So E3 2012 kicks off with the Microsoft conference, but what was the big announcement, what it wasn’t was any whiff of a new console, so before you read on don’t get too excited!
So they kicked off with what I guess is the biggest game exclusive for 360 2012 Halo 4, with a 7 minute mixture of live action and gameplay footage, which showed off some new enemy types and weapons that you will be able to use in the game.
Splinter Cell – Blacklist, this looks very good, improved mark and execute and some maybe interesting Kinect functionality.
They then talked some Kinect functionality for Fifa 13 yawn!
Then Fable The Journey, yawn again and then Forza Horizon which did look kind of interesting, with the use of different environments in a Cannonball Run style cross America race, coming out October 23rd 2012.
Next up Gears Of War – Judgement, not a lot to tell as there was not a lot shown, but looks to be more of the same.
There was then better Bing integration, with improved voice recognition and then came the Wii U kick in the balls, Xbox Smart Glass, which essentially creates what Nintendo are touting, except you can use any mobile device as opposed to one controller, also shown was how it could integrate with Halo 4.
This was for me probably the highlight of the show; An extended gameplay demo of Tomb Raider and it is looking good in a brutal kind of way!
Then two new IPs Ascend New Gods, which if I’m being honest, looks like a poor mans God Of War with ropey graphics and animation.
Also Matter from Gore Verbinski, which seems to have the Portal spheres in it, but we really found out very little else.
Next up Resident Evil 6, which has definitely abandoned it’s survival horror routes and is now firmly in the action adventure camp, you can even shoot and move at the same time!
The rounded out the show with a really bad Kinect Angry Birds rip off called Wreckateer, South Park – The Stick of Truth, Dance Central 3 with Usher and what else but Call Of Duty Black Ops 2, which looked chock full of action, enjoy!
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Great summery Stu. Tombraider does look ace but the Last of us has to be the most exciting doesn’t it? Let’s see what tomorrow brings. I wouldn’t mind a bit of that Splinter Cell either.
Yum. Tomb Raider does look exciting and Halo 4 seems to have lots of new meat on the bones. Going to be a busy autumn.
I may buy a new game.
I don’t think you’re doing Ascend New Gods justice – it’s not just a poor man’s God of War, it’s a poor man’s Shadow of the Colossus too!
Smart glass looks promising if it gets built into games, and I think it’s got a good chance if it truly is fully compatible with iOS and Android. Credit to MS for not restricting it to Windows Phone or Windows 8 tablets. I suspect it will become a much more popular way to control Xbox media than Kinect.
As for all the media partnerships, really who cares? Complete waste of time. As long as Xbox continues to not play Blu-Rays it will continue to live in the spare room with the PS3 “owning” my living room. Which, incidentally, is still not big enough to accommodate Kinect. Like many other homes on this side of the Atlantic.
On the gaming front, Tomb Raider was far and away the best one shown, but even that pales compared to Beyond and The Last of Us (at the Sony conference), Assassins Creed 3 (Ubisoft and Sony) and what looks like being the game of the show – Watch Dogs (Ubisoft).
Overall, a very disappointing conference for MS. It seems that Chad Warden was right all along – Xbox ain’t got games!
Of course, it could be that MS’s key developers are all working on games for another system…
Oh my god I want Gears of War
Glad to see Baird is still in the game and since he looks younger I bet that its a prequel
Tomb Raider.