samutzCom

Another year, another E3. Time to rant.

Halo Reach, Call of Duty Black OPs, Gears of War 3:
Meh, meh, and meh. Neither of these over hyped franchises is the reason I own a 360.

Metal Gear Solid: Rising
The bullet-time slicing is pretty cool, but I hope there’s more to the game than that. Otherwise the hack-n-slash with occasional bullet time is gonna get old fast. But in typical Kojima fashion, the trailer didn’t reveal much detail about the gameplay or the insane story that likely goes along with it.

Fable III
Fable and Fable II has been excellent games that I’ve gone back and played again several times. One of my gripes about Fable II was that your choices didn’t seem to affect the main story much, unlike the first Fable. I hope we’ll see that improved in the new game. The trailer puts emphasis in the story of the 2 brothers, the one who inherited the throne, and the one who the player will be controlling to lead the revolution. But it raises a question to me: did they remove the ability to play as a girl? In games wiith a good/evil system, I typically play through with a good guy first, then an evil bitch second, just to see how the games plays in contrast.

Codename: Kingdoms
“Who can stand? Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Who can stand?” Shut up trailer guy. Geez.
Not enough info yet to go on for this one. The trailer was just a pre-rendered CGI of 3 gladiators covered in blood and soot and such.

Kinect
Gimmicky, but still cool. After all, it’s living room motion capture without the suit covered in a golf balls.
Controlling the 360 without the controller is nice, but it’s still a gimmicky thing. Most of the time that I use the 360, it’s going to be to play a game that uses a controller, so most of the time I’ll already have the controller in my hand after I’ve pressed the home button to turn it on. I have a separate htpc running XBMC to do my movies, music, and retro games. And even with the best internet connection available here (aside from buying your own expensive T1 or fiber line), trying to stream video with Hulu, Netflix, Zune Marketplace, etc is painful. Even if I could do it, I’d probably just use the htpc anyway. So controlling media on the 360 with hand gestures has no appeal to me. The video streaming video problem here also applies to Video Kinect, Kinect’s video chat feature. More on Kinect in the various games that will use it below.

XBox Live on Windows Mobile 7 Phones
Not enough to make me want to buy a Windows phone.

ESPN on Xbox Live
To quote @TychoBrahe:
“Hey! Microsoft! I don’t give a fuck about sports! I play videogames! That’s why I bought your console!”
http://twitter.com/TychoBrahe/status/16166929831

Kinectimals
It was cute and kinda funny until the little girl demoing it pretended that the cat had actually jumped on her and was pushing her back.

Kinect Sports and Kinect Adventures
Wii Sports, but with Kinect, which might not be a bad thing. One of the things that Kinect has over the Wii and PS3′s Move is that it actually makes you use your whole body. With the Wii so far, you could get away with sitting on the couch and moving your arms around a bit and keeping your feet on the balance board. Kinect will know if you’re sitting or standing, and also doesn’t restrict you to a small rectangle on the ground.

Kinect Joyride
Um.. how do you brake? Seriously, it looks like your car accelerates on it’s own and you only control steering and the occasional boost. What I found funny thought was the girl demoing it would stick her ass out towards the audience every time she needed to drift around a corner.

Your Shape: Fitness Evolved
Maybe it’s because I’m getting fat in my gut and trying to work it off, but this actually looks really cool and much better than Wii Fit. I like how it has both the slow-paced yoga-type stuff, but also the faster-pace combat-ish looking stuff.

Dance Central
Looks like a lot of fun. But like DDR, I wouldn’t be caught dead playing that in front of other people.

Star Wars for Kinect
Looks like an on rails slasher, similar to the Swordplay Showdown mode in Wii Sports Resort, but with the added functionality of force powers. I can’t see them making a full retail game out of this though.

Forza Motorsport Something-or-other
They spent an awful long time showing off the car with Kinect, but didn’t say anything about the racing.
I’ve still got music from the Dance Central demo stuck in my head.

Xbox 360 Slim
Quieter, provides power for Kinect, built-in N wifi and already out today. Cool… but I already own a 360. $300 isn’t worth it for the extra features. Now if I could trade in my existing 360 for a sizable discount off the new one, then I’d consider it.