Launch Station: Sorcery

It has been a good two years since Sony showed off Sorcery as one of the big games for their PlayStation Move motion controller.  After that Sorcery nearly fell off the face of the Earth until a few months ago when Sony announced that it was coming this May.  Out today along with Dragon's Dogma and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, Sorcery might just be the game that gets gamers to pick up their Move in months or be too little too late to save a product that has been dead in the water for over a year now.

Sorcery follows the story of young sorcerer's apprentice by the name of Finn.  The Nightmare Queen has broken an ancient pact with mankind and sends out here foul minions to cover the world in eternal darkness.  Along with Erline, a magical cat, Finn must journey through the dark Faerie Kingdoms and master the arcane arts in order to dispel darkness from his home world.  Sorcery is built from the ground up to use the PlayStation Move to the best of its abilities.  With the Move controller, Sorcery puts Finn's wand in the palm of your hands letting you perform numerous different spells.  As no two people are the same, every action you do with the wand from a flick of the wrist to a unique gesture with the wand adds to your own personalized style. Complete quests, rescue kidnapped children, recover ancient artifacts and aiding the local townsfolk are some of the things you are able to do as you travel across the Faerie Kingdoms.

Honestly when Sony showed off Sorcery way back at E3 2010, I was impressed with how the game played.  I have no doubt that Sorcery will be a solid game for the PlayStation Move.  I believe that it is far too late for Sony to catch up to the success of the Wii and even the Kinect due to their lack of actual support and promotion of the product.  While Sorcery will most likely get lost in the shuffle with the bigger releases of Dragon's Dogma and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, it looks like a great game for the casual PS3 gamer who already owns a PS Move controller.

Launch Station: Dragon's Dogma

For this whole console generation, Capcom has tried its hand at introducing new intellectual properties that they could possibly lead into bigger franchises.  Capcom has seen success with both the Dead Rising and Lost Planet while also experiencing complete failure with Dark Void.  In 2012, we have already seen Capcom try their hand at one new IP with Asura's Wrath back in February.  Today, sees the release of Capcom's other big new IP, Dragon's Dogma.

Dragon's Dogma is an action RPG published and developed by Capcom to compete with the action RPG giant The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.  In the opening few minutes of the game, a dragon raids your home village.  During the raid, the dragon tears out your heart.  Missing your heart, you inevitably die only to be revived as an Arisen.  As an Arisen, you have been chosen as the hero to find and kill the dragon that stole your heart.  From the outset of the game, Dragon's Dogma offers tons of customization options in order to make your own personalized character.  From your appearance to your gender to your class, you are given the freedom to make whatever character you want.  If you do not like the character you made, you can retool them and change classes at any point in the game.  One of the main features in Dragon's Dogma is the pawn system, which governs the AI that controls the player's party.  These party members referred to in Dragon's Dogma as pawns, fight independently, learn skills on their own, actively converse with the player and give helpful information on enemies.  The player is also able to give pawns orders if you need them to do something in particular.  In Dragon's Dogma, you are able to grab onto anything from enemies to objects to even NPCs.  The grab can be used to grab onto to giant enemies like a griffon and scale them much like what you do in Shadow of the Colossus.  It makes the player feel like you are actually fighting a giant monster rather than chopping at their shins like you do most games.

Dragon's Dogma has a lot of stiff competition to compete with.  The comparisons with Skyrim will no doubtfully come up and most likely be used as a negative point against the game all due to Capcom's huge lack of promoting Dragon's Dogma.  While I was never interested in the game, it was very hard to tell how good or bad the game would be from the trailers or previews.  There is the demo, which I have not tried yet due to how busy I have been lately.  The reviews have been all been very positive so it will be interesting to see how well Dragon's Dogma sells.  If there are gamers out there looking for another high fantasy action RPG much in the vein of Skyrim, Dragon's Dogma should satisfy your needs.