Microsoft Press Conference E3 2011 Round-Up

Today, E3 kicked off. This is only a brief look at what was shown at E3. These are the big name games that I feel everyone should at least take a look at. Microsoft’s press conference was the first to air and they brought a lot to see. The conference opened up with a Modern Warfare 3 gameplay demo, the next Infinity Ward outing.

Tomb Raider was next up, the series looks to have a reboot upcoming with a younger, less experienced Lara Croft. Supposedly a sandbox style Lara Croft game, puzzle-solving still seems to be a big part of the series as the big feature showed highlights of Lara’s ability to solve the puzzle of escaping captivity.

Bioware showcased the sequel to their blockbuster selling series Mass Effect. Adding Kinect voice recognition adds to the immersion value of the series by letting you tell your squadmates what to do and to choose the dialogue option just by speaking it.

Ubisoft showed up with their brand new Ghost Recon game with Kinect support. Ghost Recon seems to be one of the first hardcore Kinect titles. The gunsmith is the most unique thing in a shooter game I have ever seen, with the ability to completely build your gun from the ground up along with the shooting seems to be a huge step in the right direction for Kinect.

Gears of War 3 with Cliff Bleszinski opened up with a brand new look at the games campaign. For those of you who played the beta, you know that this gamer is the best looking of the three and looks to be extremely fun. The demo had Marcus and the rest of the crew fighting a Leviathan on a ship. GoW3 looks to be a great game and another great first party exclusive title for Microsoft.

Microsoft announced the 10-year anniversary Halo: Combat Evolve HD remake. To be quite honest, the game looks beautiful. A completely remastered campaign, Xbox live competitive and cooperative multiplayer looks to be a home run.

Turn 10 showed more of their blockbuster racing series, Forza. Forza 4 looks to be one of the most detailed racing games out to date yet. Head tracking Kinect support adds to the complete immersion to the beauty of the game.

Peter Molyneux came out and announced Fable: The Journey. From the looks of it, it seems to be almost entirely Kinect based. Best I can tell, it is an on rails shooter and to be honest, I wasn’t expecting too much after Fable 3.

Disney and Microsoft partnered up to complete recreate the Magic Kingdom in all of it’s glory in Disneyland Adventures, and in my opinion looks to be a cross between Kinect and Kingdom Hearts.

Star Wars Kinect is an on-rails Jedi game where you have force powers and a lightsaber in the palm of your hand. As good as it looks, the gameplay looks a wee bit clumsy. Hopefully they will have a better version of it in years to come, right now it looks like a simplified Force Unleashed game.

In one of the biggest announcements of the Microsoft press conference, they announced Halo 4. There weren’t many details  let out, but from the teaser, Cortana is calling Master Chief to wake up as their ship drifts off toward what appears to be a giant ship. The teaser ended with a Holiday 2012 release date.