you can level your character and unlock new abilities by doing more heists, which adds incentive to keep playing. Plus, I love a good first-person-shooter and the scenarios presented here are different from the norm. If you ever wanted to try your hand at robbing a bank just like you saw in Heat, now’s your chance.

Explosive bank-heist action in PAYDAY.

Neverwinter

I’ve been a long-time player of Dungeons and Dragons (starting back in 1981), so any game that takes place in any D&D setting gets my notice. What has got me excited about Neverwinter isn’t what the story is going to be, but rather the fact that Cryptic is including their Foundry toolset to allow players to create their own adventures and share them. The Foundry toolset has kept Star Trek Online going and we all know that gamers are a creative, inventive lot. We all played the mods created for Neverwinter Nights more than the regular game, so I’m expecting more of the same from Neverwinter. The toolset is easily accessible to players who don’t have much experience at modding, but appears to have a great deal of depth for more experienced modders. Being able to play loads of different mods for the same game is like buying one game, but being able to play dozens.

The Undead in Neverwinter look freaking awesome!

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