Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (reviews) came out yesterday, and I spent a fair bit of last night playing the first part of it. My short take: best fantasy FPS ever.

Things I like include:

• It's very pretty. They use the Half-Life 2 engine to excellent effect. Now that I have a card that can deal with it, I think high-dynamic range support really makes things look kickass.
• The sword fighting just feels... right. So much more so than the swordfighting in Oblivion. Rather than just beating someone down until their health hits 0, you try to gain advantage -- knocking somebody down and then delivering a coup de grace is much more effective than outlasting their endurance. Also, your special moves use up fatigue, a fast to lose but fast to recharge statistic. When your fatigue gets low, the game lets you know -- you can hear your character's labored breathing!
• ROPE BOW. My favorite item from the first two Thief games.
• Like Deus Ex, the game contains a rudimentary but effective skill system. You can mix and match elements of sneakery, hack & slash, and magic. So far, I'm enjoying the ability to freeze someone, which takes them out of combat and then later knocks them down, exposing them for a finisher.
• I just can't get over how much fun a rough & tumble sword brawl in the game is. You can KICK people. Over ledges. To the ground. Into various hazards strewn around the environment.

Probably the only con is that it's an FPS, so like all good things that aren't MMO crack, it'll come to an end, sooner rather than later. But that's a strength, too. Oblivion had a lot of stuff to explore, but in the end, it was a breadth first exploration of a shallow world. This game, by virtue of focusing on linear level design, really pulls off a deeper and more interesting gameplay, since you don't get lost in the min-maxing details.

I'm pretty intrigued to try the multiplayer, though.

Download the demo. If you like the demo, you'll like the game. It's well worth the time to take a look.

Update: I'm still enjoying the game, but I'm starting to encounter random crashes on level loads. This makes me sad. Hope there's a patch soon. Also, I find myself keeping stuff in my inventory even when I'm not using it, because I keep expecting to find a merchant. I don't think there's a merchant, so I'm not sure why they bother limiting my inventory slots.