For those of you not in the know, E3 is the gaming industries biggest trade show, allowing all the publishers, developers and journalist to gather in one gaming hall in America and announce most of the coming year’s games and hardware while spending money and making journalist unable to go feel jealous and slightly annoyed about how much they have to write about it despite receiving next to no info on things. This year is supposedly a return to the old style featuring booth babes and enough excess to make everyone forget we are in a recess and the Gulf of Mexico is rapidly filling with a black, gloopy substance that isn’t liquorice. Hopefully, this isn’t the case so some bright spark at the Daily Mail doesn’t go on a massive “Games are evil rant”. But I digress.
This year is pretty big for the youngest of the Big Three, Microsoft. As well as being the 10th year of the Xbox Division’s trips to E3, they are also announcing their main attempt to grab the younger audience and get away from the Frat Boy image that “Gears of Halo” have helped to propagate. Their ace in the hole is “Project Natal” which was revealed to be actually called “Kinect”. I don’t have a problem with the name – it gives across the idea of being kinetic and full of motion which it does promise to be via the camera, microphone and its ability to perceive in 3D. Its name was properly unveiled on the 13th at a Cirque De Soleil event which, based on the Giant Bomb staff’s description, was the freakiest thing this side of last year’s Milo demo.
On the 14th was the official Press Conference for Microsoft where actually details and things were revealed instead of just marketing hype. As with all these things, the first couple of item were 3rd party games.
Call of Duty: Black Ops – I’m not as down on Treyarch as most people are and so I’m looking forward to the latest Call of Duty due in part to my love of all things Vietnam War. The demo they showed doesn’t disappoint, featuring the Tunnel Rat section (going through the dark, water filled tunnels that the VC used) followed by the usual shooting and then a jump in a helicopter to blow some Vietnamese away. It looks like World at War did – like Infinity Ward’s work but a bit more gritty and focused on “Fuck Yeah” moments. Its also a bit gory – the .357 used in the tunnels looks like it can rip guys in two so expect more bodies lying around. The helicopter moments I’m less excited about – its doesn’t look quite as sharp as the run and gun combat. Based on the fact your character speaks while your playing as his shows another shift towards a single focus as opposed to the previous game’s multiple characters
However more interesting from a business point of view is that Microsoft and Activision has signed a deal that all Call of Duty DLC for the next 3 years will be exclusive to the Xbox 360 for at least the first month of release. Based on the success of the MW2 packs, I think Microsoft has just found themselves another system seller, as most of the people who will buy Call of Duty will want the DLC packs as soon as, an experience only available on the Xbox.
Next was Metal Gear Solid: Rising (AKA Raiden’s messing dudes up adventure). After Kojima symbolically handed over control of the main franchise to his producer, a short, pre-rendered cutscene (just like 80% of the full game will be based on previous form) was shown featuring Raiden cutting up man and machine with a big sword. Personally, I have little interest in MGS, but this game does sound quite interesting – it appears to be closer to Devil May Cry then the previous games.
After a short interlude from Microsoft’s Phil Spencer where he said all the following games will be exclusive to the Xbox 360, Cliffy B from Epic came out to show a 4 player co op demonstration for Gears of War 3. It looks like more Gears which is no bad thing. The addition of 4 player co op helps to improve on the overall package, while the section played looks quite good. The new enemies, the mutating Lambent, look pretty nasty (as they can transform mid combat to new forms) but this time you have a normal bayonet which allows you to spear a guy through the stomach and then hang him over your head. It looks like the same feelings we all had when we first chainsawed a guy will return. One of my major concerns with the previous games was the fact that 90% of the screen at any time was brown making it look just a bit too bland. The new environments help to correct this and means I may be keeping an eye out for this when its released.
Then Peter Molyneux popped up. Last year he was gushing about Milo, but this year his is back to talk about Fable 3. Or show a trailer at least. The trailer looks rather good, continuing on with the good bits of Fable 2 but with a whole new set of things. Unfortunately it was only a trailer and so Microsoft moved on to announce a partnership with Crytek to produce a game called Codename Kingdom. It looks to be a gladiator style game but it was only a teaser trailer so not much could be really gleamed from it. But Crytek is really going for the consoles with this and Crysis 2.
It isn’t a Microsoft press conference without Halo, and this year’s showing of Halo: Reach fitted the bill. After a successful beta, they talked first about singleplayer and showed off some it. It looks like a better looking Halo – I’m guessing that if you don’t like Halo, you won’t like this. But I think it looks like it could be great fun, with the new weapons and a better story. And you go into space in a jet which is pretty cool.
And then came the moment that we were all waiting for – Microsoft’s Marc Whitten came on stage and told us the future of gaming – Kinect. Before any games for it was shown they focused more on the general dashboard – by waving he logged in. He waves again and he selects Kinect app app. He says Zune to load up the Zune app. It all looks like a feature you could comfortably use and not feel like a tool. It also looks the part as well – shiny black plastic with several cameras on the front. The selection are done by the appearance of a virtual hand on the screen which is then used as a cursor which is slightly freaky seeing ghost hands. He also mentions Voice Kinect which will allow Xbox users to voice chat to their Windows Live Contacts which could be quite funny – sat on the sofa and talking like your some big time boss. Or it could be a feature that, like its current gen version is never used.
Then he announced something that made most of the British watchers not give a damn. They announced ESPN was coming to the the Xbox 360 in the states and showing nearly all the major sports APART from the NFL which strikes me as odd – wouldn’t that be the one thing you would want to have on your streaming service? However, it is free for all Gold users which is a nice thing rather than charging another huge amount. I could see this being used a lot by many people but it is of no use for the UK.
Of more use were the Kinect games, all of which would be available on launch of the new hardware add-on in the Autumn.First up was Kinectimals which looks like it could make Microsoft a bucket load of cash. The system is two fold – first is the soft toy animal of various big cats like Lions or, in this case, a tiger. As well as the soft toy, you can scan in the barcode around its neck to import it into the game which allows you to play with it, a bit like the Milo demo. They showed a little girl playing with the Tiger named Skittles and it looked like for a certain age it could be fun (such as the moment when it goes into a slow motion Matrix style spin around as the tiger jumps over the skipping rope). However, look closely and some of the actions just didn’t seem right or match up properly. Also that tiger is scary as fuck – tigers shouldn’t smile.
Next on the list of motion controlled games was Kinect Sports. Its basically Wii Sports but better looking and on an Xbox 360 with avatars. Rare has been working on it and it does look good but at the end of the day its Wii Sports. Joyride, the kart racer announced last year is back and now Kinect exclusive requiring you to use an air steering wheel (yet another thing that makes me think actors and/or mimes are going to be the best at all the Kinect games). It actually sound really fun through with several different modes. However, I really hope its going to either be reasonable on XBLA or free with the Kinect device itself. Then there was a rafting game and the knowledge that the Kinect will be able to automatically take pictures of you playing the games and then auto upload to Facebook.
Fuck.
To round out this section, they also made mention of an exercise game from Ubisoft from Your Shape. It features standard exercises as well as Yoga and Martial arts which sounds pretty good. I know from other people that the Wii Fit has be used a load just for the Yoga – bringing this to the Xbox is a pretty good idea. It also showed just how accurate the Kinect is by showing off 1:1 motion. In a similar vein of burning calories, Dance Central is Harmonix’s/MTV’s latest music game focused on dancing. It seems like a quite good idea and the announcement that it would feature Lady GaGa makes me think it will sell gangbusters. Also announced for the Kinect was a Star Wars lightsaber game and a new version of Forza which will use Kinect.
And as the show was wrapping up, Don Matrick, Microsoft’s Senior VP, came out with a new design for the Xbox 360 which is quieter, cooler, smaller and contains integrated wireless and a 250gb hard drive. Even better was the news that it will be out some time this week.
Overall Microsoft showed off some pretty good games at the start. All of them look really, really good. However, I’m not quite as keen with the new Kinect stuff. As a device it looks like it could be quite fun, but all the games are not really that interesting. Its going to be up to the other third party developers to make games to really take advantage of it. But many of the Xbox’s big games will be shown at the EA and Ubisoft conferences later today.
Write-ups of all the conferences will be on the site at various points during the week
(Gametrailers will be having all the trailers and gameplay from the live events up all week and eventually the complete streams later if you want to watch. Thanks to Joystiq, Destructoid and IGN for most of the pictures and Giant Bomb for the reference live blog)
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