PPR's E3 2010 impressions: Microsoft

 
So with E3 finishing up & leaving us behind in it's bag of mixed feelings but none of the less, shedded some light on the games & consoles that we were in anticipation of while being surprised by some announcements & being disappointed with the complete lack of coverage on games some of us have yet to hear anything on (Andrew has been dying to ear anything from Valve on Half-Life 3). Press Pause Radio has been on the down low with us, mostly myself being so busy & tied down with work we weren't able necessarily to follow second by second coverage of all the E3 highlights, however we have now reached the end of E3 & I will be  
posting my impressions of the expo along with Toast himself. I will go ahead & start out with Highlights along with a list of ten games with no specific order in terms priority over the other in excitement or quality hahahaha because they were all pretty good so let me go ahead & start off with my impressions on the conferences, & I will start off with Microsoft.

 
What can I say? Personally, I felt that the entire conference itself was fairly mediocre at best. The age of First-person shooters is still prevalent among us as we were treated to all the Microsoft's shameless boasting of exclusive DLC regarding multiplayer maps & modes that just immediately instilled the feeling of arbitrary nonsense that was simply used to fill in some show time on the show as again I was amazed from the get go that run time for the show after I caught it on GameTrailers was just a little over 29 minutes. though the presentation of the Gameplay showcasing Call of Duty Black Ops did not show too much out of the ordinary until the excellent Helicopter dog-fight combat that followed in the end, I will say that my lack of or otherwise neglect of interest on Call of Duty did slightly change, even though Infinity Ward is out of the picture, I think Activision struck gold with the new development team behind Black Ops as far as my initial impression. Why is that I state this? it was honestly the attract trailer that played at the start of the presentation, some how I was just engorged on this sensation of accessibility that the trailer suggested for the game. I honestly think that the FPS genre has just become some watered down Frat-boy fuck head game that has been recycled over a dozen times & it must do a lot for me in terms of some kind of brilliant gameplay mechanic or innovative component to warrant the slightest bit of interest in any of the games that modern publishers currently saturate the market, I am sadly going to have to give some sort of kudos to Activision...very little though, & I am not completely sold either, I just now show interest towards the final product. The next Key point within the conference would be appearance of Hideo Kojima & growing light on Metal Gear Rising, which showed off some stunning gameplay elements revolving around action & using Raiden swords to perform some gruesome & satisfyingly accurate cuts that sever limbs into even small limbs that would instill images of Iron chef but with people & there was again some bullet time effects used during the slicing of Raiden's sword...again I am excited for this game but I do eel that the Metal Gear Franchise is done. Especially to the point to where even though this game is a self proclaimed spin-off that derives mere plot & narrative or references to Metal Gear, this game was not Metal Gear...in the slightest, which again only shows just how fucking played out this game is now become to the point where Kojima is simply using the name to appease who he may feel may be his faithfully blind & ignorant fanbase by name & name only (honestly I would say universe too but after Metal Gear Solid 2, I think the guy honestly just makes it up as he goes & then pulls out this magic continuity, which still doesn't fully make sense within the MGS4...) so I am excited & will purchase on day one, but at the same time I also feel ashamed that I am contributing to the gluttonous monster that MGS has become when we have already had countless stale spin-off that I can enjoy because of my dwindling but faithful loyalty to the franchise & on that note with a minor segway, I again found it baffling that neither Kojima Productions or Konami presented so little mention to Castlevania: Lords of Shadow which was announced last year at E3 2009 along with Metal Gear Rising & Peace Walker. Castlevania:LOS was even forecasted with a 2010 release & we have a game that looked so promising now look affirm fears so I don't know exactly, I also don't feel that the majority of focus shifting over to Castlevania: Harmony of Despair really helped it any. Back to Microsoft, we then had  
Cliffy B. from Epic make an appearance on the stage to announce the status of Gears of War 3 which was such a welcomed sight I wanted applaud, mostly due to the fact that other then Kojima's appearance on the stage, the attitude & stage performance of everyone representing Microsoft or Activision was so uninspiring & stale, that  could relate it to the image of finding an obtuse shaped paper clip firmly buried in crusted dog turd.Cliffy B. was showing off the 4 player cooperative play & the new Lambent Locust in action which was definitely much faster paced than I had originally anticipated with the sequel but at the same time gave me the sense that the very thing that made Gears of War so amazing & distinctive in the first place is slowly taking a back seat of how the combat flow works & that the environmental tactic of cover & fire, the game other than a few meat shield moment, felt very run-&-gunny...that's not why I play or enjoy Gears of War at all, so other than some new apprehension thrown in the mix, another release I am yet again pretty fucking stoked on.

This is where I felt the conference started nose diving into disappointment. Project Natal was something that I was amazed with even as Paco & I first did our E3 episode during the early Press Pause Radio episodes & one of the key things that we couldn't just shake our excitement for Project Natal, a year later & we now have an official name & release for it, it's name is Kinect, which even though I did find strange, the name didn't really bother me, the announcement of Nov. 4 also made me feel great, seeing it in action & seeing what Microsoft & Rare have been doing with it...unacceptable. Kinect is supposed to be Microsoft's outlet to explore the realm of Motion control gameplay & revolutionize what some consider to be a fad in the video game landscape, Microsoft takes this opportunity & immediately shits in my brain & heart with conventions in the motion controlled gamely that we have already experienced as it has been saturated on the Wii since 2006..FOUR FUCKING YEARS AGO! with games showcased like Wii Kinect Sports, some trite Mini game collection with Kinect Adventures & Kinectimals...an interactive virtual pet simulator that as been done several times & poorly on the Wii, which I know that Sony is doing the same thing with eyepet still this is exactly what burns me, when Sony & Microsoft made these bold statements they were going to revolutionize the motion control scheme interface & innovate it beyond all of the Wii'slimitations...yet they stick with profitable conventions that has already been done...God dammit. The Kinect interface compatibility with the Xbox 360 dashboard was nice & though it may have come off as being much too convient to where controllers have been removed from the equation along with voice-control, I can see that being innovated into something awesome if developers can get their head out of their asses. The ESPN channel was hardly anything to be impressed with, I know I'm not the biggest sports guy but there was nothing so immediately substantial that it needed to be paraded like it was this amazing new life changing feature for that of a modern gamer so that's all I'm left with at state on that point. the New slim model of the Xbox 360 is more then a welcome change & I hope eliminate a majority of the hardware failure rate that's plagued the 360 even in this most current generation & it's funny as I already had a feeling that this was going to occur that this was the end all be all close to Microsoft Conference, again nothing really surprising or heart pumping excited me & the fact that the slims were also given away to the physical attendees as well only made me feel like Microsoft was trying to make up the lack luster effort in this Year's E3 showing, so here's hoping that something motivates me to reconsider my new apprehension on Kinect & something else along the lines of Third party exclusives that'll renew some of my lost faith, ahahahha who knows? maybe Microsoft will finally announce their portable entry into the current generation as the X-Brick! 
 
Hahahahaha anyway, I'll be posting my E3 Nintendo conference impression tomorrow night along with news with the newest Press Pause Radio episode & what not, catch you later on tomorrow guys~GBAXE