I love the Christmas gaming season. Today’s example of why – the new fps/rpg mashup set in the Might and Magic universe, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, is up for pre-order on Valve’s online game distribution service Steam. The only bummer is that there’s no discount for pre-ordering, which is unusual for Steam – normally you can save $5 or so for pre-ordering. The game looks promising. The demo, while very short, managed to show off a beautiful game engine with solid fps hand-to-hand combat and interesting physics-based levels. The multiplayer is also interesting. You play on a series of linked maps and gain levels and abilities as you work your way through them. This is PC-based and unlikely to make it to other platforms, but is definitely worth a look if you’re interested in fantasy FPS – ones that feature hand to hand combat are rare, and there hasn’t been one with online play that’s decent since the days of DOS.