E3 2011 Booth Spotlight: Sony Online Entertainment

Sony Online Entertainment pushed their stable of fantasy multiplayer games on the show floor, alongside a new first-person shooter called "Payday: The Heist."

"Payday" puts gamers in the role of criminals on various action movie-style missions. On the show floor, SOE was demonstrating a bank robbery level. Although the game includes a handful of levels, the enemies are built to come at you in unexpected ways so each playthrough feels fresh. Police could storm your team of crooks from around the corner, but they could also blast in through a wall or drop on you from a ventilation duct. "Payday" is coming to PlayStation Network and PC by the end of the year.

Sony's "EverQuest 2" might be one of the oldest games still exhibiting at E3, having debuted in 2004, but that is only a testament to the PC classic's enduring popularity. This year, the game adds a little breather to the usual fantasy battles in the form of air-based races. Winged mounts (think Pegasus) have been made available, along with mounts that leap rather than fly. EQ2 is now in 3-D, if you have a monitor that supports it, and executive producer Dave Georgeson says that was a relatively easy addition because the technology had already been built into the game some time before, just waiting for the right moment to debut.

Based in the unstoppably successful card game, "Magic: The Gathering - Tactics" turns cards into a turn-based strategy game. The game uses the same randomization as the card game, where you buy a pack of cards and receive an unknown assortment of new warriors. The game developers even created their own Magic cards to take advantage of the new way to playing this PC release. Similar to fantasy role-playing games, characters fight according to their own individual speed and abilities, and it is the player's role to position them on the battlefield and set up attacks.

Earlier this year SOE debuted "DC Universe Online," a massively multiplayer game that puts gamers into the world of DC Comics for epic battles alongside both the Justice League and their cadre of foes. The DCUO team is currently finishing up a third pack of new content and was at E3 to show off a fourth. The fourth set of all-new missions will take players into Superman's famous Fortress of Solitude for an unexpected team-up with archenemy Lex Luthor. Both updates are expected by the end of summer, and two future updates are still in the works.

This report is on products featured at E3 2011. Products may change by time of final release.