Microsoft
Let's start with Microsoft, because they went first. It started out cool. Showing some great games: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Gears of War 3, yada yada yada. My favorite game demoed was actually the new reboot of Tomb Raider though. Now that game looks absolutely amazing! Oh and they formally anounced Halo: 10 Year Anniversary; which looks really cool. The same Halo we know and love from 10 years ago, with slick new graphics. Oh, and they showed Forza Motorsport 4, but I mean... it's a racing game. I'm just not as into those enough to really say much about it other than that it looks really good visually and stuff.
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| Left to right: Gears of War 3, Modern Warfare 3, Tomb Raider, Halo: 10 Year Anniversary |
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| Left to right: Mass Effect 3... ah screw it, you can read the titles yourself right? |
A couple of the Kinect games looked cool, and I gotta say, the Sesame Street game looks really cute, but at the actual expo I was watching some people play the Star Wars Kinect game, and there were times when the player would be making the motion asked for on the screen, yet the game would not respond. So it seems as though there are some parts that seem broken.Of course they still have a few months to iron out some of those issues, but still. Something else that concerns me, is the fact that when you are swinging the lightsaber and such, it seems as though you don't have control of where you actually go. You take out one enemy (in our case, mostly droids), and the character will for the most part automatically move to the next target; taking out any choice the player would have of who to attack when. There were more portions of the game than just lightsaber fights, and on foot sections, such as space combat sequences, but I didn't see any of that being played.
Also, just from the press conference, Ryse actually looks like it could be really cool. It's a melee combat styled game taking place during the era of the Roman Empire I believe, where you are actually lunging and blocking with your arms as though you were swinging a sword and shield and such. This wasn't on hand at E3, so all I have to go off of is the short clip they showed of it at the press conference, but one of the representatives said that the player will probably have a controller in their hand, so that you can still control where you are moving. So it seems that Ryse will avoid my previously stated concern about the Star Wars game. It's also worth noting that since it is Crytek developing Ryse, that it will be a very good looking game most likely.
The Fable: The Journey game just looks like a bit of a missed opportunity. It seems to be mostly an on rails shooter... set in the Fable world. Strange direction to take the Fable games if you ask me. However, Peter Molyneux (head of Lionhead, the developer, and Microsoft Games Studio Europe) did say that the version that was shown actually was a dumbed down version, taking away a lot of the player's choice in movement or something like that. So who knows, maybe it will turn out good anyways. I can at least say it has my attention. As for the other stuff... I mean there's Dance Central 2 (now with 2 player support), and some other stuff that I personally don't really care about. Haha. Last thing with Kinect; Mass Effect 3 looks really good of course. Did I really have to point that out? I grouped it with the Kinect games because they showcased how you can use the mic in the Kinect for voice commands and choosing dialogue in the game. No really, this IS the last thing with Kinect. Ubisoft showed the new Ghost Recon game, and guess what? It supports Kinect! They have some cool features, but other than them being "cool," I'm not really sure if they will really contribute to the quality of the game itself.
So to summarise, Microsoft's press conference was... good at first, and interesting at some points with the Kinect titles (Ryse, and Mass Effect 3), but it did feel a little bit like the core game was getting left out if you don't have a Kinect. ANNND one big announcement came at the very end.
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| Are you serious?! |
Ummm... let me just say I'm extremely excited. We finally are getting to move the main plot forward. Enough of this prequel crap. I want to know what happens now that the Covenant is over with and the Flood is supposedly destroyed! I want to go to the planet Onyx and find the missing group of spartans! See what kind of mess or whatever they have gotten themselves into. Halo: Reach was a great game, don't get me wrong, but we all already knew what happens. Reach falls. But with Halo 4 we finally get back with our beloved Master Chief and sink our teeth into something knew, where we don't know what's next. Things have just been a bit too framiliar as of late with the past 3 Halo games (ODST, Halo Wars, Halo: Reach).
And I think I'm just gonna go ahead and post this... cause it's already pretty long. Part 2 coming soon! I'll likely talk about Nintendo and Sony in one, cause the Nintendo one wasn't as long and didn't have as much meat to it aside from the new console they announced.
