E3 2012: Thoughts and Feelings – Microsoft

So, E3 2012 kicks off with Microsoft taking the helm. There are many games I’m excited for and I was hoping that maybe they would get shown here. Well, we didn’t really get that, at all, but let’s go through the press conference from the beginning.

Halo 4

At the start we had a trailer/demo for Halo 4. Personally, I’m shocked they didn’t end the Halo franchise at the end of the storyline, which I presume is Halo: Reach (I don’t play Halo), but after the secret ending of Halo 3 (secret only to those who didn’t complete it on Legendary) we now see Master Chief is still shooting aliens on some other planet. Or maybe they are AIs. I don’t know, really, I’m just kinda confused how you can shoot AI with bullets. The weapons looked interesting, but for me it was more of the same. Just more Halo. Oh, and they got rid of the health system again, relying purely on shields. Don’t like it, but I don’t play those games.

Splinter Cell: Blacklist

Then we had Splinter Cell: Blacklist. I don’t really play these games either, but at first I was intrigued.  Then I slowly realised that what they were showing was not the stealth games they used to be but rather HEART PUMPING ACTION! So, yeah, Splinter Cell has become a generic third person shooter apparently with no real stealth element by the looks of things. Shame, really, as the opening of the gameplay intrigued me, seeming almost Hitman-like in the fact you use a disguise.

EA Sports

Well, Ubisoft and EA have shown games real quick. Now we have EA Sports games. WITH KINECT! Yay? Now we can be silly and tell people in FIFA what to do. Because that’s what we wanted in FIFA, right? To not play the game? Of course.

We also got a nice little Madden tutorial. This actually interested me, to be honest, and was the first thing I could see being somewhat good. It was shown that you can call out all of the different plays when doing the hike thing (I know bugger all about American Football). It seemed to work well and looks like it helps the player immerse themselves in the NFL setting.  Thumbs up to that, I guess.

Trailers

Fable: The Journey. Still looks like it’s on rails; still looks pretty crappy. Might be good, but I don’t think it will be. 

Gears of War: Judgement has Baird being the main character. This was another game series I was surprised is still having games made of it, but People Can Fly might make it good. I’m not really that excited for it, and they haven’t shown much of it, but I suppose we’ll have to wait. Not much excitement from the crowd with this one.

Forza Horizon I was out of the room for as the dubstep was irritating me. I hear it’s open world, but it’s nothing to be excited about. Just another Forza game, really.

Technology

And here’s the main ruination of the Microsoft conference. The technology stuff. My God was it irritating. Most of the conference seemed to be taken up with Microsoft trying to tell us that the Xbox 360 should be used for pretty much anything but gaming. No, instead we should use the Kinect to do what a controller can do and make the Xbox 360 a TV because if we have an Xbox 360 we definitely don’t have a TV, so need to use the console to watch TV on. Wait...

Oh, and sports. Lots of sports stuff.

Also, we have the Wii Fit on Xbox 360. They didn’t really tell us how that would work, but someone from fucking Nike will let us know they are working with Microsoft and that athletes love the measure stuff. Cool, I guess.

But of course, we also have more random shit. This time it’s linking smart phones, tablets and the Xbox 360. Now we can search online on our Xbox, but apparently we all have tablets and smart phones, so why is this? Who cares, Microsoft really want us to use Internet Explorer and Bing. Yay?

All in all, this stuff (called Xbox SmartGlass) is meant to immerse us all in our TV shows, movies and games more by giving us information on our smart phones and tablets whilst we are watching or playing these things. But this all seems rather pointless and nothing that should have this much focus. There was a demo with Game of Thrones which showed a map of things happening as the show bounced from place to place which was kind of cool but it doesn’t seem to have that much purpose.

Tomb Raider

Thank you! GAMES! I forgot about games. So yeah, the new Tomb Raider. This game interests me a hell of a lot and the demo they gave showed off a lot of features. The shooting and stealth looks cool and the destructible environments look great. It’s a very pretty game, but it does seem fairly Uncharted, which for me is a bad thing. I do think it looks more interesting than Uncharted and is a lot more of a human tale, with some good survival elements.

So there we go, another thumbs up for me. The only major complaint I have is they showed a bit too much of the game, but it is looking good and for that I am happy.

Oh, except that they have announced the DLC already, saying it will be Xbox 360 first. Ugh.

More Trailers

So now we finally get some new exclusives. Three games in fact. Nothing much was shown of these, they were mostly teaser trailers. All looked a bit interesting, but I can’t really say what they will be like. The games were Ascend: New Gods, LocoCycle and Matter, a game made for Kinect and from the guy who made Pirates of the Caribbean and Rango which looked like it had the Space Core from Portal 2. Might be an idea to keep an eye on these.

Resident Evil 6

Well, this looks like it sucks. I don’t have much to say about it, other than the guy playing it was awful and it didn’t look like you played the game, it just seemed to have set pieces that you go through.

Wreckateer

It’s Angry Birds for the Kinect. But with goblins. INNOVATION!

South Park: The Stick of Truth

A game I’ve been looking forward to. It’s got good voice work and looks just like South Park, keeping all of its humour and everything. Definitely a game to keep your eye on. Not much was shown of this, but Trey Parker and Matt Stone came on stage to talk about it.

Trey started off by taking the piss out of the tech stuff, saying how this game allows you to connect your Xbox, TV, smart phone, tablet, oven, all whilst in the refrigerator. Good show! There seemed to be many challenges coming with making the game, such as actually having to finally map out South Park (they said it occurred to them they have no idea how to get from Stan to Kyle’s house). All in all, they talked it up quite well.

I think this might be the gameplay, but not too sure...

Dance Central 3

That’s coming and-

Usher

Okay, maybe Usher is going to perform instead. Don’t really know what is new about Dance Central 3 or what they are doing with it, but Usher performed a song for us for no reason. Thanks, I guess. 

Call of Duty: Black Ops II

So, I’m actually intrigued by this game. The future tech and the branching pathways definitely look competent and interesting, but the story seems to be lifted directly from the Modern Warfare games. The gameplay looks pretty standard for this series and hopefully people will be better at playing the game than the guy who played it.

However, I do have a couple of little niggles. It looks less like an FPS and more of a sight-seeing tour where you tell drones to move around and shoot people. I honestly think other things killed more bad guys than the actual character did with his gun. It looks like an interesting direction for the series to take, but I have to say I’ve lost a lot of my excitement for this game.

Ending Thoughts

Microsoft’s conference was horrible. It was one of the worst I’ve seen. It concentrated more so on the technology than the actual games, which is what people want from a console. Now they want a whole new entertainment system, but the focus on gaming seems to have been lost. There was nothing new on the table and everything just felt kinda bland. Hopefully the other conferences will be better, but this was a bad start to E3.