What a first day! Eurogamer 2012 has started with a bang. The show floor this year appeared to be a little more sparsely populated with stands than in previous years, with large stands from Sony, Nintendo and Virgin Media dominating the space. The focus this year seems to be within the 18+ section, as the majority of games for the coming year appear to be more mature in content.

Our first port of call was of course Nintendo. Nintendo are the only console maker showcasing new hardware and they have picked four of the best titles to showcase what the Wii U can do. The first game that we had a chance to play was New Super Mario Bros U; our initial impressions of the hardware were positive. The build quality and size of the GamePad is excellent, and the graphics displayed on the secondary screen and the main TV display were clear and bright, and a huge leap from the graphical output of the Wii. Later in the day we returned to play with Zombi U. The queue time to get hands on with this particular title was never below an hour, with some people queuing over 90 minutes for a chance to experience this new survival horror. Again this title impressed and with the inventory system and map on the GamePad showcasing how this unique concept can expand the gaming experience.

Our next hands-on was with the reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise, and it was the pre-beta hunting gameplay on the Xbox 360 console. It was new material, which hadn’t been seen at E3. It is clearly early on in the game, and a wounded Lara must search for shelter, a weapon and then food, before the story progresses. It features very similar set pieces and platforming to the Uncharted series, which makes it feel more organic and it plays better for Tomb Raider, which bodes well for the future of the franchise.

Next on our play-list was Dishonored. There has been a lot of buzz around this title over the past few weeks and I am pleased to confirm that from what we saw today it was all worth it. Dishonored has the potential to be a massively popular game with the ability to craft an adventure that you want. We will probably return to this game again just to see how many different ways you can complete the mission.

After Dishonered we spent some time with the Devil May Cry reboot, the God of War prequel and the latest addition to the Assassin’s Creed fanchise. DmC and God of War: Ascension are very similar games with both being ‘Hack & Slash’ platformers. Both were pretty to look at and enjoyable to play but neither really offered anything new. Unfortunately the same brush can also be used to tar Assassin’s Creed 3. There has been a lot of talk about this newest game and it’s hero Conor. We were both looking forward to getting to grips with Conor in the wild and seeing this game in action. Ubisoft however, decided to choose a demo of Conor breaching an English Fort that involved a lot of similar gameplay to what we have seen in previous iterations. Lots of jumping, hanging, sneaking and assassinating, it would have been nice to see Conor in action in something similar to what’s been shown at E3.

We then allowed our brains a break with two games that are more similar than their developers would have you believe. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and Dead or Alive 5. Both games are what you expect from beat em up’s, the former having a larger roster of characters and the latter having an excessive amount of animated cleavage. There really isn’t much else to tell them apart.

We rounded off the day with a pleasantly surprising treat. Hidden away between the aforementioned animated cleavage and a generic racing title was Double Fine’s The Cave. A fantastic game that involves players picking three characters from a roster of seven, you then use their unique abilities to help work your way through The Cave solving puzzles. The game played smoothly and looked beautiful, our only gripe with it is that it’s not out until early 2013.

So that was Eurogamer 2012 Day One. Three more to go!