E3 2010: EA Keynote Impressions

Due to circumstances beyond our control at Just Stuff & Nonsense we weren't able to attend E3 this year, however thanks to the wonders of the internet it has been possible to watching the keynotes live online. Here are my impressions of the EA conference. Electronic Arts presented ten games, and rather than doing a play by play as we did for the Microsoft Keynote I will just look at those ten titles.


Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit

The event was opened by a trailer for Criterion's take on Need For Speed, and it looks like they're taking everything they learned when making Burnout and will be applying it here. The trailer was a good introduction to the return to the roots of the series, super fast sports cars on the run from souped up police cars, and at one point a helicopter swept in and dropped off a stinger trap. The focus of the trailer was on the players, every few seconds it would pause and bring up the details of the person in the car. It was very stylish and made me want to watch The Blues Brothers.
Before delving into the gameplay side of things a breif moment was taken to show how the online features would integrate into the game and they were touting it as revolutionary, but in reality it was just a varient of the ticker system Burnout already has. Instead of being just scolling text the information rises from the darkness on the main menu, this may tell you who is online, or that someone has beaten your best time, it will also bring up photos of your rivals.
Then it was time for a look at the online gameplay. After a brief load (it must have felt excruciatingly long when stood on stage) a cutscene started playing, this opened with the chase already in progress. The camera followed a fleet of police cars chasing the other players yellow sports car, using the same effect as the trailer had the action paused mid action and bought up the details of each player, it's extremely stylish. The camera from the cutscene slowly rotates until it is behind the car and suddenly they're in control of the action, the graphics are very good quality and look like a more refined and advanced version of Burnout Paradise. It looks like both sides have power-ups assigned to the D-pad, it was hard to make out the symbols but it looks like the police had access to Stinger Traps, Helicopters and Road Blocks, the other icons weren't so easy to decode. The gameplay was as fast as you'd expect it to be from the creators of Burnout Paradise, and seems to be about trading a lot of paintwork, eventually the police driver was able to hit the required about of damage and the criminal's car was sent into an explosive spin with lots of flying and crumpling parts.
Being a big fan of Burnout it's good to see that Criterion didn't just settle on a straight up street racing game, it looks very good and parallels to their magnum opus series will be unavoidable. The demonstration ended with a release date of November 16.

Dead Space 2

Before we can see any footage we are reminded that Dead Space was more than just a gaming franchise, it also had a spin off comics, an animated movie, and a Dead Space: Extraction, a Wii spin-off, while we were being told about these products and Dead Space 2's place among them there were screenshots in the background, all of which looked far superior to anything seen in the original game, Dead Space was a good looking game to begin with so the extra detail is particularly striking.
The gameplay section that was being shown took place in a church, it made a nice change to see the Isaac be somewhere other than an oppressive festering spaceship. Within seconds the game was back to its old tricks when a new type of enemy burst from the floor and started dragging Isaac along my his ankle in the exact same way the giant tentacle did in the first game. Once that had been fought off swarms of large headed wailing creatures jumped out, the design of these was pretty unpleasant and the sounds they made we also sufficiently creepy, a few were dispatched by having their heads knocked clean off and the rest had their limbs removed in the usual fashion. Gameplay seemed to be faster this time around, even Isaac seemed to be moving and aiming a little quicker, other than that though it was all very similar to everything we saw in the original. My main hope is that this was a section later in the game, or that it had been tweaked to include extra monsters, because the emphasis was much less on horror and more on fighting off hordes. The fight continued to the upper levels of the church, where more Necromorps launched surprise attacks, by way of - you guessed it; jumping out, once Isaac was out of the church and in an elevator it was clear that there is a lot more emphasis on different environments in the game, the elevator was very colourful, and the doors opened to reveal The Sprawl; the futuristic industrial city that the game will take place in. suddenly there was an attack from some kind of drone that opened fire with a machine gun, this was avoided by way of some serious button mashing, looks like there will be a larger variety of enemies in this game. The demo came to a close with Isaac tumbling down into a pit where a very large drooling Necromorph roared in his face, we were told that the demo would continue at the Sony Keynote and that the game will be released January 25.

Medal Of Honor (+ Bad Company 2 and EA Gun Club)

A very wise decision has been made with Medal Of Honor, the campaign and multiplayer are being developed separately by two different studios. The multiplayer duties will fall to Dice, and it is their work that was being displayed.
The demo was a 24 player deathmatch, and although they had a different name for it, there is no escaping the fact that this game looks a lot like Modern Warefare 2. Its a parallel I was hoping to avoid because its the first thing everyone will mention, but sadly I'm going to have to say it too, even the HUD looks like a variaton on Infinity Wards genre defining shooter. The only noticeable difference was the way kill scores are displayed, they flash up in a very bold and unique way above the crosshairs, but they're a little too distracting for their own good. Graphically there was no faulting the game, it may not be particularly distinct in its style but at least it looks good while it's trundling down the middle of the road. Medal Of Honor will be defined by the quality of it's single player experience, there was never any doubt that a Dice created multiplayer component would be extremely strong, which made the choice to favour this side of things at such a big event a little odd. A beta of the game will be available in the coming weeks, hopefully a more up close and personal time with the multiplayer allow us to see where it stands out.


Following the MOH demo, Dice's other multiplayer extravaganza Battlefield: Bad Company 2 received a bit of fresh news. There will be an expansion pack in the near future; Battlefield: Bad Company Vietnam. Nothing was shown beyond a brief teaser that essentially consisted of a helicopter flying through a very lush and beautiful Vietnamese jungle and swooping over a small village engulfed in smoke. It's a no brainer to assume that Bad Company Vietnam will be a multiplayer only title, and its announcement explains why there has been no new content for Bad Company 2 since release (we're not acknowledging new outfits of maps being unlocked for different modes as new content).

If you play a lot of EA Sports games you may have been aware of a feature called EA Sports World that tracked all the games you owned and based upon accomplishments in those games unlocked rewards for an avatar that you never really saw. After the BCV teaser it was announced that a more practical version is being rolled out for shooters called EA Gun Club. Gun Club will follow your progress in games such as Dead Space 2 and Bad Company 2, and will reward loyal players with early access to beta's, demos, news and other things that everyone stopped listening to once the words 'beta' and 'demo' had been said. Essentially it revolves around buying more and being rewarded for it, but it's always good to receive a little extra for something that we probably would have bought anyway. The final announcement was that users of EA Gun Club will get access to the Medal Of Honor demo June 17, everyone else will have to wait around ten days on top of that.

EA Sports MMA

Peter Moore was unsurprisingly the host for the EA Sports section of the keynote, I'll save you some suspense right now; there were no new tattoos this year! MMA has been in development for two years now apparently, but there was next to no footage to be seen during it's section of the presentation. We were presented with a few screenshots and some bulletpoint statistics about the game such as; the control method requires accuracy and timing rather than button mashing, the fact there are lots of fighting styles from around the world, there are many global locations and variants of cage fighting in the game and finally revealing that the cover stars are Randy Couture and Fedor Emelianeko. The bigger focus of the presentation was the revolutionary take on online gaming that MMA will feature called EA Live Broadcast. The concept behind Live Broadcast is to make playing online more like competing in real sports, they will be implementing the ability to set up a Facebook style page where the player can build a persona for themselves including a section where they'll be able to upload 'smack talk' videos as well as get involved in real life rivalries with other players. If a player is able to build up enough fame for themselves behind the scenes while also proving their in game prowess they may be invited to take part in a live online game that will be broadcast to all owners of MMA and will feature live commentary from real world commentators. To add a little incentive (and probably to detract from the embarrassment of talking smack into a webcam) there will be actual prizes up for grabs. It was disappointing that there wasn't even so much as a trailer for the game, let alone a gameplay demo, so the quality of the game remains a little up in the air.

EA Sports Active 2

The Wii exclusive title is going multi-platform, and it's shaking things up by making everything wireless on the PS3 and Wii while utilising Kinect on the 360. Unfortunately after the much more impressive Your Shape: Fitness Evolved presentation by Microsoft earlier in the day Active 2 was looking a little last gen before it has even been released. The graphics were particularly poor on the Wii version and didn't seem to be utilising the little power that the system has, the PS3 and 360 versions were passable but by no means revolutionary. The wireless nature means that there is a far greater amount of exercises and stretches that can be achieved without the limitation of the tiny Nunchuck lead in the way any more. The other feature that was being touted heavily was the newly included link to easportsactive.com which means that regardless of platform (but depending on if you're connected to the net obviously) the game will automatically upload your workout statistics to the website where the user will be able to see how they are progressing and can share their progress with other users as well as joining fitness clubs that will set goals and bring a social element to the game. The kinect version of the game will feature 1:1 movement recognition, but there was some pretty noticeable lag between the demonstrators movements and the game repeating them. All three versions of the game use a heartbeat sensor and relay the data back into the games HUD, in addition to this sensor the Wii and PS3 versions of the game require a motion sensor strapped to the leg and arm. After demonstrating some of the activities in the game such as mountain biking and boxing it was announced that the game would be released across all platforms on November 16. The online aspect certainly has some appeal and may provide the additional incentive that other games in this rapidly expanding genre lack, if your console of choice is the PS3 or Wii then Active 2 looks like it will probably be the fitness game to go for, on the 360 Your Shape still looks like it will make better use of Kinect.

Madden NFL 11
Peter Moore returned to the stage and introduced his special guest to talk about Madden NFL 11, one of the best quaterbacks ever to play the game: Joe Montana. Moore explained that the buzz words for this years Madden are 'Simpler, Quicker, Deeper' a lot of effort has gone into making the game easier for newcomers without alienating the All-Madden elite, the biggest step towards this is the feature that has been coined 'Gameflow' which puts the player into the huddle, giving them a coach shouting into their ear with the play to perform. It does actually look like it will make the game far more accessible, for over twenty years the play call screen has been the same across all of the Madden games, which is great for anyone who knows what they are doing, but to someone with a casual interest looking to pick up the pad and play a quick game as the Detroit Lions it isn't particularly user friendly. Peter Moore asked Joe Montana to talk him through a play, a rematch of this years Superbowl "between the New Orleans Saints and the Miami Colts"... something tells me that he may be slighting feigning his interest in the sport. The virtual coach doesn't just suggest the plays he will also explain why he has picked the play and what the player needs to do once the ball is snapped, which in the case of the Seattle Seahawks will probably be along the lines of "try not suck". Vetran fans will still be possible to call audible changes on the line of scrimmage, or if they really can't stand the Gameflow mechanic will be able to switch back to the traditional play-book. An embarrassing video that was aiming for funny but felt hideously awkward ran through the features of the game and introduced 3 Vs 3 co-operative play, the ability to create your own game strategy and play-book in advance and introduced Gus Johnson as Chris Collinsworth's broadcast partner for the game. There wasn't any new news about the game and anyone with a slight interest in the franchise already knew about the features they were touting, so given the room was full of journalists (whose job it is to know these things) it felt like a complete waste of a segment.

The Sims 3
The Sims 3 is coming to home consoles. This segment was very long winded, and didn't provide any information about the console ports at all, however it did remind me that we are essentially terrible people, and that The Sims 3 caters to our darker sides. This again felt like a completely wasted segment.

Crysis 2

Business picked back up again when Cevat Yerli introduced us to some Crysis 2 footage, and it was completely worth sitting through the Madden and Sims presentations. The graphics were brilliant, more so when a button prompt appeared on screen and it became obvious that this was a console version of the game. For a console title it looked out of this world, the explosions were extremely impressive as were the reflections of the action on Grand Central Station's marble floor, friendly units were engaging enemy units in a small scale skirmish around the station while the player manned that staple of a first persona action game; the mounted machine gun turret. Yerli explained that the nanosuit the player wears offers three completely different ways to play the game, they can switch to a stealth mode and completely disappear from sight, taking their time to carefully flank and eliminate enemies, or they can switch the suit to battle mode which essentially tanks up the player, offers them extra armour and opens up the ability to play far more aggressively. The third mode of the suit is a tactical mode, this is the middle ground between the two suit modes and offers advanced features such as a predator style heat vision to allow a more careful but still direct approach to the action. During the demo the player was fighting off a series of smaller enemies and a giant alient robot that smashed through a window, the shattered and the debris flying everywhere when he did so looked truly brilliant as did the way the creature unfolded itself into the room taking out almost all of the friendly characters in one swipe. Things started to get a tiny bit generic at this point with the player finding a conveniently placed missile launcher crate containing what seemed to be unlimited ammo. During this missile based back and forth Yerli said that the game is best described as a choreographed sandbox, so it will feature all the freedom of a sandbox game but with the intensity and focus that is usually reserved for linear experiences. The lighting effects during this fight were spectacular, the entire room glowed blue and bloomed with light when the robot as firing it's special attack, each individual bullet it fired carried with it a moving light source that seemed to effect all the shadowing around it, the game is made great not only by the overall visual quality but by the attention to these little details. The demo came to a close with an attack on a building by the invaders, after a few rounds of fire the building started to tumble, the player jumped onto a Humvee and a Cloverfield style first person escape video started to play, it was a brilliant end to a overall fantastic demo.
After the gameplay demo was over a pre-rendered trailer played in full 3D, all 3 versions of the game will support stereoscopic 3D, assuming you have the appropriate hardware, when the game is released this holiday.

Bulletstorm

Cliffy B and two associates bought a gameplay demonstration of Bulletstorm to the stage, if you haven't heard of this game before the most important thing to keep in mind is that it doesn't take itself seriously at all. The game is about revelling in the excitement and fun of running around with a giant gun blowing people to pieces, it rewards brutal experimentation with bonus for impressive and unique kills, the way it was eloquently described was "you do cool shit, to unlock cool shit, to do more cool shit". The demo opened on a some form of a quarry high up in the mountains, it looked absolutely brilliant, the colours were vibrant, the buildings and architecture looked really unique it was a refreshing change to the subdued gritty realism of other games that use the Unreal Engine. The lead character kicked a large vault style door open sending it flying to the other side of the room, squashing an enemy in it's path, he then shot a couple of others and kicked two into exposed power cables on the walls. Every time a kill happened a bit of dialogue popped up over the enemies head (such as Fire In the Hole when an enemy got hit in his posterior) and a score in the corner continued to climb. The weapons in the demo were the standard types of FPS guns albeit with fancy skins, but the hero did have some sort of stasis whip that let him throw enemies around in slow motion or tear up bits of the scenery to use as makeshift weapons. The dialogue is a cheesy swear-fest with some of the lines falling a little flat but majority of them raise a wry smile, if this game took itself seriously then it would just be considered outright bad dialogue, but luckily it is able to avoid taking the Rogue Warrior route. The demo ended with an on rails section featuring a giant cutting wheel hurtling towards the characters escaping train, the dust that was being thrown up by this along with the hundreds of explosions looked fantastic, just before the wheel hit the train the demo came to a close with a screen informing that the game will be released February 22. The game looks like it will be a lot of fun, as long as it doesn't fall into the trap of having too many repetitions of the cool kill moments (every level having re-skinned conveniently placed spikes on the wall for example) and can keep things varied throughout the campaign.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Such a disappointing end to the show following the last two games, information was low on the ground and there wasn't any in game footage, just four screenshots. Every player will get their own spaceship in the game, this ship will be their base of operations and will be in some way customisable. PvP will take place in 'warzones' that will be based on classic Star Wars locations, the one they were announcing today was Alderann. This announcement was followed by a CG trailer, it was a fairly good watch and capture some of the essence of the franchise and how it will relate to the game, but was no substitute for any real information or a demo of the game in action.

Overall the good outweighed the bad at the EA Keynote, Need For Speed, Crysis 2 and Bulletstorm were the absolute best titles at the show. It was a shame that time was taken up by re-hashing already published Madden and Sims 3 information, when we could have seen another two games, a look at the new pro mode in Rock Band 3 for example would have kept the pacing of the presentation going instead of having a very noticeable lull in the middle.

Don't forget to check out our Microsoft Keynote coverage. We will be covering the Nintendo and Sony conferences as well, and keep checking back for all the most interesting news from E3 throughout the week.

E3 2010: Microsoft Keynote impressions. Part 2: Kinect

For the sake of length this article has been broken into two parts, for a look at the rest of the keynote check out part 1. 

After the Halo trailer its was time for some hands on time with Kinect. Ron Forbes was demonstrating how we will be able to use the new technology with the existing dashboard; to log onto his account all he had to do was wave, within about a second he was logged in, a second wave bought up a simplified version of the 360 menu. The new 'Kinect Hub' menu allows everything to be selected by moving your hand around, if you pause over an item for a few seconds it will open that item, so far so EyeToy, things get more impressive though with the introduction of the voice controls, to enter a command he first said "Xbox" this bought up the command phrases for the applications, he then said "Zune" and was taken into the Zune menu, it all happened very quickly and didn't seem to have any noticeable lag. He then started up a movie, using his hands again he showed off how easy it is to fast forward and rewind with simple hand gestures, as well as some precision tuning. We also got to see some simple voice command examples such as "Xbox, pause" and "Xbox, play" both of which had the results you'd expect from those commands, again without any noticeable lag, he then demonstrated using voice commands to switch to music and used similar controls there as well. 

We were then treated to a demonstration of Video Kinect, this was always going to be the hardest part to sell of all the features and I was surprised how much time they dedicated to it, the video quality was very good, and there were a few neat touches such as being able to see the weather information for the area the other person was in and the ability to being up videos to watch together. The coolest feature was the use of Kinects motorised base for head tracking, when the person moves out of shot the camera follows them, it was very cool to watch, and was the highlight of a segment that otherwise screamed 'webcam chat'.

This was followed by what can only be described as mixed news depending on what country you're from, if you're from the States rejoice because you'll be getting ESPN for free if you have Xbox Live Gold, if you live anywhere else in the world I'd hold back on that excitement because this is looking like Netflix all over again. Anyway, for those who will be getting it the ESPN option looks fantastic, access to 3500 sporting events, either on demand or live and most of which will be in HD. Again Kinect offers voice control and includes some clever features such as being able to call out who you are rooting for and have it logged against all the other people who are watching live, as well as being able to participate in some trivia quizzes or even request a replay! All ESPN.com features will be available when watching a game as well.

Kudo Tsunoda walks on stage, and he wasn't wearing sunglasses! Only kidding, of course he was wearing sunglasses... He explained that he would be our anchor for the Kinect section of the keynote, and then left the stage, leaving in his place a little girl. She called for her pet tiger cub who excitedly bounded onto the screen, the entire segment was absolutely adorable. She demonstrated how she could tickle it, or make it do tricks, then in a cruel twist she hid from the poor animal, at which point he pressed his paws against the screen and looked around for her, whining, the girl jumped back out and the little tiger cub got really excited. I realise how silly this all sounds but it was a really cute demonstration of the Kinect's tech, towards the end of the demonstration she giggled "go and get your jump rope" she didn't say it in standard voice command style as everyone else had previously, and yet the tiger came back with a jump rope clenched between it's teeth. Its worth pointing out the the graphics were really good, the realistic but cartoony faced tiger was fantastic, this looks like a toy you're going to buy for yourself but pretend it's for your daughter, trust me. After a further play with the tiger it was time for the heart warming scene to come to an end, Kudo returned to the stage and explained that the game is called Kinectimals and will feature 40 pets and 30 different activities.

Next up we got to see Kinect Sports and Joyride, the observant among you may remember that Joyride was announced last year as a free title for XBLA, no idea if it will still be free but it's Kinect only now. Kinect Sports had a rather cool feature where you could hype up the crowd on the title screen, there's absolutely no purpose to it at all, but being able to initiate Mexican waves and get a stadium going wild just by lifting your arms is something that most gamers secretly aspire to I'd imagine. The actual game mode they demonstrated was the 200mtr hurdles, and basically involved running on the spot and jumping when your avitar reached the hurdles. The graphics looked fairly good again, and it it's always nice to see support for the Avatars, but it is really just a minigame compilation much like that other motion controlled sports game with 'Sports' in the title. The other sports included in the final release are Bowling, Boxing, Table Tennis, Volley Ball and Javelin.
Joyride made similar use of Avatars and simplistic gameplay, steering is handled by holding your hands in front of yourself as if holding a fake steering wheel, you have to push your hands forward to boost and move your hips to drift, it is possible to do tricks by posing when your car is in the air. It didn't look very good as far as graphics are concerned and the way Kinect had been implemented looked lazy, these two were by far the least inspiring of the Kinect titles.
The next title that was presented, Kinect Adventures!, just managed to avoid being dropped into the uninspiring category by having a couple of cool features. Again the game centres around mini games, and essentially involved jumping on the spot in a variety of different game locations, the most impressive feature was the way the game instantly split into splitscreen mode when another player jumped into the play area, it also took pictures during gameplay and presented them in the way a rollercoaster does at the end of the ride, but this is something EyeToy games have been doing for years now. 

When the Ubisoft logo appeared on screen I felt a faint twinge of excitement that we might have gotten to actually see a 'proper' kinect game, the excitement faded away instantly when the trailer began and it became clear we were looking at some kind of fitness game. The actual title of the project is called Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, and despite my initial reservations it actually ended up looking really impressive. The games demonstrator was Felicia Williams, Ubisoft's international brand manager, when she stood in front of Kinect she was rendered as a 3d orange model stood in a room filled with brightly coloured exercise balls, she was able to interact with these and kicked a few away to demonstrate this. The system then began to do a comprehensive scan of her, this was cool, but also kind creepy, there was something very Terminator about the way it showed a skeleton under her skin and the started reeling off statistics about her body. She explained that this scan was so that the system could remember her, base routines around her body shape, and so that it could customise the menus specifically for her, sure enough all of the menu items were placed within her reach, its a small feature but it was very intuitive. The first real activity had a virtual instructor next to her on-screen orange model, it was simply a case of doing the same movements as the instructor, just like a workout video, unlike a workout video the game provided feedback such as 'you need to lift your knee higher' to make sure she was actually doing the exercise right. Next up was a block breaking combat game, this placed a grid in front of the player and it was a simple case of kicking or punching the blocks away, it looked really responsive and fairly fun to do. The final part of the demonstration revolved around yoga, in the same way as before the game advised on how to adjust her pose to best match that of the instructor, it was possible during this to see the estimation of where the game thought her bones and joints were, it did look very accurate. 

Next up the Harmonix logo flashed up on screen and we were treated to a girl playing their new game Dance Central, it looked a lot like the Wii game Just Dance, but with a lot more potential. The girl's dancing was incredible, but it was hard to tell if the character on screen was replicating her movements or doing some pre-canned animations, regardless the game did look a lot of fun but also very daunting to someone like me who has no type of dancing talent at all. Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos then walked out on stage and explained that Dance Central is the natural progression from dance mat games of the past, he's probably right and I can see this being a massive hit with the Just Dance style crowd, he then ran through a few of the artists who will feature in the game; Lady Gaga, The Beastie Boys, No Doubut and Mia, a lot of the songs in game will feature the dance moves featured in their music videos, hopefully that means we'll be re-creating the Sabotage video in the near future from the comfort of our own homes. The character models look like they have been lifted out of the Rock Band, the HUD features a boom box that fills with stars and displays the score multiplier  as well as a rotating wheel on the right hand side of the screen that shows the current and upcoming dance moves, it is in essence a dancing version of Rock Band. Finally my fears of humiliation in the world of bedroom dancing (take from that expression what you will) were laid to rest when another member of Harmonix demonstrated the 'break it down' mode which takes every dance move and in a method similar to Your Shape advises you on how to change your posture to achieve each step.

There will be 15 titles available for Kinect when it launches November 4, all but 2 of which look like they are going to be sports / fitness games. This was the most disappointing aspect of Kinect, the technology looks very solid, but there aren't any release titles to excite core gamers, in fact a couple of the titles that were up on screen looked like standard Wii shovelware, hopefully there will be some innovative must have titles soon after release.

Things started to look up when the Star Wars theme started to play, and I can happily admit that I was getting pretty excited about what was going to follow. My excitement was burned away ina  few seconds by some awful pre-rendered on rails footage of a Jedi swinging a lightsaber that seemed to be just tapping stormtroopers on the head causing them ragdoll into little piles. There wasn't any indication of how the the game will control, but judging by the over the top nature of the animations its fairly safe to asume we'll thrusting our arms forward to use force powers and swinging them to use the lightsaber/ wiffle ball bat. The trailer concluded with Darth Vader stepping out of an imperial transport and swinging for the protagonist, hopefully everything on display was just a quick pre-rendered mock up of how the final mechanics will work.

After the Star Wars trailer two members of Turn 10 come on stage to show off what again looked like a tech demo for Forza Kinect (no actual title was given). The driving was far more solid than that seen in Joyride, and was handled in the same way with outstretched arms on the steering wheel, in a rather impressive touch when the person playing turned his head the head of the in game driver turned as well thanks to the head tracking technology. The graphics were undeniably up the the usual Forza quality, although the gameplay was a very simple matter of passing as many cars as possible, it was a good demo of how the tech might work in an actual racing game, hopefully this will be a part of Forza 4 and not a stand alone game. They then cut to a Ferrari sat in the middle of a desert, again Kinect's head tracking features were being used to allow the user to look around the car, when he leaned in the camera leaned in for a closer view, when he crouched down the camera couched down and by holding his hand over a feature of the car he was able to bring up a little cutscene that gave details of that feature such as the angles of the headlights... which looked a lot better than it sounds! The best moment of this section if the demo was when the he walked round to the side of the car, reached out and opened the door and then was able to get into the car to look around the interior. The rendering inside was fantastic, and the head tracking did allow for a lot of interaction and exploration of the vehicle, the demo ended when he started the engine, but it did look unlikely you'd be able to actually start driving the car once you were inside.

That bought the Kinect presentation to a close. As I mentioned earlier the technology looks utterly fantastic, it's a really exciting device and has the potential to make a big impact on the way games are played. Unfortunately it wasn't put to very good use at all, there seems to be a lot of focus on ditching the controller and playing catch-up with the Wii, hopefully some developers will realise that features such as voice recognition and headtracking would really compliment a lot of existing genres. Imagine an RPG that was able to read expressions and react to voice commands or a first person shooter with head tracking, throw in some 3D glasses and there is massive potential for something amazing to be done with this technology. As soon as we possibly can we will be getting some hands on time with Kinect and we'll let you know our impressions.

If you haven't already done so, don't forget to check out part 1 of the Microsoft Conference for a look at some of the core gaming experiences coming out soon. We will be covering the EA, Nintendo and Sony conferences as well, so keep checking back for more E3 news throughout the week.