I had a look at a demo of Homefront, a first person shooter coming from Kaos Studios, part of THQ, and you know what? I’m optimistically enthusiastic about this one.

It offers rather a grim vision of a future where the U.S. is invaded and occupied by North Korea, but I think what I liked about it was that the game – well, the demo at least anyway – was set in a rural American town. No soaring skyscrapers with conduits and pipes and police patrolling the streets, but a run-down collection of houses, tents and shacks. Almost shanty town looking, with overgrown weeds and grass at the front of houses and boards nailed to broken windows and wallpaper peeling from the walls inside houses. Windmills and solar panels are bolted to roofs and structures.

It’s a first person shooter through and through, but it has some nice elements which might just lift it from that crowded genre into the stratosphere.

One of them is the Goliath, which is this sort of radio-controlled killing machine that you can direct towards enemies using a laser pointer. This thing is big, powerful and kick ass, as the American’s say a lot here. Kick ass is the game of E3, it seems.

The other cool thing about the game is that the guy from Kaos playing the demo said that technology will track objects towards the player, such as when you blow up a vehicle with a rocket launcher, it’ll soar frighteningly close to you, flying just over the top of your head, increasing that immersion factor.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

Another game that I want to play now, but it probably won’t be out till at least 2011 is Relic’s Warhammer 40K: Space Marine. This thing kicks serious ass, with you playing a seven-foot tall, armour-plated killing machine that is the space marine, and you can stomp heads, break bones and generally rough everyone up.

During the video, demo lines like “We crush the corrupt and unpure” and “We are the Emperor’s wrath” really set the scene for some serious combat in this action-dominated game with some RPG elements (you can level up your characters).

The guys from Relic even hinted that there might be the chance of co-operative play where you can play as a team of marines. Now that would be kick-ass.

Relic have a great pedigree when it comes to strategy games and from the trailer at least it’s putting that good pedigree to work in Space Marine. Did I say I wanted to play it now? In fact, I want to play both of them now.