E3: Microsoft Press Conference Instant Reaction

It’s E3 time! Microsoft had the task of kicking things off for us this year so we start with the Big M. Below are my instant reactions as I watched the press conference unfold:

Halo 4

• Halo 4 will kick off the show. After ending the show with it last year, MS obviously doesn’t want to make us wait any longer than necessary. But what will end the show? My money’s on a sequel to Blinx.
• Live action trailer for Halo 4. Pretty bad-ass. Pretty cheesy. A ship designed to discover new worlds. Looks like something went wrong. Oh, they are crashing on the Chief’s planet. Interesting.
• Gameplay! Looks like Halo. The planet is a vibrant green, lots of foliage. Looks cool. Grunts. Covenant. An Elite just disintergrated. Weird. New enemies are attacking. Some new robot thing that reminds me of General Grievous popped out. Cortana says it is Forerunner design.
• Some cool ass new weapon is tearing these things up. Daddy like.
• Infrared visor! Nice! Metroid Prime meets Halo.
• Clips of lots of stuff, like Warthogs, Cortana going batshit and a tagline: An Ancient Evil Awakens.

• Don Mattrick comes out, welcoming us. It’s his 17^th E3. Damn.
• Today is all about Xbox 360. Sorry, Eddy. No 720.
• “Greatest line up of games ever.” Hyperbole radar going crazy.
• Taking Xbox beyond consoles, to your phone, TV and tablets. Expected this is. And unfortunate.

Splinter Cell: Blacklist

• New trailer starting. Middle-Eastern dudes. Whoa! Homeboy is killing everyone. Brutally. S that Sam Fisher? Yep. Splinter Cell: Blacklist.
• Sam has some fun toys. Looks like Detective Vision he borrowed from Batman. And slo-mo from Max Payne. I am trolling here, this looks cool.
• Now he is climbing up a rock wall. Nice.
• Oh, he used Kinect to distract the guards. Uh oh. “Honey, dinner’s ready!” And then you get killed.
• Looks like stealth can be done away with and you can kick some ass in a cover based shooter type combat system. Looks fun. Most stealth games hamper your combat. This doesn’t seem to.
• Pretty cool trailer. Never played a Splinter Cell game before, but this one has my attention. Co-op. Coming Spring 2013.

FIFA 13 and Madden 13

• Andrew Wilson, head of EA Sports is out now. Kinect will make Madden and FIFA.
• FIFA 13 is up first. Gameplay. You can substitute, change play and give commands to AI teammates using Kinect voice commands. You can even talk crap to the ref and he will respond. That’s pretty cool. Coming this fall.
• Madden 13’s turn. Biggest investment in gameplay in franchise history. Bringing out Joe Montana! I loved his Sportstalk Football on the Genesis. Seems appropriate to bring him out. You can change the direction a play is going to go and hike the ball using your voice. Hot route and audibles can be called using voice. I see a lot of chances for trolling if I am sitting next to a friend on the couch.

Fable: The Journey

• New trailer…not sure what this is. Something about magic saving or destroying us. Kinect game. Guy waving his arms around, casting spell. Oh, it’s Fable: The Journey. Guy did a fireball motion and it SHOT A FIREBALL.

Gears of War: Judgement

• Phil Spencer here now. Biggest year for games on Xbox. Hyperbole meter is going crazy. Crowd cheers when he mentions 343 Studios. Not sure I understand game journos.
• World premiere of Gears of War prequel: COGs running from Locust. It’s Baird. Expect lots of crude humor. No gameplay. Coming out in 2013. Didn’t do much to get me excited.

Forza Horizon

• Forza time! WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB. Dubstepping it up. Looks like a racing game. Pretty impressive graphics, as always. Forza Horizon coming October 23^rd.

Video Content

• Head of Marketing, Yusef Mehdi in the house. This is the non-game portion I bet.
• Now you can search by Genre. Say, “Bing, Action” and it brings up Action movies. Say the title and it starts the movie. It can search though Netflix, Hulu Plus and the rest.
• Showing the game thing in Spanish. Bueno.
• Announcing 35 new providers such as Nickelodeon, Paramount movies, Machinma and Univision.

Sports Content

• Moving on to sports. NBA coming to Xbox. 2400 live games. NHL Gamecenter coming, too. Watch ESPN on 360, bringing tons of ESPN content. Live, in HD.
• Sizzle reel for the sports stuff. Kinect voice commands all over this. Game recaps, highlights, Monday Night Football, split screen? Wow. That’s cool.

Xbox Music

• Music time. Xbox Music is a library of over 30 million songs. Coming to Xbox, tablets, PCs and phones. Sizzle reel. Songs anywhere you want, share, personalize playlists and more. Going all out.

Nike Plus Kinect Training

• Future of fitness on Kinect: Nike working with MS on Kinect fitness game. Imagine how awesome LeBron would be if he trained using Kinect! Using a metric system to compare yourself to other atheletes around the world. Nike Plus Kinect Training. Honestly, I am trying not to fall asleep here. Your phone will remind you when you need to workout. No, thanks. Siri loves me the way I am. It’s not over yet. This is neat and all, but people who are really serious about fitness probably won’t want this. Besides, why play this when you can be yelling at refs in FIFA 13?

Xbox SmartGlass

• Marc Whitten, head of Xbox Live is talking now. Talking about smart phones and how they don’t work together with your other devices. Xbox SmartGlass will make movies more immersive. Um…if I am stopping to check my phone, that’s not going to be the case.
• You can send the movie from your tablet to your TV. Then your tablet will give you info about the movie you were watching. Kind of neat.
• Phone and tablet can follow what you are watching and give tibits, such as where a scene in Game of Thrones is taking place. I just pay attention to the show, but whatevs.
• You can use your tablet to create plays in Madden. That reverse flea flicker you always dreamed of at your fingertips!
• Halo 4 again. You find a waypoint in the game and your tablet or phone can give you info on. Other games call this a Codex. Also alerts you when other people want to play. It also allows you to control your dashboard using your phone. Thought Kinect made that obsolete. Getting confused.
• Oh, now you can use your phone to control Internet Explorer on the 360. Call me when you get Firefox.
• HAHA, he said “Internet Explorer” and the feed went black. It’s back now, but that is clearly a sign.
• Remember, games?
• Yeah, me neither.

Tomb Raider

• Crystal Dynamics dudes are out here now. More Lara Croft torture pron?
• Yup: looks more like Tomb Raider now. Using a bow to steath kill some dudes. Lara Hood: Princess of Grunts,
• Jumping, ziplining. Looks great. Reminds me of Uncharted, though…#troll
• She is relying heavily on that bow. These guys have machine guys and she is picking them apart with a bow. Combat looks smooth, though. First Tomb Raider I am interested in.
• Looks like Lara will be put in few dire situations, some that would make Drake himself poop in his pants.
• The grunts are strong with this one.
• DLC will be available on 360 first. Crowd goes wild. As always. Not.
• New game announcement, mabbe? 3 new world premieres.

Xbox Live Games

• First up: Ascend: New Gods. From creators of Toy Soldiers. Metal music. Fantasy world. Lots of blood. Don’t know what to make of that.
• Next up: Tron cycle game? No, Lococycle. I sense a lawsuit. That was Tron. I am sure of it.
• Third game looks like a puzzle game. Reminds me of Portal’s spheres. Called Matter. Out in 2013. Kinect game.

Resident Evil 6

• Capcom guys are out now. Resident Evil 6! OMGGGGGGG. It’s Leon. He looks hurt. Poor thing. His hair is so dreamy.
• He is out in the street, zombies everywhere. He’s rolling around, escaping. Looks awesome. Kicking some zombie ass! He is solo. Thought it was all co-op? Where is his friend?
• Wow, he just naded everything.
• A daring escape to a chopper. I can’t wait to buy this.
• There’s a lot going on, but I am too spellbound to type it. Watch the trailer.

Wreckateer

• Alex Ruiz from Xbox Live Team is here. She has tats.
• Wreckateer is a new Kinect XBLA game. The guys in the game are talking to her. She launched a catapult and it knocked down a tire. It’s Angry Birds in 3D in a fantasy setting.

South Park

• South Park RPG now. Cartman voiceover talking about how they were betrayed. Jew joke. This is a South Park game for sure. It does look pretty cool, even if I stopped watching South Park in high school. You can create your own character, which is neat. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are out now.
• They are trolling MS’s connectivity stuff. Priceless.
• Talking about how they had to map out the town for the game. They want to make it feel like an episode of South Park.

Dance Central 3

• Harmonix trailer: Looks like a Disco game. No, it’s Dance Central 3.
• Usher came out and is perfoming. That guy can dance, no joke. But he did bring us Bieber, so DAMN YOU!
• That went on forever. Way to play to your core audience, MS.
• Don Mattrick back again. Wrapping up the presser. Thank God. I need a drink.
• Xbox wants to own your life from morning to night. They might even enslave us to have the time in-between.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

• Black Ops 2 to close the conference. Downtown, L.A. In the future is where the trailer starts. Air Force One shot down by drones. Skynet is attacking! Where’s John Conner?
• Vice President is a female. All I can think of is HBO’s “Veep”.
• Choppers crashing on the road, skyscrapers collapsing, dogs and cats living together…MASS HYSTERIA!
• Hero is operating a Stinger missile turret launcher. Shooting down drones. Because MS is the king of turret segments at E3.
• You can choose to snipe enemies or rappel down to the ground. Choices through gameplay! Wow, how innovative. RPGs, pay attention.
• Sniping fools using a thermo scope that can see through walls like the Auger from Resistance.
• Jumping to a different part of the game now. It’s Call of Duty, that’s for certain. Lots of pointing and shooting. He keeps tapping something on his wrist, not sure what it is doing. Maybe calling out drones to attack enemies, I think.
• This is more future-y than Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, though.
• Looks like Mason is flying a jet. Ace Combat, your time is up, too, Activision is coming for you.
• It’s an escort mission! Canceling my pre-order.
• They are not going for a quieter, more personal game, that much is obvious. This is more full of explosions than Modern Warfare. Shame. I liked the spy type stuff in Black Ops. This is more like Obvious Ops.
• That’s the end of the demo…and the end of the show. I saw some neat things, but wasn’t blown away by anything, really. A lot to like, little to love, perhaps. Whats your take on it? Hit the comments below!