We stopped by Perfect World Entertainment's booth at E3 to check out RaiderZ, Rusty Hearts and Blacklight Retribution. We're also giving away Rusty Hearts closed beta keys!

We stopped by Perfect World Entertainment’s E3 booth last week to get the scoop on three new titles premiering this year at the convention. Those new games are RaiderZ, Rusty Hearts and Blacklight Retribution. Keep reading after the jump for our impressions of each title, as well as gameplay trailers.

If you like what you hear about Rusty Hearts, be sure to grab one of our Rusty Hearts closed beta keys! The beta will kick off in July, so pick up your key now and be prepared to dive into this anime-inspired MMO.

RaiderZ — Big Weapons for Big Monsters

Powered by the Unreal 3 engine, RaiderZ is a dream come true for gamers that like wielding ridiculously gigantic weapons and taking on equally big monsters. After getting a brief introduction by Executive Producer Jonathan Belliss, we instantly jumped in the game and began wailing on everything that moved.

You get a lot of satisfaction out of RaiderZ’s combat system. When you land a hit, you’ll knock off a good chunk of your enemy. Should you strike a particularly lucky blow, you’ll disarm the beast of whatever weapon they’re packing and get the option to use it against them.

For a game still in beta, RaiderZ looks incredibly polished. The only bug we encountered was a few instances were the game didn’t register our ridiculously large weapons hitting our target.

Belliss tells us that the leveling system in RaiderZ will be highly customizable. The skill tree is class-less, so it’ll be up to players to invent interesting roles and niches.

For an action-oriented MMO, there’s a lot going on off the battlefield. RaiderZ’s economy is player-driven, so a lot of the top gear will need to be created by players and sold at market. Belliss also revealed that unlike traditional MMOs — where your character’s armor is a hodgepodge of gear — RaiderZ lets you dye individual pieces the same color so that your character looks more fashionable.

We’ll definitely keep our eye on RaiderZ as it gears up for release sometime next year.

Rusty Hearts — Story-driven Gameplay

On first glance, Rusty Hearts looks like that the stereotypical MMO from Asia. Yes, the game features anime-style characters that perpetually run forward torso first. And yes, the user interface favors speed and lots of clicking. There’s even a stamina system that once exhausted forces you to take a break from the game because your character will no longer gain experience.

Developed originally by South Korea-based WindySoft, Perfect World has been hard at work localizing Rusty Hearts for a North American audience. The cool thing about Rusty Hearts it that characters come pre-developed. You’re always on a quest and never worrying about grinding lower-level monsters to make your level cap.

And despite looking like a stereotypical Asian MMO, Rusty Heart’s hack-n-slash combat is a lot of fun. With puzzles and soloable dungeons, you’ve always got something interesting to do. Each character features an engrossing storyline and I appreciated being able to leap into action as opposed to grinding in newbie areas.

The dungeon crawl we ran consisted of various rooms filled with bad guys that needed to be taken down before we could advance. Rusty Hearts lets you use different combos when you attack, so you can adjust your style to face different types of enemies. After solving a few puzzles, we progressed to the final area where the main boss was waiting for us. Once we finished him off, we traveled back to town to spend our hard-earned gold on new gear.

Besides PvE content, Perfect World also plans some competitive PvP modes that include free-for-alls, team matches, survival and the always-fun VIP escort mission.

Beta begins next month in North America and odds are good that by the time the final product launches in Q4 of this year, that pesky stamina system will have magically disappeared. Head over to our giveaway page to grab your Rusty Hearts closed beta key!

Blacklight Retribution – Hot FPS Action

Last but certainly not least, Perfect World showed off its new free-to-play FPS Blacklight Retribution. The thing that caught my eye was how slick the graphics looked. Like RaiderZ, the Unreal 3 engine is the heart of this futuristic shooter, and developer Zombie Studios spared no expense in making the multiplayer maps top-notch.

Free-to-play means that to get some of the better gear, you’ll be paying a little bit of money using Blacklight Retribution’s microtransaction system.

I have to hand it to Perfect World for diversifying the type of games it presented to us. Each game held something unique and original that kept our interest piqued. With their recent acquisition of Cryptic Studios, it seems clear that Perfect World Entertainment could very well become a new force in the industry to be reckoned with.

Christopher "Aurum" Wyatt