My favorite time of year - Part 1

Even though E3 has drastically changed the past couple years, E3 has always been my favorite time of year for video game coverage, news and announcements. Even though Gamespot dropped the ball a bit earlier today (the site basically shut down for a half hour or so during the press conference) Microsoft held their press conference this morning at 10:30 AM (12:30 PM in my time zone). Here are some of the highlights and my reactions:

Fallout 3 - They showed part of a new trailer and live gameplay footage. (The remaining part of the trailer premiered online on Xbox Live) The game looks F-ing amazing! It sounds like you can go basically ANYWHERE just like Oblivion. I like the option of switching between 1st person or 3rd person views and you can also play the game in real time or the VATS mode which lets you target different body parts and each part has a higher rate of success. Seems kinda like you can play in real time or turn based? There's a weapon called the "fatman launcher" and its basically a mini-nuke. Holy crap that is sweet. They will also be doing a lot of downloadable content just like Oblivion had. Nice. I can't wait to play this game. This has shot up to one of my most anticipated games of the year.

Resident Evil 5 - Another live gameplay demo which also debuted 2 player online co-op! They showed a lot of "zombie" killing action but seemed to run out of time at the end? The zombies didn't really act too zombie like, so I wonder what the story of the game is. They mentioned something about chemical (biohazard) terrorism. I guess the big annoncement here is the online co-op. Nothing in the game itself was too exciting (they didn't even get to fight the big dude with the chainsaw at the end of the demo!) Oh well. I am really excited about co-op though. I hope some of my friends pick up this game so we can play together:D The release date is March 13, 2009 (Friday the 13th!).

Fable 2 - Debuted a new trailer that showed a bird flying around the town until it takes a dump on some kid's head (I'm not kidding) and that kid is your character at the beginning of the game. I haven't been following too much about this game, mainly because I didn't have any interest in the first game and I've heard from numerous people that Peter Molyneux (spelling) makes a lot of promises about his games that he can't keep. I've tried not to get caught up in all the hype. However, what I saw here looks great. The way they set up co-op is very cool. There are orbs all over the world that represent other players in your friends list. When you go up to an orb you can hit a button and it brings that player into your game!! Very cool. They talked up some of the features of the game in that you can have a unique experience and play the game you like. Be good or evil, go to a bar and get drunk, even get married. The game looks very nice and I think I'm going to have to check out some more videos, interviews and previews of the game. The game is set for release in October of this year.

Gears of War 2 was shown in trailer form and a live gameplay demo. The trailer seemed to be all about the "meat shield." Cliffy B played a "live" demo of the game afterwards. I say "live" because it seemed that the live demo wasn't really live, but pre-recorded. The screen went dark near the beginning and the video restarted and the actions of Marcus and Dom seemed exactly the same. Very weird. Anyway, the game looks like Gears just a lot more epic and on a bigger scale. The environment was very large and things were falling apart all over the place. The meat shield was shown, as was some new weapons and items. A pop-up shield kinda like Halo 3, a flamethrower, and a morning star. One of the new enemies is a "ticker." They are small and run around all fast like and look like insects (well sort of). They run at you and try to self destruct in your face so you have to take them out fast. They make this creepy "clicking" noise that reminds me of the sounds of an alien race in Star Trek: the Next Generation. (don't ask). Brumaks are also in the game and the trailer ends with the reveal that you can ride them?! There is also a new mode called "Horde" a 5 player co-op survival type mode where you take on wave after wave of locust.

The next announcement was that NBC and Universal movies/tv shows are now available on XBL Marketplace. Not a big deal at all for me, but I noticed they have Ghost Hunters on XBL now. Very cool if its free, otherwise I'll just watch it on Sci-fi channel.

Next they announced the new Xbox Live interface, which looks very Windows Media Center like, as Giantbomb's Jeff Gerstmann says. This features 3D menus and as revealed in the big leak last month, Avatars!, Microsoft's answer to the Miis and Playstation Home. My first question is, what happens to all the gamer pictures and themes I've paid money for? In the demo they didn't appear to be used anymore in the new interface. Oh yeah, the avatars are designed by RARE. Probably the coolest thing is the group chat feature where up to 8 friends can chat and share photos (and music?) together. Kinda like how you can in Home I guess. Xbox Live Primetime is a new feature where you play in game shows (with your Miis...err Avatars) and can even win prizes? The first game is 1 vs 100. Kinda neat how you can jump from game to game with the same party.

Uno Rush was announced and it also uses Avatars.
Geometry Wars 2 was shown as well. Looks nice but I've never really played any of these games.
Galaga Legions was shown and looks feaking amazing. It comes out next month on XBLA. It was made by the same team that did Pac-Man Championship Edition.
PORTAL ON XBLA!!! Portal: Still Alive comes out this year. No footage was shown, just an "announcement" by Glados. They mentioned new levels and achievements though. Sweet.
South Park will have "something" on XBLA. Not sure what though.
XBL Community games launches this fall

Microsoft will now offer Netflix streaming movies on XBL instantly if you're a Netflix subscriber (like me). Too bad Netflix doesn't have a whole lot of streaming movies yet, and the ones they haven't aren't that good. Current releases rarely get added right away. Its mostly old movies. Oh well, I may give that feature a go if I don't want to waste a rental spot on something I can stream.

Microsoft talked about 3rd party games next and I noticed Need for Speed Undercover. What is this? No more info was shown. They briefly mentioned the GTA IV DLC but didn't say when exactly it would come out or what the DLC was. Trailers for Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts and Viva Pinata Trouble in Paradise were shown. I've never played Banjo but this new game looks nice. They also announced the original Banjo game would be coming to XBLA. Viva Pinata looks awesome and I can't wait. I loved the original game and I spent hours upon hours in my garden trying to get all the Pinata. Scene It: Box Office Smash game was shown which also features avatars. Then they showed "You're in the Movies" that seems to use the Vision Camera. Several Microsoft employees went on stage and played some minigames that were very boring and made the crowd speechless, especially the last one. Then a trailer was shown in a 50s B-movie style that looked very weird. No interest at all in this one.

Guitar Hero World Tour was talked about a bit and one of the big announcements is Metallica in World Tour (they are also in Rock Band 2). They will have their new album; Deathmagnetic on Guitar Hero World Tour as DLC (on GHIII as well). The Eagles and Van Halen are "exclusive" to Guitar Hero as well.
The Harmonix CEO came out on stage to talk about Rock Band 2 (comes out in September) and revealed the 84 track setlist which features 20 more bonus tracks as DLC. All master recordings. Guns N Roses will debut a track from the long in development album, Chinese Democracy. AC/DC will appear exclusively in Rock Band 2. On a side note, I don't have much interest in all these music games. I do have Guitar Hero 1 on PS2, and I enjoyed it on easy mode, but anything harder then that is just a waste of time in my opinion. I would rather spend all the time I would waste learning a song on hard mode, to just learn to play the real guitar or drums instead. I'm not trying to insult anyone, that's just how I feel on the matter.

Lips, the karaoke game was officially announced after being rumored about for weeks. Seems like Singstar but you can use your Zune or ipod to sing along with ANY music you have on it. The mics are motion sensitive so you can play the tamborine among other things. Some singer named "Duffy" came on stage and sange her "hit" single. Gamespot blocked this part of their broadcast but you can see it on G4tv.com. I don't see what the big deal was that they had to block it.

The final set of announcements were all from Square Enix. Infinite Undiscovery, Star Ocean: Last Hope (new trailer on XBL) and Last Remnant (in trailer form) were talked about. Infinite Undiscovery comes out September 2nd in the US, Star Ocean in Spring 2009 and the Last Remnant on November 20th (also on PC). I'm really looking forward to all these RPGs but the BIG announcement of the press event was that Final Fantasy XIII will be coming to Xbox 360. For some reason the camera angle zoomed way out during this trailer and you couldn't really see anything. What's the deal Microsoft?? Anyway, that's pretty huge news for Microsoft. Now I have to decide what platform to get the game on. I wonder if there will be DLC of any kind.

Overall, there wasn't anything too exciting at Microsoft's press conference. The biggest surprise was easily the FFXIII announcement, but other then that most everything else was rumored about weeks ago and didn't surprise anyone.