Dark Messiah of Might and Magic Previews

Both GameSpy and 1Up bring us the latest previews of Ubisoft and Arkane Studios' Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. A snip from GameSpy's article:
But what about first-person melee combat? Many games have tried to do it, and many have failed. Arkane is aware of this and has worked hard to make sure it wasn't a matter of "clicking the mouse button to swing the sword." The exact mechanics weren't shown but there were several stances to chose from and multiple types of attacks and parries with one or two weapons. You can also kick. Combat is also helped by the visual impact: your shining blades will become covered in blood, sparks will fly as two weapons grind against one another, and you can apparently disarm foes or grab them by the neck. Brutal.

And a snip from 1Up's article:
By using Valve's Source engine to power their game, developer Arkane has the means to offer plenty of interactive objects in the game world. Use a fireball to shoot down a rock pillar and it may collapse onto your enemies. Another nifty feature was the freeze spell. Once enemies are frozen, you can either hack them to pieces, or opt for the more fun option. We were shown a sequence where and enemy was frozen while standing on a rope bridge. The player the proceeded to chop down the bridge supports and watch the frozen enemy fall and then break into a million pieces upon impact with a rocky bottom.