E3 2012: What Microsoft had to say and show
Matt Hawkins The first E3 2012 presser was earlier this afternoon, courtesy of Microsoft. So did they blow everyone away, or bore everyone to death? A mix of both really… and unfortunately, more of the latter.
Their presentation, as expected, was a snoozer. Because the Xbox 720 is still a ways off(which again, is a good thing, in my opinion), MS intends on milking the existing hardware for everything its got. Too bad they brought very little to the table in this regards.
- Things kicked of with another taste of Halo 4. Which over-all looks impressive, again as expected. Even if the new enemies look like that old Lego toy, Bionicle. On the plus side, Cortana now has bigger tits!
- Next was the long-awaited (well, by some I would have to assume) return of Sam Fisher, in Splinter Cell: Blacklist. It actually looks pretty neat! And this coming from a Solid Snake devotee…
- Madden 2013 was shown off, primarily it’s Kinect functionality. They got Joe Montana to demo the game, who clearly isn’t getting checks from Sega anymore. Would have been much better if they got John Madden himself to play the thing. Live, from his nursing home/mansion.
- So the new Fable is now a Kinect game. Looks like the recently released PS Move game Sorcery, but mixed with Dragon Ball Z. That’s not a good thing, by the way…
- Next was hardly any time dedicated towards the GoW prequel, Gears of War: Judgment, and the Forza spin-off, Forza Horizon, which apparently open world racer that celebrates the wild world of street racing. Too bad hardly any time was spent on either game. Instead…
- We had the bulk of MS’s E3 presser, which is where things fell off a cliff. The plan, once again, is to have the 360 be the center of one’s entertainment set-up at home, but apparently just having awesome games and the ability to stream movies isn’t good enough.
The system’s Bling integration is getting some steroids (who cares), there’s a new music service that’s being prepped (aka Bling 3.0, which again is subscription based, so who cares), and some kind of Nike integration (which is where I completely stopped caring and paying attention).
I will say that the Nike portion was about five times longer than the amount of time allotted to the Gears of War: Judgment and Forza Horizon. Which was beyond obnoxious. But on the plus side, both NBA and NHL is coming to the system, alongside the NFL, MLB, and UFC offerings, so sports have at least something to looking forward to.
- The aforementioned SmartGlass made its debut, and thanks to the MS presser being so god-awful boring, it too failed to be anything of note. Mostly because only two game specific examples were given: being able to dictate a play during Madden and accepting a multiplayer invite during Halo.
Otherwise, you can watch a movie on the small screen and pick up where you left off on the big one. Just like Netflix has been doing for a while now. Yawn. Oh, and SmartGlass will be used in tandem with the Kinect to finally allow one to surf the web on the 360, via its own version of Internet Explorer.
The world’s crappiest browser managed to get cheers from the audience, that’s how boring this presentation was. Oy vey.
- Thank God some more games were show, including Ascend: New Gods, which looks like a cross between Skyrim and Shadow of the Colossus…
- The Tomb Raider reboot was shown already not too long ago, I realized, but the following demo must be watched regardless…
- The South Park guys soon hit the stage, and shocker: they were the most entertaining thing of the entire lame duck presentation. Also, the new South Park looks genuinely amazing…
- The following has more info on Dance Central 3 than what MS had for the live audience. Who instead had Usher do a dance number, since he’s in the game. Why they didn’t have him actually play the game is a total mystery…
- Eventually, it was time to wrap the snore fest up, with an extended look at one of this year’s biggest releases, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Which, to a completely novice to the series looks mighty impressive, like myself…
… But the Internet is afire with diehard fans of the franchise going “BORING” and “looks like a new coat of paint on the same old shit; where the f*ck is that new engine”. Kids today!
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