Xboxist Presents Comic Con Roundup Part 1:

We’ve been to Comic Con and we have impressions of Velvet Assassin, X blades and more. It is that time of year where everyone dresses up in their best costumes and ventures off to the center of geek paradise in the city that never sleeps. That’s right, the New York City Comic Con came and went last weekend and for three days straight gamers, comic fans, cosplayers and everybody else came to see the new video games on display this year. Just for our readers out there we at gameflavor.com were on the scene to get you the low-down on the most anticipated upcoming titles coming out this year. So please strap on your Thor helmets and cast your eyes on the things to come!

As the New York branch member for GameFlavor, it was an honor to represent the crew at Comic Con this year and speak with many of the developers about the up coming titles for you special gamers out there. The first booth that was visited was the great people at SouthPeak Studios where I met with Lee Perez who gave me a sneak peek at "Velvet Assassin", "X Blades", "Roogoo Twisted Towers" and "Section 8". It seems there was a huge turn out this year for Southpeak with these great titles all geared towards different gamers with all different genre represented.

Let’s start with Velvet Assassin, the upcoming action/stealth game that has us very excited.

Southpeak games has done an outstanding job filling in the historical background for their WWII themed shooter. Since we all know there have been many stories that were never told, we get the chance to play in one of those stories as Violette. Yes, a female assassin that was working behind enemy lines against the Nazis. This is an interest spy thriller with come new twists, including the choice to go with a female heroine in the mostly male-dominated WWII shooter genre. As you go through the game you will discover a lot of historic situations, each requiring stealth tactics to resolve. This is not a run and gun type of game you have to really rely on the shadows sneaking behind and killing enemies while obtaining information to win the war.

Southpeak representative Lee let me play a short demo and gave out some interesting information about how this game will work when you have limited resources. An example involves Violettes' equipment – at some points in the game she only has a pistol and a knife and since she has to stealth kill all of her opponents, the knife will be your best friend since it never runs out and is very reliable for a kill. According to the developers, players can perform 40 different kill animations. The developers have innovated in the stealth gameplay department by forcing the gamer to think carefully about how to evade and kill enemies. One mechanic involved looking through a peep hole in closed doors to scout enemy locations. You will also have to activate certain items in the game to distract guards or bring them towards your position. As Lee gave out a few tips when dealing with two guards; always try a bait and switch with them because Violette can't take on both guards at once.

I have to say I was expecting her to have a bit more combat training just in case you mess up a bit while trying to stealth kill a guard, however Lee assured that they wanted to keep it focused on stealth rather than combat. Either way I did enjoy the fact that even though the guard spotted me I was able to hide in the shadows and come around to take him out. I know some of you will be itching to go up close and personal with some of the guards so the developers gave Violette morphine which pumps her up to attack a guard in any direction. It slows down time which gives her options to perform more deadly finishing moves. When she takes the drug you will notice that she starts off in a nighty with bubbles surrounding her like a dream. Reason being she was an escaped prisoner at one point and the drug kind of puts her into a flash back for a short time. Without giving away any more of the story, we will simply say that it all makes sense in the context of the game. Check out some of the screens below to get a taste of what is coming later this year.

For your added viewing pleasure I met with the model that Violette was portrayed after and I have to say she was stunning and charming. However I am not saying this because she put a gun to my head mind you.

The next game from Southpeak that we got to check out at Comic Con was X Blades, which will be hitting current-gen consoles this week. The game’s story focuses on two powerful beings, one of light and one of dark, who share a brotherly bond as well as a rivalry – they can’t decide who is deity number one. While one helped the people the other planned to do nothing but evil. Luckily, however, the enlightened being trapped his brother but in doing so lost his divine powers as well. So two artifacts came to be and held great power which would make any being the most powerful in existence. Enter our heroine Ayumi who has been cursed by darkness and seeks the artifacts to end this curse and hopefully save the world, but mostly she is concerned with stopping the curse that is coursing through her.

The game has a nice fantasy element with a hot anime style character leading the story. The visuals of the backgrounds are amazing with some stunning effects for each of the battles. The central gameplay idea is to use melee attacks and magic to your advantage against various adversaries. You will have a sidekick that will help you out during the story arc whose name is Jay which will also be on the temple island adventuring around. Check out the screenshots as well as a gameplay video below.

Last but not least, we got a look at a new first-person shooter called "Section 8". So far, very little has been said about this game, in which the titular group of special forces soldiers are sent on deadly missions. Yeah I know it sounds like we’ve heard the story before but this game seems to be done a bit differently and we were very impressed with what we’ve seen so far. We can’t say much more about Section 8 right now, but check back with us soon for some gameplay details.

This is just part 1 of our Comic Con Preview, so be sure to check back later this week for part 2 of our round up. There were lots of great games on display this year and we want to provide as much information about each on as we can.