E3 Thoughts: Microsoft

Here it is, my thoughts on Microsoft's press conference...late and unedited.

Microsoft started off E3 2009 with a fantastic press conference that exceeded practically every expectation. The press conference was not perfect, but it was a great way to start a relatively enjoyable E3.

The press conference started off with Beatles: Rock Band and while I’ve never been much of a Beatles fan, I actually found the game to look rather enjoyable and it looked to catch the Beatles vibe perfectly. It did feel a bit weird and uncomfortable when they started bringing out family members of deceased Beatles, as well as Paul McCartney and Ringo Star. It was as if they were trophies that Microsoft and Harmonix wanted to show off.

Then Microsoft started to show off some of their lineup for both 2009 and 2010. The first game shown was Tony Hawk: Ride, which will be coming out for $120, along with a weight limit of 250lbs. The game looks ridiculous and I don’t expect much of a wait before someone seriously hurts themselves on that flimsy piece of plastic. This was followed up with a live gameplay demo of Modern Warfare 2, which looks to be essentially more COD4, but that’s not exactly a bad thing. At this point the show wasn’t too bad, but it started to pick up after the announcement of some known (and unknown) new games.

Forza 3: Motorsport was officially announced (surprise?) and left me with mixed feelings. I love Forza 2 and I know I’ll likely pick up Forza 3, but there was just something odd about this presentation. The live gameplay demo looked good, but graphically not as impressive as Gran Turismo 5. The odd part is that they showed a video after this that supposedly was made using the in-game video editor and that footage looked amazing. I’m not sure if that was actually taken from the game, or if we’re looking at another case of “Killzone 2-anitus”.

We then got some surprising sequels in the form of Crackdown 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 (that’s right, we’re already getting a L4D sequel). While I think L4D2 will likely be a great game, I can’t help but be annoyed that we’re getting a sequel to a six month old game and we still haven’t heard a word on Half-Life 2: Episode 3. I’d rather have heard that Portal was getting a sequel and I haven’t even beaten the game. Then we got our token Halo news (Halo: ODST), which was followed by a second bit of Halo news (Halo: Reach). It was also announced that an invitation to a closed beta for Halo: Reach would be included with the purchase of Halo: ODST. This begs the ultimate question: Can a Halo beta make a Halo game sell better? …did I just blow your mind!?

The most surprising game of Microsoft’s press conference came from EPIC Games and was an XBLA title called Shadow Complex. There isn’t much info on the game currently, but it’s essentially Castlevania in the future, with guns. The game is what looks to be a 2.5D side-scroller and screams Castlevania/Super Metroid and I can’t wait to get my hands on it; it’s part of the “Summer of Arcade”. Another surprise of the show was how good Splinter Cell: Conviction looked, along with how different it was from when we last saw the game. It’s hard to describe why the game looks so amazing (check out the live demo), but Conviction has gone from a blip on my radar to one of my most anticipated games of 2009; yes, the game is coming out in 2009!

Alan Wake also came by to say “Hello. I’m still alive. Please don’t think of me as the new Duke Nukem ‘Fornever’.” I believe that Alan Wake is not the type of game that would demo well and the demo they showed did not excite me, but it also didn’t turn me off in any way. It was just nice to see an actual demo of the game running on a 360 and being given a release window of “early 2010”. The final major game announcement was that Metal Gear Solid: Rising, which will star Raiden, is coming to the Xbox 360. I’m extremely excited for this game, but I am a bit surprised that there was no announcement of a port of Metal Gear Solid 4 for the 360.

Microsoft followed up this terrific lineup with some unexciting, but understandable new content for the Xbox 360. They announced that the Netflix “Party Live” system will finally get up and running this fall, along with partnerships with Last.fm, Facebook, and Twitter. Now we can all look forward to even more spam “tweets” in our Twitter feeds. The last big announcement of their show was that of “Project Natal”, their answer to this whole motion-control bug. “Project Natal” is obviously still in its infancy, but the technology looks very promising and its potential use for games, specifically adventure games and RPGs, is quite intriguing. I’m all for the exploration of these new motion-controls, but if gaming ever goes completely controller-less, I’ll have to say “goodbye” to gaming. Innovation is a key to keeping things interesting and fresh, but that doesn’t mean we have to completely disregard the old way of doing something.

There were a few absences from the Microsoft press conference, including no mention of Rare at all. I did find it a bit odd (and disappointing) that Rare was nowhere to be found, but it is highly probable that they are behind much of the workings of “Project Natal”. There was also no mention of the new upcoming GTAIV DLC, The Ballad of Gay Tony, nothing on XNA Community Games, and no mention of the new Zune. It’s a bit surprising that none of these topics were mentioned and I was particularly disappointed with the lack of anything XNA related at all. It is also important to mention that while it wasn’t mentioned during the press conference, Microsoft did announce that they would start selling full retail games digitally through XBL. This service will be called “Games on Demand” and will launch in August with such games as Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed, and Bioshock.