Sammy isn't a name that comes up often in the US game market, but since their recent buyout of Sega and strong ties to the revitalized SNK (with rumors of a buyout there, too), Sammy seems poised to corner the market on publishers whose names begin with "S". (Not counting Sony and Square Enix, anyway.)

Sammy didn't bring anything devastatingly innovative to this year's E3, but every title on display was solid. Guilty Gear Isuka is an unusual twist on an unusual fighting series, Spy Fiction is a higher-tech take on the sneaker genre, Darkwatch is a first-person shooter starring a vampire gunslinging cowboy man in black who fights the undead (seriously), Iron Phoenix is a Live-enabled multiplayer brawler, and The Shield is a gritter take on the territory Police Quest: SWAT originally tried to cover.

Darkwatch was the big announcement of the show, but actually turned out to be a little bit underwhelming. The stylish cinematic cut-scene on display showed Jericho Cross, the protagonist of Darkwatch, shredding ghoulish undead with his rapid-fire revolvers, but the actual gameplay turned out to be a not-yet-remarkable first-person shooter. The setting is ostensibly western, but as Jericho Cross is a member of a secret undead-hunting society and himself a vampire, he has a little bit more in his arsenal than a six-shooter and a scattergun.

Well. Most of his guns weren't yet evident, so he had a six-shooter, a rapid-fire rifle, and sticks of dynamite. The guns did tear undead apart entertainingly, though, and his nightmarish horse did a great job of trampling the ghouls. His vampiric powers basically boiled down to an ability to see the blood of enemies, even through...thin walls. Unfortunately, the sense of cohesion and style that a FPS needs to stand out from the masses was as absent from this version as Jericho's promised arsenal of weapons and powers. That said, Darkwatch isn't going to be coming to consoles (PS2 and Xbox) until spring of 2005, so Sammy will have plenty of time to give this title the polish that it will need for it to be a success.

Guilty Gear Isuka looks to be a departure from the Guilty Gear formula, coming on the heels of the latest minor upgrade (Guilty Gear X2#reload, an Xbox release including online play over Live). It's still Guilty Gear, but with a little bit of King of Fighters and a whole lot of Super Smash Brothers. Plus, all the Guilty Gear style, character design, and music are intact and in full force.

Isuka adds four-player play, in any combination of teams (rather than the two-on-two only as previously rumored.) Things aren't quite as crazy as Super Smash Brothers, but more players means, of course, more chaos. This is made manageable by splitting the 2D fighting onto two different planes, a foreground and a background. Switching planes and turning around (the latter is no longer automatic in GGI) are as simple as a button-tap, and both can be done mid-action. One demonstration had a character charging at an opponent, switching to the background to run right past, and switching back to the foreground and turning around to strike the blocking opponent from behind.

Balance issues weren't completely solved, and some of the new actions and stages were still buggy, but that sort of thing is to be expected in a preview build. Such problems should be absent in the final version, when it comes to the PlayStation 2 this holiday season.

Pictured from left to right are Darkwatch, Guilty Gear Isuka, and Spy Fiction..

It's hard to be trying to get people excited about another stealth game at the same time as early looks at Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Splinter Cell 3. This doesn't mean Sammy wasn't giving it their best shot, with Spy Fiction (coming this September to the PlayStation 2). Spy Fiction has, at its heart, the same formula as the others: don't get spotted, don't get caught, don't get shot.

The "how" of accomplishing this is a bit different in Spy Fiction, as one of the main skills is using a high-tech gadget to turn pictures of enemies or bystanders into disguises. The disguise will vary on the quality of the picture (a headshot is needed to duplicate the face, for example). The utility of a disguise will depend on who is duplicated; a lap technician has free run of the laboratories, but only a commanding officer can enter the command bunker.

Managing these identities is also an issue. If the player is seen in a guard's uniform doing something suspicious, that disguise and identity can build up a warning level. What starts as mere suspicion can turn into an all-points alert, making that disguise rather useless. The alert status can be cleared off of an identity with some effort, but this can be difficult.

Iron Phoenix was still rather early, but had some interesting potential. It was a brawler along Power Stone lines, focusing on larger-scale online battles over Xbox Live, with modes taken mostly from first-person shooters. (Capture-the-flag and team battles, for a couple examples.) Kung fu stylings were evident, from the settings to the fighting styles, but the style and gameplay hadn't quite come completely together yet. Hopefully, Iron Phoenix will be quite a bit more polished by its release on the Xbox this holiday season.