Nintendo Okie

It’s Tuesday and that means E3 proper begins today.  It will start off with Nintendo’s Press Conference at 9:00 am PST, followed by Sony’s Press Conference and then a day of content streaming in all over the place.  Scott, Shelby, and I are going to be doing everything we can to get you all the best content possible from info on all the games announced, to new screenshots and video.  That being said while we’re preparing for Nintendo’s turn on the podium let me tell you what I thought about Microsoft’s event.  These are my gut reactions to everything talked about yesterday.

The new Call of Duty: Black Ops looks freakin’ amazing.  I’ve said many times before that I think Treyarch gets a bad rap.  They’ve been living under the shadow of Infinity Ward for too long, but they’re games are just as amazing as anything IW did.  CoD 3 was my first step into the franchise and so I may be a little biased, but I still think they do awesome stuff.  Moments like the ending of World at War brought chills when you rushed out of the Reichstag with the Russian flag and planted it in the ground after being shot repeatedly.  This new entry into the franchise looks like it will have some great moments as well.  There is a lot of extra stuff going on in the environment like the rats scurrying in the tunnel you’re crawling through and the helicopter air battle looks like it’s going to be intense.  I can’t wait for this game on either the 360 or the Wii.  Treyarch does right by me as far as the Wii is concerned and I’m confident that game will be great.

I’ve never been a big fan of Gears of War so I don’t have a lot to say about Gears of War 3.  It’s cool to see female COG troopers I guess.  It all still looks muddy and quite frankly very ugly to me.  I prefer the more fast paced action of the Call of Duty franchise to the stop and pop play of Gears.  That’s not to say they’re bad games.  Millions of people can’t be wrong, can they?  I have just never been able to get into those games. 

Of course, the biggest part of the show was the new motion controller, now call Kinect.  Initially, I have to say that I’m intrigued, but I don’t know that I’m impressed.  It looks interesting and has some cool functionality that I’d like to see on Wii like the voice activation and gesture based controls.  I don’t know that I constantly want to be saying “Xbox” before I do anything on the system.  The games themselves are a bit of a mixed bag as well.  Things like Kinectimals are going to be great and I know my kids would spend months playing with that stupid tiger hiding from him so he paws the screen.  Others, like Kinect Sports, just seem like a me too reaction to Wii Sports.  We know Sony has a game like that in the works and now Microsoft does.  I just chalk that up to another instance of Nintendo knowing what they were doing before anyone else.  The one thing that does tick me off is that Microsoft has announced a motion based light saber game before Nintendo.  It looks interesting.  Of course, I haven’t had any hands on time with the new controller so I can’t be 100% objective in my opinions.  I do really like the new video chat feature that the system has and the fact that the camera follows you is kinda awesome.  I’ve got to give it to Microsoft.  They really do understand how to make the 360 an all in one device that people really want.  It’s a whole lot of little things that add up to huge convenience and interest.

Some of this I’m not very interested in, like the racing game.  If I’m going to drive a game using motion controls I want a steering wheel in my hand and I don’t want to have to swing my hips around to drift.  That’s not how you drive a car in real life and I don’t want to have to do that.  There was nothing wrong with pushing a button to initiate drifting in games.  It seems like one of those things that takes you out of the experience and makes you realize you’re sitting in your living room gyrating around like an idiot to drive your car. 

ESPN coming to Xbox is awesome.  I’ve been looking for a way to get live sports on my TV.  I don’t have cable and have been relying on Netflix and Hulu for all of my television viewing so it will be good to know that I can turn on the Xbox and get sports in HD.   

I’m interested in the new Halo game if only for the space combat.  I’ve played Halo on the PC and parts of Halo 3 on the 360, but I wouldn’t say I’m a fan of the franchise.  I’ll be giving this game a look, though.

The new Xbox 360.  God Bless America, I want one of those.  That thing is sexy.  It looks like the Xbox, hit the gym, mated with the PS3 and had a twin baby to the Wii.  The built in Wi-Fi is the sole reason I would want one of those.  I have this ugly white cord stretched across my living room and dining room so I can get online with the Xbox and eliminating that wire would make my wife one happy lady.  The bigger hard drive also means I could get video content from Zune to the Xbox and watch it on the TV.  That is until I can get Apple’s new set top box that will sync with my huge library of content I currently have. 

All in all I would say Microsoft had a good show.  I wouldn’t call it great, jaw dropping or any other adjective to describe awesomeness, but it was solid.  They showed off Kinect pretty well and gave you some titles that would interest a number of people from your kids to your grandparents.  The rumored price tag is not pretty and may turn a lot of people who are interested in the device off.  I know I’m not looking forward to paying $150 and will be holding off for a while to get it.  Outside of that the games themselves were interesting whether for Kinect or not.  Microsoft continues to make the Xbox a device that everyone needs in their living room.  If they ever nail down the deal with Hulu to bring that to the system I’ll be in lazy man’s heaven.  The Wii will continue to be my gaming machine, but the 360 is definitely becoming the center of my media center. 

Grade: B