One of the two conferences I’ve watched live has passed. Yes, the Microsoft conference. It seemed alright, but as predicted by others – whether directly or indirectly – it was mostly concerned with Kinect. I only managed to join fifteen minutes late to the party, since I hadn’t refreshed Youtube, which was streaming the conference. Checking on CVG, I saw I had missed Halo 4. So apart from that, here’s my view of the conference, in terms of the games.
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell BlackList was being shown when I finally got on, and I must say, the game did look impressive. Not familiar with the Splinter Cell series, the story of the trailer gripped me, which means the game must be doing good.
Forza Horizon then got shown. I’m familiar with racing games. I like them. Forza is one of the series I have least played, only test playing it occasionally. The trailer for Horizon though, made me want to buy an Xbox 360. It is a great trailer and shows that the game will be great as well. It’s even got a release date.
Then got shown the sports games. FIFA, Madden, and NBA. All with Kinect features. However, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The features were shown off and were perfect in their actions. However, the basic gameplay of all was still the same, though I expect more to be shown off at the respective company conferences.
Tomb Raider. One game that gets a lot of looks, and all for the wrong reasons. Now, however, the gameplay and story are core. The gameplay is that of Uncharted, but with better weapons and extra little bits added in. The story, while I couldn’t really understand it, seemed to be engrossing. The game as a whole was action-packed and quick. Just as a game of this type should be.
The supposedly new games followed. The first, Ascend: New Gods, looked absolutely great, but a gore bath. But still, the gameplay and story looked okay. The next was LocoCycle, and from the short clip shown, all I could think was ‘Tron LightCycle rip-off’. Looked too similar to it. The next – Matter – was confusing, but through that looked like it could be interesting. Set in a sci-fi universe it followed a probe of some kind hunting.
Konami then showed Resident Evil 6 with quite a long video of gameplay. The story is intriguing, and it feels exactly like a Resident Evil game should. The cutscenes that were shown looked absolutely amazing, as did the entire game. This is one to watch in the future for sure.
Then came South Park: The Stick of Truth. As explained by the creators of South Park, they knew what was meant to be what, but they didn’t know where everything was, so they had to map where everything is in the South Park universe. And they explained the story a bit. You move into South Park, and are wanting to be the fifth kid in the group of four. This story is sure to get your attention.
Dance Central 3 was shown off by Usher doing a live performance on stage. Using Kinect, it just looks like a way of milking money, as per usual with games like that. I couldn’t see any new features involved. Maybe sometime soon though.
The last game shown was expected. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Considering how many CoD games there are, it actually looked like it could beat them. New mechanics, a whole new story that seems gripping enough and centring around those new mechanics. The flying section shown in the trailer of gameplay was absolutely fantastic, but I’m guessing it will be hard to get used to.
Other things, just to list and give brief. Connectivity between all Microsoft products with the SmartGlass feature. Bing now recognises voices in 20 different languages. Internet Explorer is coming to Xbox 360 with support for the SmartGlass feature, and a new music store on the 360 will compete – possibly – with iTunes.
That’s the Microsoft Conference, told by me. Next one will be Nintendo’s tomorrow, or if I feel like it, EA’s later on.
Images Taken From:
[E3 2012] Forza Horizon – E3 Trailer | VG247
South Park: The Stick of Truth E3 Official Trailer | South Park Studios
