June 14, 2010

Microsoft Press Conference - The Review


- Black Ops opened up the conference with a new playable demo. I'm not personally a Call of Duty fan, but Black Ops looks pretty solid.

- Don Mattrick, who has an evil name, announced that all Call of Duty mappacks are now coming out first on the Xbox 360.

- Hideo Kojima showed up to show off Metal Gear Solid: Rising's impressive and violent new trailer. You can dice anyone or anything into pieces. That's pretty fucking cool.

- Cliffy B showed up (Can I still call him that?) and showed us some Gears of War 3 Gameplay. This time around there actually appears to be color! I'm somewhat excited, but the "new" Lambent look pretty awesome, in a disturbing tentacle kind of way. The inclusion of female characters is a nice touch too. I'm pretty impressed.

- Fable 3. Which is shipping October 26th looks awesome as well. I'm digging the Victorian-era vibe. As well as the whole idea where you can be a ruler. Looks like Fable is finally living up to it's promises made so long ago.

- Crytek has a pretty looking Fantasy-esque title coming out. Currently known as Codename: Kingdoms. Mysterious.

- Halo: Reach, though I disagree it's a cultural phenomenon, the series has driven Microsoft pretty far. We all got a taste of the multiplayer during the beta, but from the looks of it, the campaign mode is going to kick some serious ass. Count me in.

- The now re dubbed Kinect has a rather fantastic menu system, which uses both motion and voice commands to access things. Simple and unique. No complaints. The video chat system is super-badass too. HI KRISTEN! =D You can also access SportsCentre on your Xbox 360. That's also super-cool.

- Kinectamals. It's D'aww worthy!  Kinetic sports looks like it'd be pretty tight. Seems to provide a lot more than it's Wii counterpart. Kinect Joyride looks rather difficult. Kinect Adventure also looks challenging, and the jump-in splitscreen is a neat concept too.

- It fails to surprise me that Ubisoft is responsible for a Kinect Fitness title. But Your Shape: Fitness Evolved seems pretty intuitive, especially for a fitness title.

- Harmonix has a new interactive endeavor in the form of Dance Central, a Kinect dance game. Who didn't see that coming? But it looks pretty interesting. It has the Beastie Boys, that's good enough for me!

- Kinect is coming out for us North Americans on November 4th. And Kinect Star Wars. I came, even if it isn't actual gameplay just yet. We'll have to wait til Next Year unfortunately. =(

- The gentlemen who work at Turn 10 showed up, debuting a new Forza-related Kinect game. Which allows you to interact with the cars themselves. It's a pretty sweet concept. But we won't find out much until next year.

- The new Xbox 360 is adorable, allegedly quieter and has built-in Wi-Fi. That's awesome. And the best part, it's coming out this week. Holy shit, that's awesome.


OVERALL

Similar to last year, we got a fantastical new surprise at the end of the conference. Makes me wish I was there. They focused a lot on shooters, which was kinda balls, but the new Kinect games look pretty fantastic and there are some cool, promising goodies on the way. Microsoft has some of the best conferences, this one wasn't any different.

- Kyle K.

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