So last year we tried a little something where all the staff have a little chat during the E3 conferences. We tried it again this year for Microsoft’s press conference, and after heavily editing Michaels foul mouth the results are laid out below for you to see. A lot of this is our stream of consciousness so apologies in advance if not everything makes sense.
So the conference kicked off with a demo of Call of Duty: Black Ops. Here’s the staff’s response to the next game in the renowned series:
Chris: I’m no FPS fan, but this does look good
Kris: The lighting is actually very nice. Like the sloshy sound in the mud as well
Nofi: Sorry, this is a terrible demo.
Chris: not as bad as the ice climb last year
colossalblue: it’s beHIND you!
Murdo Connochie: Lovely dust effects
Nofi: Trees are nice, though. It’s like Oblivion with a helicopter. And less swords.
Michael: Ok, so this is actually a rubbish and boring demo. I am sure the game will be ok, but this is actually really dull.
colossalblue: It is stunningly pretty though isn’t it? I thought World at War was very pretty too. I like Treyarch.
Nofi: Yes, it’s gorgeous.
Kris: I’m not sure how they managed to make a helicopter battle kinda dull
Michael: They should do an Airwolf game.
As you can see, some people liked how the game looked, although not everyone was Next up was Hideo Kojima with what I felt was a great looking trailer for MGS: Rising. Opinion amongst the rest of the staff was a little more split.
Lewis: Kojima with 360…it’s like finding your wife in bed with another man…only more painful
Kris: Well this cutscene is pretty. That’s a lot of bullets. Seems wasteful
Murdo: Feet are too small.
Greg: HIs sword’s quite sharp.
Peter: did he just punch a severed pelvis? pervert
Chris: Kojima game in cutscene shock!!!!
Nofi: To be fair, the cutting is incredible. I want to cut up vans. And melons.
Lewis: woah
Kris: Ok cutting down the environment is cool
Peter: cutting up vans like in Super Street Fighter!
Greg: there’s your melon
Lewis: Parents are gonna have a field day with that one
Kris: Realistic Melon physics!
Michael: You play this with Kinect, right?
Colin: That looked great
Michael: That looked rubbish.
That’s right Rising had it all; bullets, pelvis punching, melons, seriously what on earth more could Michael ask? What does it take to make him rate a game positively? Does Jessica Alba have to come through the game and hug him? I’d say things were about to turn around for him, but I honestly can’t remember. Anyway Gears of War 3 is up next.
Chris: Gearz time
Murdo: Nice arm physics
Lewis: He’s ‘armless ;)
Murdo: Looks very grey
Greg: Did his chainsaw bayonette run out of petrol?
Murdo: This just looks slow, clunky and brown.
Kris: Shooting off arms looks fun
Greg: Beast mode? Play as the Horde?
Now you’d think that after all of that moaning about dullness maybe we’d move onto something people cared about. I’d like to tell you that, but it’s simply not true. In fact there was so little comment about Fable 3 I literally have nothing to write here. At all. Or the new Crytek game, for which the only comments boiled down to “it exists”. So I guess that Halo: Reach is up next.
Chris: Halo y-a-w-n
Kris: Woo Halo
Peter: Reach looks really good though. Not the Multiplayer, obviously but the single player looks good.
Nofi: Ah, this looks ace.
Kris: This is looking good
Chris: Some very low detail on background and floor, almost like a multiplayer game
Greg: They’ve certainly cranked the HALO engine up a notch or two.
Peter: same engine, stripped and rebuilt.
Chris: oh, more tunnels and corridors in a space station :|
Nofi: It’s space, Chris, what do you want, a carnival?
Chris: At least KZ swaps envirnments every release, not the exactly the same thing 4 times running
Kris: Man a carnival would be kinda awesome
Peter: space carnival.
Peter: space combat? No thanks.
Nofi: SALE LOST.
Kris: I get to fly a space ship?
Nofi: No you don’t, Kris. YOU DON’T.
Chris: So, Halo Reach is Halo 1, 2, 3, ODST with a higher rez, great
Peter: shush, Sony fanboy.
And at about 750 words that’s where we’re going to take a break. Why? Well it’s at this point that the conference moved onto Kinect, which in all fairness could benefit from its own discussion. I don’t think any of you want to read us talk insanely about games for now, so we’ll return to this tomorrow morning.
clank250
Yeah… before the hour long Kinect presentation. It went a little overdose Kinect. Not a little. A HUGE overdose.
BioEye
I was enjoying rice at this point. Missed all of this. :)
Raen
The big question is where the fuck did Lee go?
cc_star
Don’t mention him, he’s dead to us now. Splitter!
Kovacs
Lee was stuck on a bus watching the keynote on his iPhone screaming “OH DEAR GOD MAKE IT STOP.”
CaptainMurdo
Not good enough.
icuyesido
After 20 mins of non stop arcade games for connect, I started doing other things at the same time, at least the fish’s are happy with there clean tank! lol
Harinero
They didn’t move directly into kinect. Peter Molyneux appeared on stage before that. But he only spoke about Fable 2010, so I’m not surprised you forgot. I’m actually trying to forget too.
Raen
It’s in there. I actually said that none of us said anything about Fable (everyone got distracted cause the map looked like Populous).
cc_star
Oh yeah, Kinect powered powered Populus – Bit of a no brainer isn’t it, you would actually feel like a real god
Rob92
So boring.
I genuinely wanted to see something interesting. Kinnect looked cool at times but actually I saw a product with plenty of lag and didnt do much to make me feel better about my worries with it. That Dance Central looked awfully scripted and the guy in the game just kept on dancing even though the guy playing it was awful and didnt look anything like what the guy dancing looked like. Scripted.
Its definately Sony or Nintendo’s for the taking.
JakeMadge
Whole press conference was terrible, so much so that they needed to bribe people at the end by giving them free Xboxs
Uhyve
That seemed alittle off to me aswell…
Practically giving the Games Press 300 dollars. Just seemed kinda weird.
On the other hand, Chris was just joking with his blatant trolling right?
cc_star
What, about Halo being exactly the same whereas KZ looks different everytime?
TSBonyman
EA’s on now.. But I’ll be back
TSBonyman
It’s just sports atm …yawn…
Oh yeah Microsoft conference.. That kid doing the Kinectimals was a great actress.
Dancing looked very well rehearsed rather than responding to any game prompts.
sports over back to EA….
Supertaxman
well i enjoyed your random mumblings…
jimmy-google
I wondered where everyone went during the MS press conference. Now I know what you lot were doing.
jonny_bolton
I enjoyed last years E3 staff comments and more of the same here. Good stuff.
My 2 cents is as follows. Fable 3 looked terrible graphics wise and I just don’t think I can get behind a Peter Molenyeux game (although he’d probably get behind me, pervert). Hal Reach looked like the same old Halo stuff. Not that it’s a bad thing for those who like it. I’m just not a huge FPS fan these days and I thought that the scenery looked really poor.
I missed the CoD stuff unfortunately but the bit where Raiden chops the veranda down onto those guys in MGS:R is immense.
All in all no real games on show that wowed me. I think if Sony bring out some big hitters then E3 is theirs.
bunimomike
Agreed. I think I joined around this time (must check what it says against my “Member since:” bit. The conversations were superb. More please!