Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

So after having some time to digest the whole event, without typing at a frantic pace, I can finally give my extended thoughts on what I saw at the Microsoft E3 Press Briefing. Microsoft packed a lot into the presentation and so far, they have fired one hell of a shot across the bow in the platform wars.  A lot of what they showed off was exclusive to the platform, and while I did not get that Kingdom Hearts 3 announcement I was banking on for my predictions, I did get an Metal Gear Solid announcement.

First off, I was highly impressed with the visual styles used for The Beatles: Rock Band.  The fact that they seem to have captured all the periods in the band’s development, without looking hokey was a triumph.  Now with harmonies, I will have a use for all three of the microphones I own, along with drums and guitars.  The vocals did get a little too congested at the top of the screen with all three harmonies going at one time, but overall, I am glad to see that the game looked solid.  Custom DLC just for that game however, had me very upset.  I am sure it had to do with marketing issues, but it just seems a bit too much like the Guitar Hero philosophy of DLC development.  Offering full Beatles albums for DLC is a nice touch, and Abbey Road as the first available should be a big hit with Beatles fans.

Tony Hawk Ride was shown off and I was impressed with the new peripheral.  That said, I can’t convince myself that I need to buy it.  I have a shelf load of plastic controllers and at the heart of the conference, it seems to go completely against what Microsoft is trying to do with Project Natal.  The action in the game looked really good, and it looked like a completely new engine.  Yeah, that is a big duh, but still it was nice to see a new, more refined look to the Tony Hawk series.  That said, I still think it is a step or two behind the Skate series, but I am going to give it a shot on the show floor sometime this week.

Okay, now we start getting to the big guns.  Modern Warfare 2 looks spectacular at this point in time.  Watching the video for the game footage, it is running silky smooth, without any hiccups or stuttering.  Like I said in the live blog, who knew that snow could look so awesome.  Everything that made the first Modern Warfare great is here for those gamers, and it was nice to see that the boys and girls at Infinity Ward know how to make dramatic moments really shine, regardless of whether they are scripted or not.  Adding vehicles was another nice touch.  While we only saw our character, Roach, on a snowmobile, it would be idiotic not to think that other vehicles will be in the mix.  I just want another AC-130 level so I can “bring the rain” once again.

Final Fantasy XIII looked pretty good on the 360, and should sooth the fears that it was going to look like a giant slice of ass on the “inferior” 360.  the combat looked a little strange to me, but to be honest, Final Fantasy has not been on my list of must play games for some time.  That said, to know that it is coming along nicely for a Spring 2010 release is a good thing, although, nothing was stated about how many discs it would ship on.

Now I had heard nothing of Shadow Complex before I came into the event, but I left intrigued.  Not sure if it is an arcade title from the guys at Epic games, but it looked really good.  It sort of reminded me of the old Sierra game, “Hunter, Hunted”.  Again, not much was shown right now, but it will be on the show floor, so I will have to hit it up and give it a spin.

Then we moved into the Avatar game of the show, which would be Joyride.  It was cute, and it give us something else to do with our avatar.  My ears perked up quite a bit when they said it would be free to all XBox Live members, and then they added the microtransaction pitch.  Buying cars and paint schemes just seemed like a cop out.  But what did we really expect with this.  Free is never free.

Then I saw one of my stars of the show.  Splinter Cell: Conviction was borderline cancelled last year, but has come back and looked fantastic.  Someone next to me summed it up perfectly – “It looks like what Assassins Creed was suppose to be”.  I like the idea of allowing me to do what I am comfortable with doing.  Sneak around, run in, guns blazing, it is all there for anyone to do as they please.  Sam has come back pissed and it shows.  The interrogation scene they showed us at the beginning of the game, was brutal, giving us a sense of where Sam Fischer now stands in regards to the government and the Fifth Echelon in general.  Its coming this fall, and it looks fantastic.  We will probably see a lot more of this at the Ubisoft briefing tonight.

We got some Halo ODST.  I can’t say that I am hugely up on this game, but the other title in the series that Bungie is working on has me quite intrigued.  Halo Reach did not give us much, but if you have read the books, you know that Reach was the home of the Spartan project where our favorite Spartan, Master Chief, was spawned from.  It has me wondering if this is some sort of prequel that will give us more of that story but in playable form.  However, the Halo crowd might not like the idea of playing as a human Master Chief.

Alan Wake showed up and it impressed me quite a bit.  It is no longer a Max Payne without Noir as some have come to sum it up at time.  Instead it was suspenseful, creepy and very dramatic.  The story seems to have changed a little bit, but it still looked awesome.  I would have liked to have seen more gameplay, but it is nice to know that it will actually be happening, but as we also saw, no release date was given for the game.

Facebook, Last.fm and Twitter are all huge wins for the Xbox console in my opinion.  Integrating them into games is an even bigger step that will surely gain Microsoft a huge amount of fans.  Even I was impressed with the integration of the social networks into the console, and the idea that I can be in a game and with a couple of clicks, can push a screenshot or video of something in game to Facebook would be huge.  Also, give it up to Koss who called this shot in the E3 podcast a week ago.  He said they would hammer away at the social networking stuff and they hit a home run with it. 

Okay, how else do I say it, but Kojima showing up was probably the big hit of the show.  When he walked out, you had to wonder if you felt 1000 PS3 fans cry out in pain and then disappear, but to be honest, most figured something was afoot with Microsoft and Konami, but there was nothing solid, and to be honest, we had all heard the rumors many times before.  But now it is official, the Metal Gear Solid franchise is coming to the 360, although it is a new franchise, keeping Kojima at his word that Metal Gear Solid 4 is not coming to the 360.  I know little to nothing about the Metal Gear Solid series, but the new game will focus on Raiden, and it will probably have a lot of cutscenes, hopefully skippable if you want to do such a thing.  Funny goof of the evening was Don McKittrick calling the series Metal Guild Solid.  Probably had to do with Felicia Day doing the Social networking presentation.

Finally, we had Project Natal.  Our own Richard has some thought on the subject already up, but I have to say that the more I thought about it, the more I really felt that this might be a serious game changer for consoles.  The idea that people don’t have to learn a controller configuration, or even go through such tasks as logging in to the system could make the 360 a huge system seller.  Microsoft really threw out the gauntlet with this camera system, going further than I think anyone thought.  The idea of scanning in your own gear and using it in a game was very cool, although I have to think that some IP holders might have an issue with this one.  The painting game was a bit goofy, but it could be a great family activity to put together a fun portrait.   But the Milo presentation was the genius moment of the night, while also being the creepiest at the same time.  The programming that went into that Milo creation was really amazing.  His acknowledgements of you in the real world were fantastic, and when the scanned paper showed up in Milo’s hands almost immediately, I was really amazed.  Someone did mention something to me about a Sony presentation a few years ago where they did this kind of stuff with the Playstation Eye, but I really don’t remember anything getting this integrated into the functionality of the console itself.  If Microsoft can actually produce this product, and get it to market on time, I will be impressed and buying it.

So there you go, my long, drawn out thoughts on the MS press conference.  Let me know what you think in the same amount of detail!