E3 2017 - Microsoft

Microsoft's conference (Or Xbox's Briefing as they're now rebranding it) kicks off with a timeline of screen resolutions which manages to be only slightly more dull than it sounds. This puzzling retrospective is followed by a bunch of flashy CG computer parts slotting together, lighting up and exploding showing us the next-generation of red-ring console malfunctions. It ultimately looks like the kind of dramatic sparks and lights montage better suited for the opening to a science fiction film than a conference where substance is already sorely lacking over...well certainly not style but jargon let's say.

Everyone's favourite mid-life crisis Phil Spencer finally arrives on stage to weirdly raucous applause and chanting before gushing about the stage's big 4K TV screen like there isn't always a huge screen at these events. Perhaps I'm just overlooking the significance of 4K...which to give fair warning I will resolutely continue to do throughout the rest of this review.

Phil talks about the three core principles of Xbox despite no one asking. The weirdest of these being "there's no power greater than X". I don't know if that's supposed to be an algebra joke or something but I don't really understand it. Surely if Vin Diesel has taught us anything it's that Triple X is clearly greater than just one.

He continues his preamble explaining how he's "pre-proud" to announce Xbox One X, previously codenamed Scorpio, continuing the tradition of cool codenames being replaced by shit meaningless brand friendly guff. While the One Box X is a bit of a mouthful at least it isn't quite as illogical as the original Xbox One's name reveal itself. I suppose we could have been faced with the Xbox One Q and we'd all be scratching our heads for the duration of the marketing team's psychotherapy sessions.

Supposedly Xbonx is "the most powerful console ever created" at least until they announce a new Pro Slim version next year. A different man enters the stage to get us all hot and bothered about those specifications. It's got so many terraflops and magnum core deluxe double dip masterboard processors that it presumably must resemble some kind of computer console if you can believe that.

Mister Speaker also walks the party line of attempting to repeat the word "4K" as many times as it represents. They slip this bloody buzzword into so much of the conference I start imagining a little cutlery creature called "Forkey" or a parallel dimension town of "Torquay".

The fine line between confidence and smugness becomes damn-near anorexic as he talks about the Scorpio chip which is "so intense" and how the processor was so good they named it after the bloke who made it, like they're the Henry Heimlich of gaming. Xbonx is also apparently "the most technically advanced console we've ever created." Well I'd hope so to be honest...Don't want to crack the whip too hard but I'd maybe like to think you're actually trying to improve over time.

"Liquid-cooled Vapor Chamber" just sounds like a hipster cafe to me.

All the specs jargon talk seems to please the irritating whooping bro crowd and I feel incredibly stupid when I only start to comprehend proceedings again when the speaker claims Xbonx is the smallest Xbox ever.

"Let's see what this monster can do" he quips before fatally introducing a trailer for Forza Motorsport 7. Now I know that every year I say the racing-sim game trailer looks identical to the last one but with the new Xbox One X's unprecedentedly hyped powerhouse technology it actually looks...the same, it looks exactly the fucking same, same as every year. Forza might as well be called Groundhog Motorsport Day because I'll decompose before I figure out what they're doing different, how they still sell any games and why these chucklefucks always present it as a groundbreaking new benchmark every poxy year.

It turns out I was naive to think they had realised how dumb, shallow and out of place bringing an actual car on stage was because this year they've returned to their moronic tradition with a vengeance. Dan Greenawalt and his angry eyes full of hatred announce a Porsche car never seen by anyone before ever except the guys who made it and they were all killed afterwards and their family's tongues were cut out and the assembly machines were dismantled and NSA employees were fired but fired out of cannons and holy fuck guys get hype for this fucking car on stage please.

They reveal the car and lo and behold it looks just like a car. The only noteworthy thing about it is the, shall we say "spontaneous" decision to name it after an infamous terrorist attack. The new Porsche Holocaust then gets its own advert space as Dan reprograms himself into a horrible sponsored monologue of bollocks that feels so out of place I wonder if the tone and context of this entire segment was actually designed by Pepsi.

"Just come up on stage and place your money in my open hands."

Phil returns to defibrillate me with claims of the "most diverse lineup of games Xbox has ever had" he furthers this bold claim announcing that they will show 44 games on stage this conference, half of which will be Xbox exclusive. I won't hold my breath that 39 of those games won't be a second of footage each in a later indie games montage. 

Finally moving onto some games we see a debut trailer for Metro Exodus, the third game in the increasingly topical post-apocalyptic Russian FPS series. I'm quite fond of this series but despite the trailer supposedly being all "in-engine" it was very blatantly scripted so that's either a lie or applies only to the graphics at best. Gameplay and tone seems much the same but perhaps a greater capacity for exploration with zipwires and steam trains shown off alongside the standard wasteland mutants and toxic air. Still hoping for Vladimir Putin Hulk Monster as the final boss.

He can only be killed by homoerotic bullets.

The next "world premiere" trailer (they're very keen that we know that detail every time.) is for Assassin's Creed Origins which marks the series' return after Ubisoft realised that cranking the games out annually degrades the overall quality to the point of forgetting to give character's faces. Set in Ancient Egypt we see gladiatorial fights, horseback archery and interestingly some purely mythical beasts. French David Baddiel then comes on stage to show us a brief gameplay demo.

Much of the core gameplay remains unchanged but additions include more RPG elements like levelling up in some respect and acquiring and replacing equipment and weapons. The developers also seem to be embracing the more supernatural elements of the series with the character seeing through nearby eagles to mark targets and scout ahead as well as seemingly controlling a shot arrow's trajectory mid-air. 

I think many people are too fatigued with the mediocrity and saturation of this series to give it a chance anymore and I can't really blame them but this first look is promising. It appears to promise a return to what the series is actually about (That's assassination in case all the property management clouded your memory.) as well as some new gameplay features which are hopefully not the entirety of the changes to the well-worn formula. Time will tell I suppose, or failing that October 27th this year.

Phil Spencer returns to pass the baton to a man named Brendan Greene who is apparently famous enough to also be known by the moniker "Player Unknown."...Ironically. The game at the heart of this is "Player Unknown's Battlegrounds" which having now looked up who this guy is, I realise he's named the game after himself. I thought that kind of reputation only came from decades of acclaimed work as in the likes of Tom Clancy or Sid Meier. 

Brendan Greene's prior work seems to include mod work for Dayz and...that's about it. What a horrifically smug introduction to a game that doesn't even look very good. A standard online multiplayer shooter with large maps, vehicles and slightly less chronic jank than DayZ. There might be some cult following for this but consider me personally uninitiated and filled with resounding indifference.

The next trailer is a quirky FPS called Deep Rock Galactic but Minecraft with guns might have been more appropriate. The most surprising part of the trailer for State Of Decay 2 is the number two as I don't remember there ever being a first and from the looks of this equally forgettable generic zombie shooter, I'm amazed a sequel is even in production.

Next up a CG trailer quickly turns into a face-cramp inducing cringing shitshow with a bearded egg live commentating on stage for a third person arena shooter no one yet gives a fuck about.

I don't think you could get away with this cheese-laden dreck for an actually established popular shooter like Overwatch so whoever thought it was a good idea to add this element to a wholly unannounced game was clearly smoking the fungus growing in the commentator's beard. The words "The Darwin Project" appear on screen but it's unclear if that's the game's title or the explanation for the failed test subject shouting on stage.

This set up also suggests your game is not actually interesting enough on its own....

Pain persists as the aggravating chirpy smirk of Lydia Winters returns to talk about fucking Minecraft again and her piercing one-note delivery seems an ironic contrast to her message of inclusiveness as all ten billion versions of Minecraft on phones, consoles, PC, toasters, heart monitors, missile launchers, et cetera will now play together on connected servers so you can now build a giant dick on someone's Nintendo palace or chase mobile players with an axe just for existing.

Wait you think that's it? No because they need to show a trailer for the "Super Duper Graphics Pack" making the six year old game look as detailed as it did in the hundreds of mods already released years ago doing this exact thing.

But I guess it is 4K. You know? 4K? The new HD? You should really care about 4K, it's seriously the best, trust me. We're going to keep saying it until you buy our 4K products out of mentally damaged stockholm syndrome compulsion.

I'll pay you 4K to shut the fuck up about it.

The Last Night looks like the natural progression of Devolver Digital's pixel art games into more cinematic and serious territory except not actually developed by Devolver in any way. "Odd Tales" and publisher "Raw Fury Games" may have pulled the rug out from under them if this proves successful.

You may have noticed these banners are on every single game.

The Artful Escape has a cartoony art style and features a guy with glasses who may be an astronaut and/or guitarist. The brief trailer makes pretty much no sense but I guess it's good to fill that quota of one or two indie games with no clear plot, gameplay or purpose.

We also see more of Rare's Sea Of Thieves, the online multiplayer pirate game that could be good were it not for the grating voiceovers that always accompany the footage. I know it won't be in the full game but it still tarnishes initial impressions when you're subjected to constant unnecessary shit jokes (Don't throw stones in glass houses I know). That aside, the game's freedom of exploration, treasure hunting and teamwork mechanics look like fun and I'm more hopeful than last year that this could be an amusing multiplayer romp if everything holds up on the technical side.

A cartoon rodent begins hopping around the screen and for a moment I'm worried they've dragged Conker back into some half-arsed cameo shite but it is in fact some original fox mascot presumably called Lucky for the game "Super Lucky's Tale." This kind of colourful mascot platforming is making a resurgence recently with characters like Crash Bandicoot being brought back from the dead. Everything in the trailer seems solid so time will tell if it's merely competent or can join the ranks of the platforming greats alongside Mr Bandicoot, Mario, Spyro and others.

But where or when does retro become generic again?

Speaking of dead platformers, the long awaited, 30's animation-styled game Cuphead finally gets a release date of September 29th after appearing at E3 for the past four years.

Crackdown 3 gets an intro the likes of which only Terry Crew's style of insanity could deliver. It's a shame that once the actual gameplay trailer starts the footage looks profoundly mediocre.

Now right on cue comes the montage of indie games to a trendy song giving us a blink's worth of information for each as if Microsoft are simultaneously ashamed of these games while trying to hold them aloft as evidence of their "diversity". Much like last year I will attempt to glean as much information as humanly possible from each game, going purely from what Microsoft felt comfortable showing us.

Osiris - A levitating astronaut who can pilot spaceships, space tanks and also shoot some alien bugs.

Raiders Of The Broken Planet - Team-based third person shooter with airships seemingly designed by a freelancing Doctor Robotnik.

Unruly Heroes -  A 2D platformer with a tribal character performing hack and slash type gameplay within a pleasing Rayman-esque art style.

Path Of Exile - Exiled perhaps for looking too much like top down, dungeon crawler classic Gauntlet?

Battlerite -  Same as above with cartoon Sci-Fi aesthetic.

Surviving Mars -  Simcity: Martian Edition.

Fable Fortune - Fucking card game.

Observer - Sci-Fi horridor down the corridor.

Robotcraft Infinity - Robot Wars Series 900.

Dunk Lords - Space Jam but without the fun.

Minion Masters: Forced To Duel - Tower defence Pong?

Brawlout - Specifically Super Smash Bros Brawlout.

Ooblets - Charming cartoon villagers with totalitarian undertones regarding a race of mushroom people.

Dark Light - Hold my beer, I'm gonna do a Skyrim.

Strange Brigade - Nathan Drake time travels to shoot robots and indigenous tribesmen.

Riverbond - See Battlerite but with a pixellated aesthetic.

Hello Neighbour - Designed from the ground up specifically with Pewdiepie in mind.

Shift - Mid-air anime sword fights...Forever.

Conan Exiles - A Colossus, a Metroid, an elephant and that CG bull-dragon thing Anakin rides in Star Wars Episode 2. Kill them all with spears.

Next we see some of Ashen which appears to be very Dark Souls inspired in terms of theming, plot and gameplay but with a more cartoonish aesthetic where no one has a face for some reason. Still I'm mildly interested.

Life Is Hipster comes next with a prequel game or DLC called Before The Storm which looks hella like the first Life Is Strange bae so if you were like totes emosh for that you'll probably be like sadface for this too in a good way LOLFML.

Game Of Throne's Littlefinger takes the stage to introduce the sequel to Shadow Of Mordor creatively titled Shadow Of War. The gameplay demo seems to show improvements on all the things that worked best for the original, expanding the Nemesis system of grudge-holding, returning enemies to include personable allies whom you can recruit for large scale castle sieges. Hopefully all this will elevate the series above being a textbook example of an 8/10 game.

Well...Some versions were considered 8/10...

Phil comes back on stage managing to maintain the one shirt for the entire conference and waxes lyrical for a while before announcing backwards compatibility for original Xbox games on the Xbox One. So you can play Xbox one games on your Xbox One...Make sense?

He blabbers on about the Xbonx's enhancement capabilities before the usual masturbatory round up of the successes shown on stage today, even repeating the claim of "largest and most diverse lineup" which having reached the end of the show I'm pretty certain they have not lived up to. Either that or the standards for a "diverse lineup" are so low that anything not holding a gun is considered revolutionary.

Uri Geller's son arrives, who works for EA because he can't bend spoons but can bend the definition of ethical business practices. With all the enthusiasm and facial levity of a man whose wife just left them for the neighbour's dog, he introduces a man from Bioware to pointlessly stand on stage and immediately introduce a trailer for their Mass Effect necromancy project entitled Anthem.

To my surprise it's actually quite different from the corpse it was plucked from and more resembles Destiny or even a third person Titanfall. Everything seems centred around the Exosuits you pilot and the world is far more open and free-roaming allowing you to fly, swim or clunkily run across the largely overgrown forested world. We get a glimpse at larger mechanical enemies alongside a few alien creatures and significant weather changes and hazards. 

In the brief dialogue scene beforehand, it transpires that developers seem to have fixed their long-term condition of "Bioware Face". Characters will now actually move around, turn their head, break eye contact and just generally act more human whilst talking to you rather than staring bug-eyed into your soul and swatting a fly away every fifteen seconds.

Clearly this guy's anthem would be David Hasselhoff.

I was a big fan of the Mass Effect series but the shitshow surrounding 3 and Andromeda has left me cautious and bitter. I'm not sure Anthem is any kind of replacement and perhaps that's for the best. The gameplay looks solid and I can get behind customisable mech combat but it's still early days yet and I frankly don't trust EA at this point not to mangle Bioware's best ideas and sell us the offal.

Which sums up Microsoft's conference overall really. A big burnt sausage stuffed with unmentionable spam from unknown origins and some very brief hints of flavour you're not entirely convinced you even tasted.

Sausage...

Pirates Of The Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge/Dead Men Tell No Tales - Cinema Review

How do you make zombie pirates boring? Well you can ask Dead Salazar's Dead Men Tell No Revenge Tales for a step by step guide (Why does this film have 2 titles? I don't know, do they even know?). For context I haven't watched anything in this franchise since the third film ten years ago and I found that to be a confusing mess both in terms of plot and visuals. Sadly there seems to have been little progress made since.

There's a handful of good ideas here but not enough to make a film and so these are stitched together with a large swathe of reused jokes and scenarios from the prior films. When those fail it seems to resort to even older film cliches that are so tired now they seem to project that concept onto the audience.

Going into the film my main intrigue was whether Javier Bardem's career integrity would outlast his decomposing CG face. Leaving the cinema I could be convinced the entire cast were in fact zombies. Dragging their heels through the story with the bare minimum amount of energy needed to stay alive. The only possible exceptions to this being newcomers Brenton Thwaites and Kaya Scodelario but sadly only the latter could possibly withstand the argument that these characters are simple reenactments of the remnants of Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley's old characters.

"I'm Javier Bardem, I've got an Academy Award, Oogey boogey bleugh"

This mediocrity worsens for those behind the camera. If the film weren't so blatantly two thirds CGI I would wager there was no artificial lighting whatsoever as anything after sunset might as well be runny ink smears for all you can make out. The hungover vampire or Zack Snyder fan in charge of lighting is joined by an audio mixer either being shagged or blackmailed by the foley artist. Then there's the dialogue writer who seems to have taken 90% of their work from the glossary in a Dungeons and Dragons manual.

Before I drown in my own bile let's talk about that handful of good ideas. The action scenes when not plagued with darkness are decent, more so in terms of the concepts behind the set pieces rather than the choreography. The latter disappointingly opts for the cheap and increasingly common Batman Begins style of moving close up shots symbolising action whilst not actually clearly showing any...or requiring actors or stuntmen to perform any.

For a film on its fifth iteration I was impressed to see some inventive uses of cannons, ship ramming and guillotines still conceived even if they are extremely dubious in the eyes of physics and common sense. There are also some memorable settings including meteoric islands and walkways more commonly reserved for Moses. Those alongside a few humorous exchanges and one or two lines where Depp kicked up a spark in the ashes of his iconic character unfortunately amount to all of the positives I could find in the film. This smattering of creativity is lost within a retread of old storylines about ancient curses, treachery and lost glory.

The aforementioned CGI is probably my biggest grievance with the film as by the third act, characters might as well be invisible amidst the blinding cloud of animated ocean, ships, people and, well...everything.

An otherwise decent flashback scene coughs up a disturbing adolescent Jack Sparrow, with Johnny Depp digitally de-aged and free-falling down the uncanny valley at terminal velocity. A similarly tainted scene has a reasonably entertaining set piece involving zombie sharks but is thoroughly hampered by the insistent CGI so forced and desperate to be impressive that it distracts you from the danger the sidelined main characters are supposed to be in.

I know PotC started as a theme park ride but that cartoon fish's rotting flesh has more substance than this.

Ultimately if you've seen all the films up to this point you may have enough investment to remain engaged with the characters and plot. Perhaps something crucially important happened during fourth film On Stranger Tides but then again it might just as easily have gone entirely unexplained. If you still have a crush on Johnny Depp and/or still find it hilarious when he drunkenly staggers to his feet and pulls a face you'll probably adore the film. If you want to make sense of anything happening on screen beyond desperate spectacle and rehashed performances I would avoid Javier Barfdem's Salty Circus or whatever the hell this thing wants to be called.

Had they released this photo before anything else,
I would assume it was from a video game...And not one I'd want to play.

Unconscious Hallucinations Wrenched From Temporary Night Death III - 18th February

Days have long since stopped being recorded as myself, Mitch, Nathan, Charlie, Em and Laura trek wearily through a jungley-forest-woodland of sorts. The specifics of the environment tend to shift from moment to moment as do the exact members of our plucky band of survivors in this significantly post-apocalyptic Earth.

We're all bruised, battered and wearing filthy torn clothes as well as probably starving although frustratingly I've lost no weight because of this. We hunch and push our way through the undergrowth until we come upon a vast dirt clearing with a surprisingly well-maintained shopping centre standing proudly in the centre. The sign above its doors identifies it as "YOU WORLD" and we all stagger towards it with as much cautiousness as our weariness will allow.

Time skips and we've all settled quite well into the survivor's community of YOU WORLD. To our exhausted, starved bodies and minds it must have seemed like paradise. Offering food, shelter and copious entertainment of all things with mysteriously functioning arcades, theme parks and roller-coasters. Clearly the inside of the place has something of a dream-approved Tardis effect going on.

Most of the other survivors seem to have arrived recently as well and wander around with a child-like awe to their oasis in the storm of whatever unspecified Armageddon befell the world outside. We slowly become aware of the leaders of YOU WORLD despite never seeing them in person. The longer we stay the more we mingle with longer-term residents who are noticeably not as gleeful as the newcomers. Perhaps that's just normal though I think to myself.

Eventually we see the leader and presumed owner of the shopping centre city. A slimy businessman who has managed to stay relatively unruffled by apocalyptic circumstances. He's a typical grinning sleaze-ball who lures people in with his marketing buddy-pal patter but takes on a more subtly threatening tone with the older residents.

Myself and two of my rotating group of friends (perhaps the switches are meant to signify different days) overhear some of the older residents talking about people going missing. Some of them sound angry at the occurrence whilst others are scared of the mysterious background happenings.

In what can only be described as a disastrous lack of context, we time skip again and we're all trapped in our bedrooms that have been hastily refurbished into prison cells...Or maybe they always were, OOOOOEEEE.

Evil businessman tries to justify his abductions of people but none of us or the other imprisoned residents are convinced. In retrospect I would really like to know what horrible back-alley shadiness was taking place but at the time I felt suitably angered and horrified to give the snake-oil suit no quarter.

As night falls and our kidnapper retires, we talk amongst ourselves and with remarkable speed and lack of persuasion decide that a violent revolt is our only choice of action. Upon concluding this and grasping the bars of my cell I discover them to in fact be oversized pipe cleaners and thus rather simple to bend and remove.

Bloody revolution turns out to be reassuringly easy when YOU WORLD employs only three security guards. As the more courageous (or bloodthirsty) of the residents deal with them we all run for our lives and the shopping centre exit. In the chaos I lose track of my friends but approaching a set of stairs just before the exit I do find a cushioned long rectangular luggage trolley. I think to myself that this will impress and please my friends as we now have somewhere to put our stuff out in the wilderness and even sleep upon whilst still travelling.

I wait by the entrance for my friends but no matter how hard I look through the fleeing crowds I fail to locate them. I find myself surrounded by groups of Hasidic Jews and other elaborately costumed religious types from religions some of which I'm fairly certain don't exist. They all keep giving me funny looks for my trolley.

Eventually there's only a small crowd who hasn't fled the building and big boss businessman and some guards step out and address the crowd. The businessman whose heinous crime remains unclear looks distinctly more dishevelled and bitterly admonishes us
"Fine go! You ungrateful hooligans! You'll be sorry for what you've destroyed here today and you'll be hearing from our lawyers!"

The crowd jeers him and we all finally leave YOU WORLD. I despondently leave the trolley inside only to find my friends waiting happily outside. I must have missed them or they escaped through a different exit. I consider the trolley back in the entrance hall...It would be awkward to go back and get it now...