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E3 06: Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony Hands-On

Gas Powered Games' dungeon-crawler series is coming to the PSP.

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LOS ANGELES--Though it has thus far existed only in the domain of the PC, Take-Two is bringing the Dungeon Siege series to the PSP with Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony. From what we played of the version of the game that's at the Sony booth here at E3 2006, Take-Two and Supervillain are set to deliver a fun hack-and-slash RPG that incorporates some of the key features of the Dungeon Siege series.

As we started the single-player demo, we were given the choice between two prebuilt characters: a half-giant warlord and a battle mage. We went with the warlord as our playable character, which turned the battle mage into our follower, similar to how the PC Dungeon Siege games give you an AI-controlled party to fight with. We're told that in the final version of the game, you'll still only have a single follower with you onscreen at a time, but that you'll still be able to have a variety of different people in your party that you'll be able to switch out of the follower position on the fly.

We were then transported to the overworld map, where we met our guide, who explained to us the rather high-concept nature of the world we were in. It seems that the world of Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony is actually a dream being dreamed by warriors that have already passed, and the purpose of "The Dream" is to ascend to the next level of being, known as "The Beyond." Although that sounds so bizarre, what we saw of the game looked like a fairly traditional fantasy world.

We were first tasked with recovering some elemental objects from deep within a hostile jungle environment, which we were able to travel to within seconds via the overworld map. Once inside the jungle-dungeon, we immediately felt comfortable with the gameplay, which recalled other hack-and-slash dungeon crawlers like Diablo or Champions of Norrath. Though in the demo we found that we were only facing one enemy at a time, and that having the battle mage at our side made the fights even more one-sided.

Our character had a good range of melee attacks, which we could employ by either tapping face buttons on the controller or by holding a shoulder button while we did so. Of course, downed enemies dropped plenty of gold and cool loot, and over the short time we played the game, we found an incredibly sharp dagger and a somewhat disturbing helmet that was made out of some creature's skull, both of which were better than the gear we came equipped with.

The time we spent with Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony--which, by the way, is one of the most heavy-metal subtitles we've seen at E3 so far--gave us the impression that it was a fairly standard hack-and-slash dungeon crawler, but that the mechanics concerning the follower could elevate it into something more unique.

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