Microsoft E3 2012 Press Conference, Xbox Entertainment Evolved

Microsoft Press Conference ended about an hour ago and I took some notes. You are welcome.

They called it Xbox Entertainment Evolved, and I'm really digging this music that they are playing before the actual thing starts. I think I'll talk about the games first, and the rest comes later, how would you like that? Good? Yes, okay.

And were are in it. Starting the show with the showstopper, Halo 4 live action/CGI trailer. Then going into some gameplay. Looks totally Halo, but these guys have the technology down a lot better than Bungie ever did, looks gorgeous. Master Chief kicks some ass, fights Covenant and non-Covenant bad guys, Forerunner defensive AI, picks up some Forerunner weapons (it was called Scattershot, so it's probably just a cool looking shotgun). Some story exposition, Cortana is an 8 year old AI, and AI's start deteriorating after 7 years.

Splinter Cell: Blacklist from Ubisoft. Initial disappointment, as Sam Fisher isn't voiced by Michael Ironside anymore. Prequel, reboot? No idea, looks totally cool though. Seems like there are a lot of executions, which basically looks like the game is almost playing itself on those parts. That's probably just the demo though, juiced up the execution meter to show cool shit. Climbing and stuff, seemingly has some Assassin's Creed influences. Spring 2013.

EA brings Kinect to more EA Sports titles. FIFA and Madden NFL will both have voice commands, you can change formations and substitute players on the fly on FIFA. For Madden they bring out Joe Montana on stage, apparently some kind of Hall of Fame quarterback, and he calls plays in Madden with voice commands. That's all totally cool, but I'm never going to play either of those games.

Short trailer break with back to back trailers.
Fable: The Journey, the first person Kinect magic shooter that still looks like it's on rails and also looks like garbage.
Gears of War: Judgment CGI trailer starring your favorite and mine, Beard.
Forza trailer, pretty cars, dubstep. Wub Wub.

Crystal Dynamics showed of the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot. Gameplay looks like some kind of hybrid between the old Tomb Raider exploration and kind of familiar cover based 3rd person shooter. So also kind of like Uncharted, I guess. Lara shoots dudes with a bow, shotgun and performs a pretty brutal and up close knife kill on a dude, and gets in pretty bad shape by riding down a waterfall, flying with a parachute and falling down after that. Looks good, but still not quite sure what the structure of that game is going to be, and I'm still not digging the new voice.

3 new original titles coming to Xbox 2013, short trailers for each.
Ascend: New Gods looks like a 3rd person character action with some Shadow of the Colossus thrown in there.
LocoCycle from Twisted Pixel (the makers of 'Splosion Man), maybe a racing game. They only show a slick looking bike in a very showroom like fashion.
Matter, from the director of Pirates of the Caribbean, a Kinect game.

Capcom came on stage to show some Resident Evil 6. Looks absolutely gorgeous, MT Frameworks is fucking awesome. Zombies, co-op gameplay, melee executions, cover system, grenades, sprinting. Looks like it plays well. Surprisingly lot quicktime events, hard to say if you can fail them or not. Running towards a camera sequence with shit blowing up. Looks so good. And timed DLC exclusivity for Xbox.

Short demo of Wreckateer, Kinect game that's out this summer.

South Park: The Stick of Truth. RPG game developed by Obsidian and with actual involvement by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, you know, the creators of South Park. Looks authentic. You are the new kid on the block, trying to be the 5th member of the group.

Harmonix, Dance Central 3, already. Looks like more Dance Central, and to hammer that in they have a sudden Usher live performance, showing some of the sweet new dance moves.

And last but not least, they ended the show with Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Looks miles ahead of all previous CoD games, very pretty. Future is now, unmanned war-machines, and someone stole the keys. Dude is sniping with a future sniper rifle through some big-ass concrete blocks, in the interest of time they skip to another sequence where your guy has flying unmanned robot-drones floating around him and he calls support fire from them. Really cool. Flying sequence, impossible to say how much of it was on rails.

No mention of Rare at all. Maybe they are doing the Wreckateer game. How the mighty have fallen.

Then we have the entertainment evolved message. It was kind of scattered across the entire Conference, but I'll just summarize it all here.

Xbox (the brand) brings together all entertainment, also coming to PC's, phones and tablets. Bing search by genre, expanding voice search to 12 additional countries. 35 new entertainment providers across the globe. People love sports, NBA and NHL coming to Xbox. Xbox music service, called Xbox Music. Original, right? Will also be on Windows 8 PC's, tablets and phones. Tons of songs at launch.

Future of fitness with Nike+ Kinect Training. Connected every where, pipes into the Nike+ thing, personal training programs. All that good shit.

Smart devices, getting smarter with Xbox SmartGlass. Basically, an application for your phone or tablet that communicates with your console, and provides you additional information on the things that you are doing. They used an example of watching Game of Thrones on HBO Go, and your tablet shows the map of world and other nonsense like that. Additionally they showed how you can watch a movie on a tablet, pause and just kind of throw it to the console and continue from where you left it. So it's all connected. Also works as a remote for your Xbox if that's your desire.

They stressed very much that you already have these devices, and all you need is this application and it's all golden. Works on all smart devices that you might have, iPhones, iPads, Windows 8 tablets and phones, as well as Android devices. The way they stressed that “hey, you already have these devices” makes it very clearly their answer to WiiU and its tablet controller. It seems very plausible that developers could very well take advantage of this connectivity and make very connected experiences in their games.

And that was Microsoft.

Posted in Gaming by Kilu on June 04th 2012 at 2:48pm