E3 is finally upon us and Microsoft kicked things off today with their press conference, telling us what the future held for their XBOX 360. The verdict? Hit the jump to find out.
Activision opened with Black Ops, their newest instalment in their hugely popular Call of Duty series. It’s a Treyarch title, which means we’re not supposed to care as much, but it still looked pretty good. I thought World at War was a decent game, but hopefully the devs will have followed Infinity Ward’s example and removed grenade spam and infinite spawns. The trailer was very Hollywood in it’s presentation (explodey) and felt like it cost a lot of money. The gameplay they showed off consisted of some people sneaking through a jungle and stealing a helicopter. All in all it was a decent showing, but I doubt it shocked anyone.
Anyway, Hideo Kojima appeared and gave us our first look at the gameplay of his new Metal Gear game; Rising. I have to say I was unimpressed at E309 when he first announced it, but after seeing the title in action I am officially pumped. It looked beyond incredible – Ninja Gaiden style gameplay with massive elemental destruction and full control over the axis of your blade. It seems Raiden can cut through anything; destroying the pillars of an awning to make it crash down upon enemies taking cover beneath it, slicing a van clean in half and – in classic Metal Gear fashion – a comic finale where Raiden cuts a watermelon beautifully. There was also a strange element of ‘Taking’ – what seems to be a kirby-inspired method of stealing the abilities of your enemies by assimilating their glowing intestines? Awesome.
Cliff Bleszinski took to the stage – sans Lancer this year, sadly – and set a good example of shutting up and showing the goods. Three of his cohorts took to the stage with him and they played through an awesome looking jungle level from Gears of War 3, with mutating lambent locust – the lambent berserker was a particular favourite of mine – new old weapons – a Pendulum lancer with a bayonet attachment that packs a mean melee punch – and lots of new kick ass manoeuvres – dragon kicks as you jump over cover, grenade tagging an enemy and kicking them towards their buddies to score a double kill and kicking an exploding locust away from you after you’ve chainsaw’d them. All in all it was a fantastic presentation that I, as a gears fanatic (Gears 2 is still my go-to multiplayer game), loved.
Molyneux did everyone a favour and followed Bleszinski’s lead and let his new trailer for Fable III do most of the talking. It all seems in order, and seems to continue with the high quality the series commands. Some new elements such as sea warfare looks genuinely interesting. The title looks a lot more bloody than what we’ve come to expect and the combat system seems to have received what I thought was a much needed overhaul.
Now, I’m not a huge Halo fan. I have all the games and I plugged a lot of time into every multiplayer aspect of Halo 3, but I usually grimace when the game is brought up in polite conversation. Although I’ve had hours of fun with 3, I thought the original was far too repetitive, in terms of gameplay and level design, to garner the massive amounts of praise heaped upon it and the giant legacy it left, and there are countless other shooters I feel outdo the series as a whole in every aspect. So, needless to say it was a massive shock to me when I was thoroughly impressed at the demonstration of Halo Reach this year. The single/co-op campaign looked awesome. It was packed with unique encounters that were spawned with a very cinematic, set-piece orientated design, rather than just running across another band of grunts. The gameplay looks a lot more instant and weighted – with everything from the controls to the impact of bullets feeling meatier. I have gone from complete indifference towards the title to quiet anticipation. Come on September, Roll on Reach!
The newly dubbed Kinect – formerly (and preferably) Project Natal – took centre stage next and remained there until the end of the conference. Kinect is, of course, Microsoft’s new motion sensing peripheral. It is able to track multiple people in a fully 3D space and differentiate between them, their appearance and their voices. It was unveiled at last years E3 and has been a curious blip on our radars ever since. This year Microsoft went all out and showed everything the device has to offer.
The demos started with a focus on Player as Controller – something Microsoft touched on last year but didn’t fully explore. A surprisingly charismatic developer named Ron Forbes took to the stage to demonstrate exactly what these capabilities where. He began by waving to log himself in, the machine recognizing him in an instant and booting up his respective account. He then navigated through several menus using only his hands and his voice. He proceeded to show us his favourite part of this years Alice in Wonderland, navigating the entire movie-watching process with the same tools. It was all very impressive and eerily futuristic, watching Ron command the system, “XBOX, Play” to set in motion a paused scene. Gimmick or not, very cool.
Another engineer – this one believably awkward – replaced Ron and showed us the new video chat Natal offers, linking instantly with people on an XBOX or – finally – Microsoft Messenger. The really important thing here is to see Microsoft refusing to rest on their laurels when it comes to communication. They’re already far above what the Playstation 3 offers in terms of sociality, which still refuses to let players have a private chat whilst playing separate games, and they’re still moving ahead and introducing new ways to keep in contact with people, even outside the direct world of their games console. Anyway – the video-chat was awkward, as Laura chatted to her twin sister who lived wherever and had supposedly been given a Kinect. Despite the awful rigidness of the conversation, the tech seemed a little too perfect for the live show, with no delay whatsoever, no loading for videos and what seemed like a very practised routine. I don’t doubt the technology Microsoft were demonstrating – and I was very pleased with the camera tracking Laura’s sister as she moved around the room, very cool – but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find this segment was pre-recorded and acted. What I was most excited about here though is the ability to watch movies with each other, perfectly in sync, with the cameras still appearing at the side of the screen (which I assume will be an optional feature). I’ve been waiting for something like this for a long time, so that I may spend time with my long-distance girlfriend or buddies from across the globe and watch a movie together.
The presentation went on to announce that Americans will be getting access to sports channel ESPN from their dashboard later on this year, which is probably awesome for them – especially as it is free for gold subscribers.
Finally, the games began to appear, starting with Kinectimals. It’s a virtual-pet game that is a somewhat similar take on last years Milo/Kate demo. It didn’t impress me massively, but it’s still worth checking out for the sheer ad’awwwworable-ness.
Next was Kinect Sports – you know the deal here. It’s Wii Sports but with different controls. It looks wholly competent but it’s unashamed plagiarism is pretty insulting.
Joy Ride followed, and I can’t help but feel it missed the boat somewhat. It was unveiled last year at E3 and announced as a free giveaway to all Live Gold users – and I was really excited – but Microsoft saw profit and decided to turn it into a full retail Kinect launch title with motion controls. In doing so they’ve lost their charitable good will and more importantly let the far superior ModNation Racers cross the finishing line before it. The invisible-wheel method of controlling a racing game just doesn’t sit right with me, and illuminates one of Kinect’s biggest downfalls – it’s lack of tangible presence and force feedback. I focus on Joy Ride here but my fears are for Kinect as a whole – I can’t imagine holding this fake wheel will feel anything other than strange (and tiring to your constantly extended arms), and the fact that you’re feeling nothing in response even stranger. Petting your cuddly Kinectimal, for instance, is all well and good – but it’s not like you can feel anything solid against your hands, regardless of the tiger rolling around joyfully on the screen. I’ll have to play with Kinect before I can truly pass judgment, of course, but for now the real draw are the hands-off games that focus on your body’s movements rather than physical interaction.
Kinect Adventures is to Kinect Sports what Wii Sports Resort was to vanilla Wii Sports. Get all that? Good. I barely did, and I wrote it. It’s seems to simply focus on more outlandish activities than the regular sports package, and it looks fun, it really does. Up until this point though I was entirely underwhelmed by what Kinect had brought to the presentation, and was wondering whether anything would come along that would warrant a purchase.
I wasn’t convinced by Ubisoft’s Wii Fit-esque Your Shape, although the demonstration further solidified the excellent tech behind Kinect. The device scanned in a developers figure and a 1:1 representation of her appeared on screen, kicking bricks and doing some Zen cleansing. Again, very impressed, not interested.
And then Dance Central happened, and blew my mind. I won’t deny that I am a huge Harmonix fanboy and a connoisseur of music-rhythm games in general. I was always disappointed by dancing games however, stomping around on a mat and not dancing at all. They were fun and I own most of them, but they never really felt right. Dance Central looks to change all that, and the integration of Kinect is amazing here – the game literally couldn’t be created on any other system. The title tasks you with performing accurate dance moves in rhythm to the music and Kinetic tracks you and scores you on how well you’re pulling them off. Simple, yet in one genius move Harmonix alone convinced me to purchase a Kinect at launch.
The Kinect presentation closed with something fans have been desperately wanting for years – a motion controlled Star Wars title. The above trailer was billed as gameplay, but I’m going to go ahead and call them big ol’ liars. I don’t believe it for a second, but I hope I’m wrong, as I too would love to get my hands on some sweet lightsabre swinging action. I can’t help but feel, however, that this game would have been more at home on a Wii and utilizing MotionPlus.
The press conference is nearing it’s end, and Microsoft has one last announcement to make. An announcement that was – as is usually the way – leaked a while ago. A new version of the 360 – black, glossy and awkwardly shaped, but desirable nevertheless and out this week. The guts are the same but it’s promised to be ‘whisper quiet’ and no longer prone to overheating. I’ve already made plans to upgrade for no real reason other than technolust. Don Mattick left the crowd in attendance with one final gift – everyone would be getting a new 360 on their way out, “On Microsoft.”
“Holy Shit!” someone cried out.
Holy shit indeed.
Overall the conference was slightly underwhelming. Big reveals were painfully absent and Kinect left me feeling incredibly mixed about its future. It has the potential, but it’s direction seems slightly misguided. My trust, or more importantly, my belief isn’t quite there yet, and I’ll definitely have to try it before it knock it, or otherwise. I’ve always admired Microsoft for focusing on exclusives, letting multiplatform games speak for themselves at their respective seminars or on the show floor, but it was a double edged sword in that the three exclusives were just that: only three. Recently Sony have been making massive strides in exclusivity and Microsoft have to work hard to catch up if they’re to reclaim the pole position they held for so long. The great thing about Microsoft is how they present themselves though; it’s always a blast to watch their polished, quick fire productions and it means a lot to see a developer genuinely enthused about their products. They once again focused on whats important – games over stats, the potential of the future over the success of the past. Last year Nintendo made a horrible mess of their conference, talking non-stop about how great they were doing and giving us very little to actually look forward to. The industry moves fast, and gamers are a fickle bunch. We don’t care how good your last quarter was, we want to know what’s planned for the next, and Microsoft always have that at heart. Always moving, always innovating and constantly striving to deliver us better experiences. I can only hope Sony and Nintendo take heed and deliver stellar performances tomorrow at their respective forums.
