Hot off the heels of their Back to the Future game, Telltale is back with another license close to the heart of my youth: Jurassic Park. It takes risks, leaving behind the traditional point and click interface of their past games for something a little different.

The first of the two demos I played was exclusively an action scene. Several of the game’s protagonists were stuck on a roller coaster and I had to prevent them from being eaten by a pack of dinosaurs. The solution? Successfully complete a lot of quick time events including button presses and quick flips of the analogue stick. You could sum up the entire action demo simply by saying “Space Ace”.

But there was a weird layer of detachment added to this scene. The character whose actions were affected by my inputs constantly changed. This made me feel less involved with what was happening on screen since no singular character represented the player. Occasionally I’d fail and watch a death scene before snapping back to the last checkpoint. I watched my cart go on the wrong track into a pack of dinosaurs, a young girl falling out of the car to her death and more, all while my death counter rose.

If this was all the game was, I’d be pretty sad. Thankfully the second demo I played was far more interesting, though still different than Telltale’s previous games.

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How many airplane racing games can you think of off the top of your head? Any? Without resorting to Google, all I could come up with was one third of Diddy Kong Racing. This is exactly why I was instantly fascinated by Digital Reality’s SkyDrift. It’s in a sub-genre that’s rarely explored.

You could call it “Mario Kart in the sky”, but that really isn’t fair to the game. SkyDrift may be a weapons-based racer, but it’s far more deliberate and skill-based than any racing I’ve ever done in the Mushroom Kingdom. The fact that you need a second analogue stick to control your plane’s knife position is proof enough that the game is deeper than some of its contemporaries.

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Final Fantasy XIII was a highly divisive game when it released last year. I found myself enjoying its finer points, but also finding fault in some of its design leading me to write a rather mixed review. With a sequel on the way, the opportunity for a more consistent experience has been opened.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 takes place three years after the first. Lightning has disappeared and Serah (her previously unplayable little sister) is out to find her with the help of a new character named Noel. The demo wasn’t heavy on exposition, but there was enough talk of “points in time” and “anomalies between dimensions” to pique my interest.

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As a fan of the genre, I’ve seen my fair share of modern scrolling shooters or “shmups” as they’re often called. Yet, after the magnificent Gradius V back in 2004, I haven’t seen very many that actually look modern. Even some from this year tend to look like something you might’ve seen in the arcade as much as a decade ago.

That’s the first of many ways in which Sine Mora sets itself apart. The game is gorgeous. There’s a real sense of depth to the environments that manage to strike an effective balance of being attractive without being distracting. Colors are often vibrant, environments are varied, and giant bosses are real spectacles to behold thanks to art direction from Grasshopper.

And yet, as great as the visuals were, it was the unique mechanics developer Digital Reality put into the game that kept me coming back for another try. Sine Mora is not about one hit kills or traditional health systems. Sine Mora is about time (in more ways than one). While you’re playing, the clock always counts down. Killing enemies will send the clock backward a bit, while getting hit drastically reduces your time. When the clock strikes “00″, you die.

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“This is twice as fun as how completely unsafe it looks.”

Minna no Rhythm Tengoku (meaning Everyone’s Rhythm Heaven) is the most recent entry and first console edition of Nintendo’s Rhythm Heaven series. Like its predecessors, the game is composed of a number of music-driven rhythm games with simple controls. I became an immediate fan after trying out the DS game released in 2009, and was downright ecstatic when Nintendo announced a follow up for the Wii.

I was also concerned, however, since being Wii software likely entitled it to have motion gestures, and big oafs like myself can be pretty uncoordinated. Could this game have been spoiled before it even came out? (Quick spoiler: no.)

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Unless you’re part of a huge media outlet, and you get a schedule of what you’re going to see, what interviews you’re going to have and when and so forth, managing E3 can be pretty daunting. This is the third time I’ve gone, but only the first time I’ve felt like I had my head above the water’s surface. And even then there is stuff I regret not checking out more deeply, not checking out at all, or not even realizing was there until after the fact. They really ought to add at least one more day, especially since a whole day’s worth of time ends up being eaten up waiting in line. Heaven help you if new hardware is unveiled that you want to see.

Anyway, to wrap up my coverage, I have a few more games I didn’t get enough from to warrant independent articles, but still wanted to give my two cents on.

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Of all the games I checked out at E3, perhaps of all the games I’ve played ever, Heroes of Ruin by far wins the award for having the worst name. It just sounds dumb, and I can’t really wrap my head around what it’s supposed to mean. Nevertheless, I’d taken an early interest in the game upon learning about its focus on multiplayer cooperative adventuring. If the only real bad thing I can say about the game is that its name sucks, that’s not such a big deal after all.

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I’ve written before that I’m not terribly pleased with Nintendo’s direction on the latest Kirby title for the DS. Of course, as it happens Nintendo heard my concerns and went about creating one of the greatest Kirby games in years if not decades. So truthfully I could care less what happens to Kirby Mass Attack. Still, that’s not any reason not to give the game a try.

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I’ve been a bit irresponsible when it comes to Dragon’s Dogma. I had my first taste of the game a couple months back while at Captivate 2011. In lieu of there being any Mega Man titles, Dragon’s Dogma was easily my favorite of Capcom’s offerings (and this was still the case at E3). I fully intended to report my impressions on the game back then, but I sort of just… let it fall by the wayside. It would be a travesty to make the same mistake twice, so I’ll now, finally, regale you my impressions along with data I picked up from Captivate.

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Luigi’s Mansion 2 was the one real surprise announcement from Nintendo concerning their 3DS hardware. I had some requests from friends to check the game out, but there was one problem: I had never played nor did I know anything about Luigi’s Mansion. Fortunately, the pal I was staying with owned the game, and I gave myself a brief tutorial in it the night before to have a basis for comparison. What new horrors await the timid, second Mario Bro?

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