E3 '09: Microsoft is pregnant

I'm very lazy right now, what with school approaching in just a matter of hours, so instead of giving the same style of edited, more gramatically correct news round-up, I'll just copy and paste my impressions over from when I was watching the press conference. Don't worry, the new games featured are mostly written in bold or italics, and there will even be pictures!

With a (not as) new (as you'd think) way to control your games (Project Natal), new MGS and Halo games, and loads of game demoes, Microsoft is gonna have a field day/year.

--------------------------------------------------

Starts with CG Beatles, very Gorillaz.

LOL, love the video and accompanying music. (OH, OPENING CINEMATIC!)

Harmonix team demoes Beatles. NICE INSTRUMENTS and very cool harmonizing. "Eleanor Rigby" is always welcome. IMO, Harmonix will make a better artist-centric game than Neversoft EVER will.

Some guy reveals 10 songs from the game's setlist along with the game's first (great) trailer:

I Saw Her Standing There

I Want To Hold Your Hand

I Feel Fine

Day Tripper

Taxman

I Am The Walrus

Back In The U.S.S.R.

Octopus's Garden

Here Comes The Sun

Get Back

There will also be DLC (Abbey Road album) and (damn it) XBox Live will have an exclusive song after launch ("All You Need Is Love"). Proceeds go to "Doctors w/o Borders"

Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison come on stage. They look like... mothers. LOL.

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr go on stage. Holy crap. They're fooling around. "I love the game. The game is good. The graphics are very good. We were great." etc. They're promoting the game. End of story.

John Shappert (SP?!) goes on stage to thank the audience, and recap last year's announcement of the NXE. "Today we're gonna deliver even more. No charts and graphs, no sales figures. 10 games premiered for the world. Revolutionary new experiences for everyone"

Tony Hawk RIDE

Tony Hawk goes on stage, and unveils the skateboard controller for the game. Looks like a hoverboard in Back To The Future. I wonder how awkward it will handle.

So you'll have to slide the board on the floor... and actually have to grab it. Uh-oh, fat lazy bastards will have difficulty. I wonder if I even get the appeal of it.

Yeah, still skeptical.

Modern Warfare 2

Call of Duty name dropped, but you probably already knew that.

It looks really good- like a real movie. Lotsa explosions. Just a really good gameplay trailer.

Now 2 guys demo a climbing aspect. Intense?

Now shooting mode. Nice graphics, short draw distance much? I guess it's because of the snowstorm.

There are enemies... environments are pretty destructible. A helicopter exploded through demoer's own firepower. Nice.

Driving a snowmobile, holy crap. I can't wait to play this.

Demo ends.

MS once again gets 2 map packs for it before PS3.

Final Fantasy 13

OK, Final Fantasy 13. Two guys and one girl (interpreter) come on stage.

A gameplay video of FF13 running on Xbox starts, and it looks like the bomb. ATB returns to the foray, it seems, but there are 4 of them running at the same time, I think? So that you can chain together attacks?

It seems that long summons are back... Will get tiring like in FF8.

Spring 2010 is all they can get to a release date. About time?

Epic Games' Shadow Complex

Donald Mustard and Cliff Blezinski, the latter wearing a Bill Gates mugshot T-shirt. Donald's mic is broken. Did Cliff deliberately break it so the attention will be on him?

Shadow Complex is an online-centric game for the Xbox that is kinda reminiscent to the 2D side-scrollers of old. That's what the two are demoing.

Joy Ride

Xbox Live Arcade game that looks lame. Mario Kart is probably more fun. Basically, it's just using your Xbox avatar to drive around and race. But it's free, at least, I think. The tracks, cars, etc. are not.

Trailers galore

Now what's this trailer? I didn't catch its name.

Oh wait...

Crackdown 2.

"I ain't waiting for salvation. As long as we got guns, we gonna fight." I think this is a trailer for another game.

Left 4 Dead 2. Yay.

And what the hell?

Ubisoft logo appears... Sam Fisher? Splinter Cell: Conviction. Wow, that's a nice trailer. Sam's a double agent now on a personal mission, huh?

Two men from Ubisoft come on the stage, and play a demo. I have high hopes for it.

THAT INTERROGATION TECHNIQUE WAS COOL. The game's story looks like it will be told in a really cool way.

Holy crap, I freaking LOVE it. So many ways to play, so many possible scenarios. Very impressive.

Forza 3

"Definitive racing game of this generation" is how a lot of people describe it.

It does look pretty sick, and the replica of the car being displayed on screen and the one behind the presenter is absolutely uncanny.

"Best looking, biggest racing game of this generation" Pretty bold claims being thrown around. Maybe this is before Gran Turismo 5 hits.

Now a video about Forza 3 is being shown, and it's about car design and Xbox Live.

They're making a pretty big deal about community features and car design and pretty much driving around.

Sony better counter this game LOL.

Halo: ODST

A Bungie guy is demoing Halo: ODST. Not sure if I'm impressed yet.

Looks like the character is in a pod of sorts. I'm not sure.

Oh, the pod is falling... it crashed?

"You are a rookie separated from his team. You have to stay alert of unexpected elements."

Still not very impressed. It just looks like Halo.

Massive explosions... pretty good. 9/22/09 is the release date.

But there's a "top-secret-project". A trailer rolls, and...

the reveal, Halo: Reach. Oh God, another Halo which falls 2010. When you buy ODST, you'll get to play the Reach beta.

Sam Lake takes the stage, whoever he is. He (re)introduces Alan Wake. Interesting, I thought it was vaporware.

A live demo appears on screen... I guess it does look like RE4 for the 360. Someone or something is using telekinesis or something. What the hell, a... flashlight gun? Oh my, it's getting pretty intense over there.

What is with all this constant slow-motion crap going on? It's annoying. Uh-oh, a tractor is threatening our hero to go down the hill... Cliffhanger.

Now the focus shifts to Xbox Live and how it will improve. Last.fm, Facebook and Twitter are getting incorporated to the NXE dashboard, as well as improvements to Netflix sorting. Sky Cable also lets UK Xbox players watch live TV for no additional charge.

Also, Microsoft is rebranding its video service to Zune as well as expand the supported countries. There will be instant playing in HD as well as the ability to watch movies and TV (live or otherwise) together with Xbox Live friends.

IMO the Twitter interface is pretty darn slick, but the lady demoer was a bit of a "dancer" if you know what I mean. Kind of annoying.

Sernio VP for Xbox Don Mattrick goes to the stage and says one crucial piece of the puzzle is missing. Hideo Kojima then goes behind him and the famous discovery sound in Metal Gear Solid plays. Yep, there'll be a Metal Gear Solid game for the 360. And it's not MGS4.

Metal Gear Solid: Rising is the name of the game, and it's about the character Raiden. "It's a completely new Metal Gear experience," says Kojima. I wonder if Sony's gonna get the man to their stage tomorrow?

Project Natal

"People ask me, can you add a motion controller?" Uh-oh, Microsoft's gonna reveal some kind of motion controller. "We're making you the controller," he says. Oh crap this is gonna be really bad.

Theoretically cool, and could've sold me in 2006, but if co-op meant having to be the pit stop guy, I wouldn't really like it.

Basically, this Project Natal is a full body camera that also features facial and vocal recognition. No wands, no nunchuks, just a huge gimmick that's also vaporware for now. Love or hate motion control, Microsoft's ambitious project is undeniably pretty cool. But Mattrick's pretty damn awkward- clapping at his own speech. Dumping research money into this is only possible with Microsoft.

Now Steven Spielberg is called to the stage to, uhhh, endorse Project Natal? Hmm, fine. But if there's no live demo, it's gonna be vaporware.

Oh wait, speaking of live demoes... Kudo Tsunoda gets called on stage. Come on, come on... demo it already...

Ahh there it is. That's pretty nice. The camera recognizes Kudo instantly but the proposed 1:1 movement is kinda awkward on screen, but it's just a prototype. He swipes through the Dashboard, which is pretty cool but ultimately kinda slow.

Now there's a game as well as a new demoer. She's blocking balls using her body and is it just me or is the movement a bit laggy in reaction? Eh, again, it's just a prototype.

The demoer looks kinda stupid now. Stop doing that, girl.

Kudo demoes a new game called Paint Party for Project Natal. The goal is to paint by saying the color you want and dumping the paint by motioning dumpage or swiping to make finer strokes. Saying "pose" will let the game take a picture of your pose.

This kinda renders MotionPlus pretty moot, quite obviously. Both make people look stupider nonetheless.

Peter Molyneux of Lionhead Studios gets called to the stage, and I really don't like how he's such a blabbermouth. Still, I guess there's gonna be a really huge announcement since considering his work is pretty much expected. Now he's introducing something new... for Project Natal. A sort of digital "friend" that reacts to the English language and replies with something. Pretty damn ambitious, but now it makes me wonder what would happen if the person playing was a pedophile, LOL. No, erase image! The horror!

But seriously, it's pretty damn amazing. You can even give him stuff!

Still, cameras like this have already made experimental stints. EyeToy could suffice. This one is a bit more of an upgrade instead of a revolution. That was the Wii

Hmm, I wonder what would happen to the focus groups if they got a hold of FPS makers or Rockstar games making games for this device? Sucks for them, I guess.

In hindsight, the camera was not as much of an eye and jaw-opener as the Wii was to me in 2006, but there's still some pretty nice technology at work.