E3 2010 Press Conference: Microsoft

Story by: Eric

How can a copy jump back from heat from the red ring and the laughable Kinect name announced yesterday? If you haven’t guessed by now I have not been on board with the Xbox 360 for almost a year now. After 5 systems breaking and Microsoft pretty much telling me to bite the bullet and buy a new one, when they screwed me over, I couldn’t careless about the Xbox 360.

Times have changed and some games this year made me turn on my 360 for more than just an evening Netflix movie or a late night chat fest, with buddies, while I played my Playstation 3. Microsoft is finally turning things around and it all starts with the Kinect.

Before you start throwing trash at me for giving props to Microsoft with the Kinect I am going to breakdown the E3 Press Conference from Microsoft. It started off strong and for the most part it kept up with the surprises and that is thanks to Gears of War 3, a title that wasn’t part of the Big 3 (Black Ops, Fable 3, and Halo Reach). Sure it does come out next year but that was low I think.

The event started with Call of Duty: Black Ops gameplay footage. The game looks great except for the character models. We still have time for the game to be released in early November so I am not too worried. What was shown now though is bone chilling. Going through tunnels to attack enemy bases and helicopter gameplay. Treyarch is not going to disappoint I think with Black Ops. Modern Warfare 2 made me appreciate World at War more and just about every other FPS (Modern Warfare 2 sucked).

Microsoft also announced how they teamed up with Activision to get the exclusive rights to downloadable content, before anyone else, for the Call of Duty games in 2010, 2011, and 2012. Guess we all know that Call of Duty is official an every year thing, but we all pretty much knew that any way before this was announced.

Next on the list was sort of a blow to Sony fans because the Xbox 360 is getting a Metal Gear Solid game. Metal Gear Solid: Rising is a Kinect game based on Raiden, the naked blonde we had to play as in Metal Gear Solid 2. The game looks just like Ninja Gaiden to me, but in the Metal Great Universe. The graphics look good and being able to cut opponents however you want it cool. You can cut anything and everything! I can’t help but to think that this game is just a gimmick and it won’t be much fun after 3 or 4 sittings.

Fable 3, one of the games I was looking forward too during the pre-holiday gaming season. Peter Molyneux came onto the stage, talked for a brief few minutes, and should footage of Fable 3, footage that we pretty much saw already. When the footage was over Molyneux was gone. Oh we did get an official date, October 26, 2010. Why couldn’t Molyneux at least talk about the Collector’s Edition of the game?

What I think was the crowning achievement of Microsoft’s Press Conference was Cliff Blezinski showing off Gears of War 3. Not only did Cliff just show it off he had 3 other friends play with him in the new 4-player co-op story. There was no slow down, the game looked fantastic, and you can now run towards your opponent and pierce them with your weapon. Gears of War 3 got me excited to be a Xbox 360 owner and at the same time it made me want to play the other two games again. Cliff also hinted at a new game mode called “Beast”. If we know Cliff then this mode will be copied off of for years to come.

Halo: Reach. I personally could care less about this game. Halo: ODST was a disappointment on so many levels and I just don’t know if I can give two pieces of shit about this one. I couldn’t tell if the graphics were really all that much better. But hey when you have action from the very start, just like Super Mario Bros., people will notice how good it is. Oh yeah there looks to be a flying mission too. Guess flying is the new thing for FPS games.

There was a short clip on Codename: Kingdom, an exclusive game for the 360 from Microsoft Game Studios and Crytek. I thought it looked like Gladiator, which is a good movie, but that wasn’t enough footage to make me care.

The rest of the conference then dealt with Project Natal, or I should say Kinect. It finally has a name and Microsoft is ready to make everyone shut up and listen. Kinect I think is a great name from a business standpoint. Wii owners will jump over the Kinect and mom and dad will get it because it has a cute name too, just like the Wii.

Kinect has a moving camera and a built in microphone. Now online people can hear everything you say from begging to stay up a little longer to play your game or they’ll hear you fart. Not only that there is video chat (ran smooth) and command features. How many times have you lost your DVD remote? Who cares because Kinect can help you out? Not only that you can turn your Xbox 360 into a Zune friendly music machine. Pretty cool, huh?

All of those small features do add up and I think they are great. What most of us care about are the games. Here is a list of the games that were shown at E3 that work with Kinect at this time.

Kinectimals
Kinect Sports
Kinect Joy Ride
Dance Central
Star Wars: Kinect
Kinect Adventures!
Your Shape: Fitness Evolved

Kinectimals reminded me of the Dreamcast titled Seaman. It took this long for a company to mimic that game? Another reason why the Dreamcast was ahead of its time, but seriously the game is cute looking and if the Kinect works as good as they showed I think this game will be a lot of fun.

Kinect Sports is developed by Rare. Was that their big announcement? I hope not because it is pretty much Wii Sports but better. The graphics are of course better than Wii Sports and it should control better. There was a slight problem before the game was demoed so I don’t know if that is a problem with Kinect or the game itself.

Dance Central is the next game made by Harmonix. Who would have thought Harmonix would make a game like this? The game looks like fun and it could very well be entertaining if you want to dance or during those drunken parties. It looks to have the same gameplay mechanics as the Guitar Hero series so good job or lazy asses?

Kinect Joy Ride is the real kart game, or that’s at least what Microsoft says. Either the game plays slow or the person demoing it was an idiot. Nice graphics and could be just as fun as Mario Kart was.

The new Your Shape looks to be taking the Kinect technology to its fullest potential. There is just so much you can do with this game and I think this game could be what the first Your Shape wanted to be. Fitness gamer fans might want to pick up the Kinect just for this game alone, Ubisoft looks like they know what their doing with Microsoft’s technology.

Lastly on the Kinect front there is Kinect Adventures!, a game that looks to be a mix of Ninja Warrior and Whipeout. People are already calling it a tech demo. Think about this thought Wii Sports was a tech demo and you know that is one of the few games everyone is still playing. Second players can jump in whenever they want and it just looks really fun!

Kinect comes out on November 4, 2010 and the price of…wait Microsoft didn’t say a price. What kind of shit is that? Oh well at least there was the partnership of ESPN and Xbox Live. Blah blah blah sports stuff, but when that was announced everything else said after it didn’t matter. Sports people must be crapping in their pants now.

Oh wait there was one more thing Microsoft wanted to bring up before they ended their press conference. The Slim Xbox 360 was shown and the shocker was the release date…this week. Everyone in the audience got one for free (bull shit) but everyone else can buy one this week at $299.99. The system comes with a 120gig harddrive, built in Wi-Fi 802.11N, and it is supposed to be nearly silent. It does look sexy too in black.

Final Verdict
The Press Conference from Microsoft at E3 this year was a conference to say “fuck you, stop laughing at us”. Project Natal is now Kinect and Fable 3, Halo: Reach and Call of Duty: Blacks Ops will be on the Xbox 360 this year. Buy the new slim system and wait until Microsoft says how much Kinect will be. I think from a business standpoint Microsoft’s Press Conference was great. On a gamer standpoint I was sort of torn a little.

I think Kinect looks like fun and should be great if it works that great. Me personally I only cared about Kinect and Gears of War 3 and GOW3 is next year. Peter Molyneux dropped the fucking ball with Fable 3 and Reach…who fucking cares! Sure Black Ops looks awesome but what about all of the other exclusives that weren't shown? Crackdown 2? This years batch of downloadable games on Xbox Live? Yeah I liked those two things I mentioned but it just wasn't enough.

Rating
6 out of 10