K&G’s E3 2010: Microsoft’s Conference Commentary

We just finished watching the Microsoft Conference/media briefing.  Below is our running commentary on the conference while we watched.  Did Microsoft bring it?

Call of Duty Blackops

– There better be vehicles in multiplayer and the levels better be that big and realized.  Single player looks great but multiplayer will probably be a cop out.  Looked nice and we’ll be getting it on console for Graev and PC for Keen.

Metal Gear Solid Rising (Zan Katsu)

– That cutting stuff was wacky! Kinda cool how the cutting angle could be chosen and the dismemberment was crazy.

Gears of War 3

– Okay the commentary and token girl were goofy.  We’d rather hear Cliffy B tell us about the game and what’s new.

– The new mutated lambent enemies looked really sweet.   We like how they mutated differently and spawned things.

– “Guys… guys… we added girls!  Isn’t this cool?!” (Quoting Graev here.  We were in tears laughing so hard.)

Fable 3

– Peter Molyneux incoming!  Get your hyperbole filter ready.

– We’d rather they keep the same graphics engine and just expand the game and make it awesome.  That video was neat looking but… nothing really new from Fable 2 other than perhaps a few graphical upgrades.

– The look at Fable 3 was way too short.

Codename: Kingdoms

– Crytek. Mmk.  Looks like an answer to God of War but without anything other than a teaser video showing three dudes in gladiator armaments there’s not much to say.

Halo Reach

– Open your jacket a little more guy.  We can’t see that Bungie logo placement well enough.

– There’s not a lot new here that we haven’t seen in every other Hal… ohh shhh is that playable starfighter battles?!  Okay, if that’s playable we got a winner.

Much more commentary below.  —->

KINECT (logo needs a ton of work…. AKA Project natal)

– Recognizing the person to log in is sweet. The menu to select with your hands and even the voice recognition is exactly what we want in our game room.  I hate finding that remote or using a controller.  Using your hand to fast forward would be awesome… can it be done with more than Zune?  Xbox, play!

**Graev Interjects:  “SHOW US THE GAMESSSS!”**

Kinect Video looks great…. but please… JUST STOP TALKING you campy girls!  The weather being shown and how the camera tracks the person is cool.  That’s exactly what we need for when we want to communicate with family and we’re pretty sold now on the idea of getting two Kinects.

**Graev again: SHOW US GAMES!!!”**

**Graev is getting angsty as the Microsoft conference is now just talking about sports being shown on Xbox: “If I cared about sports I wouldn’t own an Xbox!!”**

At this point the creepy guy in a purple jacket with sunglasses is going on about a bunch of stuff that sounds just like shovelware.  The Xbox is turning into the Wii.

More Kinect stuff…

KITTY!!! We…. must… haves it… (Graev is now soothed)

Kinectimals uses Kinect to give little girls (and 20 something year old guys?) their own pets that interact on the screen.   Getting to adopt an animal and play with it like shown is actually something we think is really cool because we immediately thought “What about a Black and White game like this?!”

Kinect Sports…. Graev called it!  It’s the Wii. Running in place was done like 15 years ago on those pads for Nintendo.  It’s cheezie and unimpressive.  The Wii beat them by like 3 years on everything shown.  A lot of this stuff is neat in its own right because there’s no Wiimote and all done with your actual body, but still a total ripoff.

Kinect Joy Ride is like a mario kart game where you hold your hands up and thrust your hands forward while driving to look like a freak steer.   What if you get an itch?!  Gimmicky as all get out, but neat.

The rest of Kinect (Kinect Adventures) is just a bunch of gimmicky crap like standing on a platform and hitting tokens.  Little kids will eat this junk up but they’re not marketing to us at all.   If we saw this at the same time the Wii showed their stuff (years ago) then we would have ruled Xbox the winner.  But nice looking gimmicks are still gimmicks.  All this Kinect shovelware would have to be bundled together to be anywhere near worth it.

Kinect Fit… not even going to comment.  Can’t help it.  Going to comment.  The casuals are going to eat this up.  Infinitely better than the Wii, we must say.  NEXT!

**Their presentation just got boring really, really fast.**

Dance Central is guitar hero for dance.  Looks like it scans your body and then awards you a score based on how close you were to the position you were supposed to be in.  Xbox live dance offs will be popular.  I know a dozen people who will buy this already… they’re the type that gets groups together and plays guitar hero with people who never play video games.

Kinect has a ton of potential but people are just testing the waters with gimmicky stuff to bring in people who don’t normally games.  Problem is, they’re going to have a really hard time marketing this to hardcore gamers like us.

KINECT launches November 4th.

OH YES…

STAR WARS!! show us the game!  WOOT!  Gameplay incomming!

– Rail shooter. :(  Moving your arms to deflect shots and the motions to use force moves is such a great idea but it loses so much being on rails.  Visuals are stellar and the motion was great but we’re just not impressed because of the rails.

Final Verdict on Microsoft’s Conference: We didn’t get to see Kinect interface with any decent games for the core gamer.  None of the Kinect things shown would be something we would want to purchase.  Bottom line here is that the conference showed nothing but potential with the future of Kinect but failed to show us any new games or anything beyond the sneak peak trailers for the games like Black Ops and Fable that we’ve already seen.

Pulling an Oprah at the end was the best part of the whole when they gave the new shiny black Xbox360 to everyone in the audience…. following by more awkwardness from the awkward guy on stage.

We are very disappointed in what Microsoft brought to E3 in their media briefing.  Hopefully they have a lot more to show later in the week..

  • not great, beaing mostly the same as the wii, but i have to say the advances in technology approaching stuff from sci-fi has me excited about the future

  • The conference was really quite funny, I can’t wait for Sony’s. While I will never be caught dead playing the “Kinect”, I do want to pick up the new XBox 360 model since I haven’t bought one yet.

  • Yeah yeah microsoft…

    Did you freaken see that new Star Wars: The Old Republic Trailer?!!! OMG!

  • @Rindan: My Current 360 is dying an agonizing Death.
    I could sure use a new one :D. And a very large HDD for the same price.. whats not to like. (20gb vs 420 or what was it?)

    Also, seen both EA and MC’s live… seen about 80 to 90% Shooters. What. The. Hell.

    MSG Rising and Bulletstorm are the only games I’d actually play tho :|.