Is thereanything worse than waking up on a pile of corpses in a cave system?Yes: The whole experience completely without memory. This is whathappens to the hero of Electronic Arts' RPG Kingdoms of Amalur:Reckoning. The poor man finds himself in the middle of a mountainhalf-decomposed body when he opens his eyes. No idea who he is andwhere it is located. What he does not know: We have previously seenhow his being thrown from gnomes dead body, found in an abyss.Well,he's probably survived. A blessing in disguise, so to speak. Butfinding no memory of a foul-smelling tunnel system out, is notexactly easy. In Guildford, England, we have played the first fourhours of open-world title.


With the face editor, we miss ourcharacter then a few bags under the eyes, a tattoo and a long beard,so he pretty scary looking. In the cave system, we encounter a fewminor figures, rats, and two or three giant spiders, where we ourrusty longsword try out what we have found in a rather run-downcorner of the cave. The combat system is fairly simple at first:Pressing the X button or cross talk can be the primary weapon, with Yor triangle we flail around with the secondary weapon. Attack combosand finishers, then at us, we level up over time.


We also carry a shield around us andcan make a jump to the side to avoid attacks. In addition, we cansilently sneak up on enemies and then silently eliminated. That'swhat we all need to start later, when we are dealing with morepowerful opponents. The first test run has passed the sword in anyevent, it remains (for lack of better alternatives) times until ourfirst choice. As we will see the light at the end of the tunnel, wealso find some pieces of armor, old shoes (at least), a rusty helmet.