June 6, 2011 by Paul Curtin
Microsoft started their media briefing off strong today showcasing titles like Modern Warfare 3 and Gears of War 3; there was even a new look at last year’s Codename: Kingdoms, now renamed Ryse, which will run on the powerful Crytek engine (Crysis) and use Kinect’s motion technology.
Unfortunately, like the Miami Heat in Game 2 of the NBA Finals, Microsoft’s briefing quickly started to fall apart towards the end as they failed to announce anything new and revolutionary and instead showed off a ton of new games for children that seemed like what Nintendo showed off when debuting the Wii, sans the controller. Mass Effect 3 and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier showcased some innovative new ways to to bring Kinect’s motion and voice recognition into their games, but motions like shooting looked awkward when being performed in the demo.
There was surprisingly no announcement on the rumored Gears of War: Exile Kinect game. The Halo Anniversary Edition remake was no surprise with news breaking on that a couple weeks ago, and the trailer wasn’t too impressive. I was hoping for a true Halo remastering that took the graphics to the next level, not Halo 1 using Halo: Reach‘s engine, which is still behind in the industry. I’m sure fans of the original will be happy with the updated remake, but Microsoft needed at least one big announcement to save their boring briefing, and that came in the form of a Halo 4 teaser trailer they showed to close out their presentation.
The trailer for Halo 4 looks absolutely beautiful, but shows no in-game footage. Halo 4 is not being made by Bungie and will be made by 343 Studios with a teased release date of 2012. Halo 4 is said to be the first of a new trilogy, so it looks like we’ll be seeing Halo 5 and 6 too. For those wondering what’s going on in the trailer, it looks as if Halo 4 will start off where the post-credits stinger in Halo 3 left off.
