E3 2013 - Microsoft

The conference kicked off with Metal Gear Solid Five looking more like Assassin's Creed in places, demonstrating a dynamic new weather feature and claims to much deeper tactical stealth mechanics. It's a worrying sign however when you have to fast forward through your own game to get to the good bits.

Don Mattrick entered the stage accompanied by Hideo Kojima presumably just to save himself from instant assassination since as soon as Kojima finished his brief, clearly pre-written by Sony announcement, he immediately left again. Seemingly reluctant to talk about the Xbox One a different slimey suit appeared and introduced a new Xbox360 as if admitting that everyone was sick of their so called improvement. He talked about it's improved design and xbox live features before debuting a trailer for World Of Tanks which...well it's pretty self-explanatory and despite what i thought, it's apparently popular.

Eventually they addressed the elephant in the room and on the posters and forever burned into angry fans' minds and talked about the Xbox One's unprecedented amount of games, wisely moving swiftly into a demo of an interesting new historical action game set in Ancient Rome called "Ryse". This demo promptly shattered any illusion of authenticity when the protagonist shouted "Lads" and proved its extensive research into Ancient Rome in fact being full of gravelly cockneys.

Following the brand new games we saw "Sunset Overdrive" a cartoon shooter that looked like Mirror's Edge and Borderlands fucked Left For Dead when Team Fortress 2 was out of town.

I'll let you decide if that sounds like a good time or not...

Forza 5 is apparently the transcendent start of a new era and yet looked like every other driving game i've ever seen. For some reason they brought an actual car onto stage, maybe they worried gamers had never seen one in real life, followed by a bald man who talked about "drivertars" (they didn't give an exact spelling) A system that apparently creates more human AI and takes note of your own playing style in order to secretly clone you in your sleep and have the evil doppelganger steal your identity.

After Turn Ten we heard from turncoat Phil Harrison who gave us the same statistics lecture he used to do for Sony and a trailer for Minecraft, which i'm pretty sure is already on 360.
Next we saw a cutscene from Quantum Break; a game that could either be a Heavy Rain disaster or a Timesplitters gem, followed by a trailer for D4; a stylistic murder mystery by the guy who made Deadly Premonition. If this can manage to be 95% less broken than that game, there's a chance it could be ok.

Project Spark was an interesting blank canvas, creative map-making, game-making title demonstrated by the cheesiest, obnoxious, pun-slinging fucks i couldn't wait to see leave the stage. A bunch of poor Wii U gamepad imitations from the smartglass later and we reached the only logical thought Microsoft seems to have had recently by charging you in your own currency instead of Microsoft points. There was also a demonstration of the Xbox One's voice activated features and gameplay sharing abilities with a madcap fighter called Killer Instinct. A feature that looks set to flood youtube with even more tedious, amateur let's play videos than ever before.

Crimson Dragon is an innovative new title that's actually completely silent, allowing you to reflect more deeply upon your actions and choices as a majestic fire-breathing creature. For example "Did whatever i just burnt to a cinder have a family waiting back home?"
What came next was in my opinion the only impressive demo of the show in the third installment of the Dead Rising series. It appeared to provide a seamless and detailed open world zombie apocalypse with no load times, improvised weapon combinations and different ways to explore the overrun, infected city. It basically seems to have taken all the good points of the previous games and left out the bad which is an impressive amount of awareness for game developers these days.

The Witcher 3 will attempt to dethrone Skyrim and admittedly the trailer showed potential, whilst Battlefield 4 showed a truly next-gen engine failing to work for over a minute. A minute of embarrassing, cringeworthy silence and audience mockery. "Are we continuing?" With this shit? Really?

Riveting...

The game itself looked like the standard dramatical tactical military FPS in the vastly overpopulated genre of such games. We were then bitterly informed by the humiliated developer that it would be available to play later at the "microbooth" which sounds more exciting than any of the gameplay shown.

The inevitable new Halo game won my award for without a doubt the stupidest character reveal i have ever seen. Master Chief in a desert, covering himself in rags to protect from a sandstorm. How no one saw the pointlessness in wearing a hood when you're already constantly wearing a helmet is baffling. His entire personality is that fucking helmet, how could they overlook this? or do they actually just believe that's his head now?

This literally went from "wouldn't it be cool if he was in all robes in the desert like a Jedi or something?" to green-lit, confirmed, authorised go ahead and make it...

 The show finished with a trailer and gameplay demo of another FPS containing the revolutionary new features of jetpacks and robot mechs...
In conclusion they were reasonably smart to try and detract from the recent reveal shitstorm by not mentioning Kinect, TV and film functionality or any of the moronic, batshit ideas that make up the actual console. Can some potentially decent games make up for the most fucked up totalitarian console ever? It depends who you ask but personally i'm currently not convinced.