E3 Microsoft Booth

The word booth scarcely begins to describe the mammoth indoor structures that fill the LA convention center’s south and west halls this week. Any thing from Disney world style animatronics to battlefield bunkers can be found for your perusal. Not the least of which is the Microsoft booth. A sprawling slick white wonderland of gaping jaws and enormous plasmas, this is where you will find what little remains for the Xbox, this is where you can witness the fledgling first steps of the Xbox360, this is where you will be hard pressed to care about either.

Not surprisingly, about 75% of the space MS has purchased for its expo-ing, is filled with private rooms and behind closed doors demo, leaving an unfortunately small amount of room for kiosks. But this isn’t a report on the trials and tribulations of extended queuing. This is a report on booths.

If the MS booth were to be summed up in twenty words or less, those words would be: “so what?”. There are many sights to be seen, and a few choice ones will actually cause some genuine excitement, but over all, underwhelming is the name of the game in the land of Xbox.

Take for example: “Kameo: Elements of Power”. After several years of Xbox development, MS must have realized that Rare takes on average 7 years to make a game. Considering this they decided to develop on a system that would actually be popular when the game reached completion. A wise choice, to say the least. Sadly however, the porting shows. Scenes, last seen in video form on the Xbox version, were recreated on the 360, unfortunately rather faithfully. Certainly, all the bells and whistles were present and accounted for, real time lighting, more characters, better texture quality, but it was not the next-gen showstopper one would hope for. There was one glimmer of hope in the demonstration being shown, the kind of glimmer that feels tacked on and probably rushed, but a glimmer none the less. At one point, instead of the standard, platformy castle walls and 2-5 enemies at a time that had been shown, there was a sprawling battlefield. We’re not talking siege of Gondor here, but a hefty crowd nonetheless. I would have to estimate somewhere in the range of 100 Orc type creatures were all engaged in battle as Kameo switched into her armadilloesque form and proceeded to bowl through them by the dozens. It was the kind of tech-demo-ness that harks back to those first Mario shots for the Gamecube: rather than making infinitely more detailed characters than the previous generation, they just made more of them, a lot more.

On a more exciting note, SEGA had two games available for hands on, each with its own space to fill in the tech demo line-up. First is Full Auto, a sort of Burnout meets Twisted Metal battle racer, with strictly arcade style gameplay and a story to match. You play as a retired race car driver, desperate for cash, who is convinced to race for big money in a typically seedy underworld racing syndicate. Gameplay is standard issue arcade racer with the Mario Kart-like ability to shoot your opponent, with machine guns and rockets thrown in for good measure (no turtles shells were shown in the current build). The main difference here being the weapons are not collectible, but are rather visible parts of your vehicle. Customization was not mentioned, nor was a track count, but we were told that all of the game occurs in the same fictional city which is divided into 3 separate districts. What effects these districts actually have on the game play or the story has yet to be seen. The main characteristics that distinguish this from other drive-and-shoot games, is the now commonplace “unique” ability to rewind time and, get this, try again! Never before, at least in a driving game, has such a thing been done, and honestly, it adds little to the experience. It does however provide an excellent way to show off some of the 360's muscles as the camera sweeps around giving close-ups of all the big explosions and tracks them back to their origins. The gentleman demo-ing the game was more than happy to point out, on many occasions, that this “revolutionary ability” allowed you to avoid playing an entire race over again, just because you messed up on the last turn! This mindset fits nicely in line with MS’s recently adopted “accessible to all” philosophy. Seems to me, however, that unless there are an infinite number of tracks at your disposal, you might WANT to play the tracks more than once in a racing game, but maybe I’m old fashioned.

In the graphics department the game provides some incredible atmosphere in which to drive your somewhat plastic looking cars. The landscapes are littered with debris and other vehicles, and mostly everything is destructible, including some unexpected places, like the over pass that the lead car was rocketed into. A quite satisfying explosion ensued. The lighting and reflections are also quite nice and the game is already running at a very solid frame rate. Also worth mentioning, the boost button leads to a very Burnout-like motion blurring that does help to create an incredibly strong sense of speed while tearing through the destructible streets.

SEGA’s other offering, Condemned: Criminal Intent, fills in the other side of our tech demo duo. Whereas Full Auto is an insanely fast real time physics extravaganza (real time damage modeling included), if you are a graphics whore, this is your “Motel Six”, this is your home. You play as a recently suspended FBI agent, the best of the best we’re told, whose cases have been mysteriously going dry. After multiple failures you’re suspended from duty, and prerequisite vigilantism ensues. The truly mysterious part however, is that some of the mysterious characters around the back alleys have been acting mysteriously mysterious. It’s all dreadfully mysterious. A deep and intriguing story line is promised and the game is touted as a “first person horror”, so expect some of your enemies to mysteriously turn into zombies later on in the game.

If you have played Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay” you have an idea of what to expect. First person game play that isn’t restricted to shooting. In fact, due to the incredibly limited amount of ammunition, the larger part of the demo consists of whaling on enemy after enemy with whatever you could find laying around. Lead pipe, board with nails sticking out of it, locker door, the usual. Even your empty ranged weapons automatically default to a more melee centric position (e.g. pistol held by the barrel).

As far as graphics are concerned, Condemned still feels a great deal like Chronicles of Riddick, just on a much stronger system. The SEGA rep said that because MS required all games to be running in 720p they had to cut some of the special effects in order to maintain the frame rate. We were assured however, that soft shadowing along with other atmospheric effects would indeed be in and running in high res in time for the games release. But in its current state, it didn’t really look better than Doom 3 on a high end PC. Which is a rather disappointing considering the machine’s technical specs.

Other games visible on the MS floor were Call of Duty 2, which at time of press is an exact duplicate of the PC version also in development, and Top Spin, quite possibly the least exciting game out of all the playables in MS land. And that includes Crash Bandicoot: Tag Team Racing for the Xbox.

Speaking of Xbox, the system currently being Kevorkianed out of its gold years, there were still a few noteworthy titles to be seen. Conker: Live and Reloaded continues to impress graphically. Gameplay wise if you like the game, you will still like it, and if you thought the old one was too hard, fear not, MS, in its unending drive towards “accessibility”, has made a game that previously appeared on the N64 even easier.

Another big draw was Stubbs the Zombie, the latest from the guys who brought you HALO and then jumped shipped when MS bought them. At first controlling the game’s namesake is a bit awkward and kind of clunky, but keeping in mind that he’s a zombie, we can try and assume it was done intentionally. The short demo level involved the classic zombie movie standard, walking across a field towards a house and then breaking through all the doors and windows and eating the brains of those trapped in side. Although the whole level only lasted for about 10 minutes it quickly became repetitive: break through window, take a few unavoidable shots from the farmers, eat their brains, move on to the next room. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Speaking of Bungie, Microsoft’s cash cow had the forthcoming HALO: Multiplayer Map Pack on display. This was of course probably the biggest crowd gatherer of the 360 titles and the first time the public has gotten their hands on the new levels. The response, emphatically positive. Good news for all the HALO fans out there anxiously awaiting their release.

So that about wraps up our little tour of Microsoft’s ivory and green tower. The last coming wave of Xbox software promises a few enjoyable experiences to tide you over until the release of the 360. And the 360 promises to keep its main titles under wraps as long as possible while Rare struggles to meet its 5 year production deadlines on Perfect Dark Zero. It’s going to be interesting to see if the house that Goldeneye built can fill HALO’s enormous shoes.