E3 Coverage: The Microsoft Press Conference

Microsoft got the first press conference for E3, with plenty of answers to some important questions.  How does Butler feel about the affair?  More after the jump!



It seems only fitting that Microsoft got the first press conference of E3 2010.  They were the first of the latest generation by a solid year, after all.  Still, even though I am the owner of a 360, I can't quite take Microsoft seriously in the game market.  I'm not saying it isn't a good console with some great games, but the "some" in that sentence can't be stressed enough.  So I was a little trepidatious about the direction Microsoft was going to take this year's E3.  But enough about my personal issues.  Here's the breakdown of what we can expect in the coming months/years.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

This was the first title to be demonstrated, and I do have to give them a little bit of credit.  I don't really care for Call of Duty as a series, and probably won't play this one either.  Still, after the opening minute or so of by the book CoD play (scripted "cut-scene" events, a small sequence of taking out the guards at a base) they demonstrated some helicopter play that looked like a vast improvement over previous CoD attempts.  Maybe they're trying to make the damn games innovative? I guess we'll find out more on November 9th when the game comes out.

Metal Gear Solid: Rising
For me, this was easily the highlight of the conference for Microsoft.  I'm glad that Kojima and team are finally bringing Metal Gear to the 360 in a form other than a previous generation's port.  You play as Raiden (but the badass one from MGS 4, not the pussy from 2) who seems to be on a mission to slice up every human or object in his vicinity.  The focus appears to be on sword control (an iffy area, but from the demo's footage, it looks like it could be something that works) and chopping up everything and everyone in Raiden's immediate area.  It actually had a very Devil May Cry appearance in the in-game footage and that excites me in ways I had thought only a woman capable of, as DMC is one of my favorite games.  The stealth focus seems to have been removed in favor of the aforementioned sword-based carnage, but I'm OK with that.  The game had pretty much gone wherever it could go with the whole stealth thing (including the abominable system in MGS 3), so it's nice to see that they know that it's time to change it up.  The release date, however, remains TBD.

Gears of War 3
I never bothered with Gears of War for much longer after I played the campaign a few times, as the mulltiplayer that wasn't co-op is just not my style, I didn't care about the plot or characters, and the gameplay got old for me in a real hurry.  One can only run through so many dystopia-grey ruins crafted into hallway sequences full of waist high walls for so long before the experience loses some zest, in my opinion.  I know, however, that this is not the opinion of lots and lots of people, so I can tell you this.  If you are a Gears fan, it looks like they are absolutely sticking to their formula, and the co-op allows for up to 4 players this time (online or LAN only though).  I don't know what "Lambent" are, but apparently that's what you're fighting.  They look exactly like the locusts though, just a little more tentacle-y, so yeah, nothing's really changed.  Except the number, that is.  This is an alarming trend that Microsoft is doing NOTHING to alleviate, so yes, this preview made me worried.  But all you cogs out there will probably be very excited, so go forth and be whimsical with joy, you'll probably get what you're looking for on April 5th, 2011.

Fable 3
Peter Molyneux can go and die in a fire.

Codename Kingdoms
So this game came paired with the announcement that Crytek was going to start developing for Microsoft.  Too bad they didn't actually show us any of the game.  It looks almost exactly like God of War, featuring a cut up spartan-looking dude holding blades on chains.  Somehow, I feel like I played this game already, but who knows.  Like I said, they didn't show us a damn thing from the actual game.

I couldn't even find a picture to go with this one.

Halo: Reach

I loathe the Halo series apart from the first installment's plot, but hearing the buzz about this game actually managed to pique my interest.  Buzz such as talk of "having character depth" and "departing from the retarded direction and timeline of the original 3" made me want to give this a fair shake.  And here's the problem: I still don't really have any idea what to think.  The gameplay demo featured by the book halo play (run, shoot, grenades, hide while shields recharge, repeat) for 95% of it.  They brought back actual health (in addition to shields) which I am personally glad for because it means you can't play as sloppily as you could in either of the second two Halo games.  The final 5% started to show a space dogfight that looked absolutely killer though.  Almost like something out of Starfox.  But they didn't say anything about it, so I don't know how frequent it will be, and we saw about 8 seconds of it, so I don't know if it even appears to handle well.  It's too bad, too, as for me, this just further confirmed that instead of raising the number at the end of the name, they would just append a new word.  I could be wrong, but if this was all they felt was worth demoing, then consider me no longer a part of the bandwagon.

Kinect
Formerly known as Natal, this was supposed to be Microsoft's show stealer.  After all, there had been enough buildup about it.  I won't restate my opinion on the matter, though, so here goes.  The first part was a breakdown of the multimedia interfaces that would be functional with Kinect.  I also found this part to be laughable, as their spokesperson complained of the hassle of "remembering what buttons do what" and "having to use a controller", in favor of yelling "Xbox, pause!" as if he was training a goddamn puppy.  Seriously, are we so lazy that even pushing a button or flicking a stick has become too much effort?  They also demonstrated it's videochat functionality (something my computer has been able to do since 2004) which, last I checked, didn't really NEED full body interaction, nor is it something one should have to subscribe to Xbox Live for.  There was a brief break to talk about how ESPN was partnering with XBL and I just have nothing to say about it.  I don't care about sports, but plenty of other people do, so, you know, whoopee for them.

Godspeed, you champion of men.

Finally, however, the moment we had all been waiting for arrived and they decided they'd maybe show us if the goddamn thing will have any games.  I really... REALLY wish that they had decided not to show us this.  First up was Kinectimals which was demoed by a 10 year old Japanese girl for the reason that anyone over the age of 10 would be too embarrassed to be seen around the damn game.  It is essentially an interactive tomagochi type thing which, to it's credit, did seem to have many ways to interact with it, including making your tiger jump rope, scratching it, scratching it, scratching it... um... the girl really liked scratching that pet tiger, because that's most of what we saw.  Next up was Kinect Sports which is exactly what it sounds like (a shameless ripoff of Wii Sports).  2 people demoed the "hurdle jump" minigame and that was where I checked out.  The game was played by running in place looking like a moron and jumping into the air.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't I play video games to avoid those kinds of activities?  The rest of what we saw of the title was just video footage, and from what I could tell from the onscreen prompts, it looks like it will amount to the exact types of flailing seen in Wii Sports, just sans the controller.  Next on the docket was Kinectikarts, which is also exactly what it sounds like.

Rhymes with "Shmario Dart"

This game essentially does what Mariokart Wii did, without the goofy peripheral.  And I don't know if I will ever say this again, but maybe having a peripheral would be better.  Then you wouldn't look like a goofy jackass driving their invisibility-mobile.  You pretend to hold a wheel and steer, punch forward to activate turbo, blah blah.  Look, I'll level with you, this was one hour into the conference and my patience was gone, and the confirmation that Kinect is doomed to be nothing more than a flash-in-the-pan gimmick by the first batch of demo titles made me skip ahead in disgust.  So what was Microsoft's new reveal?

A SLIGHTLY SLIMMER AND QUIETER XBOX STILL PRICED AT $299 THAT WON'T WORK WITH ANY OF YOUR EXISTING PERIPHERALS (INCLUDING YOUR OLD HARD DRIVE) EXCEPT FOR CONTROLLERS! JUST WHAT I WAS HOPING FOR!  

Granted, I probably would have been more excited if I was at the conference when Microsoft bought the approval of their theretofore lackluster audience by giving everyone in it a free one.  All in all, though, I saw almost nothing that impressed me in this demonstration.  Needless accessories and services that already exist outside of Xbox Live, paired with games that offered no information or no innovation lead me to believe that if Microsoft actually comes out the winner of this showdown, it will mean that Nintendo and Sony collapsed overnight.