ECTS in London is often seen as the kid brother of E3. The location (London Olympia) is almost 1/3 the size of the LA Convention Centre and this year even more PC publishers kicked sand in the face of poor little ECTS by simply not showing up. Also, the few PC games on show were either at the Intel stand or hidden away in booths that you could only enter if you had an appointment. Still, there were a few quality titles to gawk at or maybe just raise a moderately surprised eyebrow at. Here's the scoop on those titles.

Tucked away amongst even more WWF titles at the THQ stand was the next big thing in First Person Shooters. A high claim though it may be, having given Red Faction by Volition a try, I'm sure that the deformable geometry of the Geo-Mod engine will be something future engine developers will want to integrate into their games, just as the curved surfaces of the Quake 3 engine instantly became a must-have engine feature for other developers once Id showed this feature off. Seeing the screenshots of holes blasted into walls just isn't the same as taking chunks out of the floor yourself, although to try and give you a slightly better idea of just how cool it is, I've taken some before and after shots. Yes, they're photos of a monitor rather than high quality screenshots, but they should still give you a good idea of just how cool the engine is.

One gorgeous feature of the engine I hadn't heard of before was the way glass shatters. One of the impressive features of the otherwise horrible Mortyr was the way glass realistically shattered outwards from the point where you shot it, but Red Faction outdoes that visual effect from Mortyr by far. Not only does the glass look great when it shatters but it also does so realistically, so when I dropped an explosive in the glass house demo they had on show, the glass shattered outwards from the explosion. Sure, it isn't going to mean much for gameplay, but once the game is released there's no way you'll be able to pass a window without putting a shot or two through it just to see it shatter so convincingly. It was hard to judge the actual gameplay since the levels on show were demo levels designed to show off the engine features rather than the gameplay. AI clearly also needs work as enemies were a bit suicidal, and the destructible buildings could be a touch buggy – once I destroyed the four concrete supports on a watchtower it collapsed but wouldn't let me damage the structure any more, and before it fell a mere tiny sliver of concrete was supporting after I'd blown the rest of it away. I'm told that these problems will be fixed, though.