During one particularly challenging section of the demo, we were forced to hold out while a burned out generator recharged, so we could ride a giant elevator down to the lower level. (Pat Dolan, the designer who demoed the game for us, informed us that the levels are being built with a vertical emphasis, the better to take advantage of the top-down view. Hence, the vistas of platforms and gears visible through the floor grating.)

Eventually the elevator brought us down to a lower level where we ammo-ed up and encountered more Draculas, then had to fight off a gaggle of Wolfmen. Once the Wolfmen were toast, we barely had a breather when the mayor warned us we were about to meet “one of our big critters”--which turned out to be a hulking boss enemy “made from discarded bits from the local prisons” called (appropriately enough) a “Frankenstein”. This boss was one tough undead cookie, and took some definite cooperation to kill. We took him down though and were all fired up for more monster hunting when d'oh! Our time was up.

So far, The Grinder's looking fairly promising. The graphics are crisp, the gameplay is intuitive and the framerate is surprisingly good, considering the number of enemies, characters, moving gears and visual effects seen on screen at once. Sadly, the change from first person to third person as well as the platform change has added some time onto the game's production cycle, making for a release date that's delayed another year. Rather than 2010, look for The Grinder, in October of 2011 on PS3 and Xbox 360 for sure, and possibly on the Wii.