This was hands-down the game of the show at the PlayStation Beta Rooms showcase held in Birmingham. There were various different level chunks available to play and I found myself constantly coming back to replay each of them.

The first section is that  from the E3 stage demo (colour me excited). I seem to be in the open-air cargo hold of an ship and have just been attacked by Helghast jump-pack troops. If you’ve seen them in action, you’ll know they can be tricky to take down.

The best tactic is waiting till they’re forced to land to briefly recharge their boosters. Or you can cook a grenade, timing it to explode in mid-air right in their hovering faces. However you decide to kill them, the resulting explosion from their packs sends them skyrocketing and then smash them back down to earth will all the grace of a shopping trolley full of engine parts falling off a car-park roof.

The second part of the demo gives you a go on one of the jump-packs. Flight is limited to short bursts to help you make the big jumps across the fractured pieces of glacier poking out from the furious sea waters. The pack enable you to jump further and higher than usual and there’s even a cool boost feature that zooms you forward quicker and to make you a tougher target to hit. There’s also a cool purple flame effect from the thrusters to indicate boosting. The sound the pack makes is amazing too.

There’s a machine gun built into the jump-pack, it would appear that it’s got infinite ammo too, so you can swoop in and shred everything in sight. The pack handles best in more open sections; the only problem I had was moving around tighter areas and getting too close to walls and barriers. Even so, none of these sections were around a precarious drop so it didn’t end in any annoying deaths.

This level ended by ascending to the top of the platform to destroy an AA gun, the jump-pack proved to be great fun, with the Helghast being unable to cope with the aerial threat.

Click here to read the rest of my hands-on preview at Dealspwn.com