CDV Software
www.cdv.de

CDV was a rather unassuming booth set down in “The Pit” or “The Dungeon” depending on who you were talking to and how much they hated wandering around in a hall overcrowded with enough rough to find a few diamonds in. I preferred to call it the Foreign Service Office because you couldn’t wave a wireless controller around without cold cocking some hapless Korean, German, Japanese, or possibly even a *gasp* Canadian.

CDV was no exception for while the woman giving me the guided tour was a slightly nervous though quite professional Asian American PR rep (which is a thankless position if you think about it) every guy giving game demonstrations was German with slightly mangled English skills.

However the best thing is while I was waiting for my PR guide I was accosted by a Franka Potente look-a-like booth babe who, I kid you not, asked me if I wanted something to drink or condoms. I cannot understate how nice it is to have a hot, semi-punk woman offer you condoms first thing in the morning, moments in heaven aside, on to the games. CDV had about five of them on display, including Blitzkrieg, Breed, No Man’s Land and a couple of others.

Breed (PC)
Breed was by far the most impressive game on display for one reason: no load times. We’re not talking 8 bit graphics and music that sounds like Tom Waits taping my grandmother’s arthritic knee. Think more like HALO meets Dropship, except you can go from planet side to orbit to inside the mothership without a separate loading screen to wait through or even really too much lag time between settings.

They weren’t just little arenas either. From what I saw the HALO comparison isn’t that far off. Basically expect all the FPS goodies with a focus on vehicular manslaughter in an extremely streamlined package, a nice polish graphically and a few extra perks such as a three man tank team where you can go in with all stations manned one by you the two others by AI, or you can go solo after throwing everybody off.

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No Man's Land (PC)
No Man’s Land was a nice little RTS romp through early American history, though really it’s more like American alternate history because there really is no adherence to actual historic events. The game follows the course of one family from about the colonies up to the Old West. There are a few differences from the RTS norm there just with story and setting. The graphics looked good for RTS titles with well detailed characters and backgrounds and great character motion. The sound still wasn’t finalized on the version I saw so there was no real voice acting, but the dialogue in the subtitles was funny enough on first glance.

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Overall CDV put together a great little booth and while it may not have been as flashy as even some of the Kentia hall booths, it was well worth the visit, so I said my fond farewell to their booth babe with promise to call in the morning and moved on.