Home Gaming E3 2011 Press conference round-up : Microsoft

E3 2011 Press conference round-up : Microsoft

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We’re then shown Crytek’s new Xbox 360 exclusive; once codenamed Kingdoms and now called Ryse. It all looks rather intriguing, until the trailer reveals that it’s just a very pretty wagglefest Kinect game. Disappointing.Slightly less disappointing is 343 Industry’s flashy remake of the original Halo: Combat evolved in an HD anniversary edition. It’s something fans have wanted for ages, so it’s nice that they’ll be getting it.

Even though Turn 10’s Forza 4 suffers the same needless Kinect integration, in the form of voice commands and head-tracking, it does look very pretty indeed; dare I say better looking than GT5 and right up the car porn aficionado’s alley. What nobody really asked for is a watering down of the Fable franchise, and the new Fable : The Journey, an on-rails action adventure from Lionhead was terribly disappointing. With Molyneux being such a visionary, it’s doubly disappointing seeing his company use Kinect in the most obvious way. Fable as a rail-shooter? Really?

A nice surprise announcement was that indie-darling and massive time-waster Minecraft would be headed to the 360, with Kinect support. You wouldn’t believe it, but that’s probably the most exciting news from Microsoft’s press conference.

They then showed Kinect Star Wars, which looks like it’s become even more lame since last year’s out-of-sync canned demonstration of the game. Also an on-rails experience, Star Wars Kinect just comes off as an embarrassing waste of what should be a fantastic licence. It’s not often I’m compelled to punch somebody in the face, but that’s what I want to do to just about everybody involved in this travesty.

Other kinect games shown around the same portion of the conference were two rather charming and endearing Kinect games for kids. The first, Disneyland Adventures, recreates the whole of Disneyland, and brings select experiences of the Magic Kingdom to life. Hardcore gamers will hate on it, but it looks great for the youngfolk.

Tim Schafer’s Sesame Street : Once upon a monster is another Kinect-based assemblage of mini-games aimed at children, that’s so ridiculously charming that it’ll cause even some core hearts to melt. It did mine, but I’m a family man – and i can see my little ones having a blast playing it. The last Kinect games shown were Kinect Sports 2 (which seems a terrible waste of Rare’s talents) and Dance Central 2, which now finally allows for proper multiplayer with 2 simultaneously tracked players.

The last Kinect announcement was for Kinect Labs, which brings all of the cool Kinect hacks we’ve seen on PC to the Xbox 360. It also brings the proper object scanning we were promised Kinect would have, allowing you to import your own things in to games..eventually.

…and that was that from Microsoft…oh, except for a sneaky Halo 4 announcement right at the end. In short, it was a terribly disappointing show, with just a handful of highlights – leaving most attendees underwhelmed.

Last Updated: June 7, 2011

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