E3 2014: Microsoft Edition

Hello and welcome to the E3 Roundup of each press conference today, starting off with the Microsoft Press Conference. After last E3, Microsoft was publicly humiliated by Sony for their Xbox One policies. To say that they're still reeling from what happened last year is an understatement. They had a lot to prove at E3 this year, and more or less, they pulled it off.

Microsoft said going into E3 this year that it would be all about the games, and they were right. There weren't any business executives listing off facts about the Xbox One, but instead just games after games announced. Some we knew about, like Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Halo 5, but there were a few fun little additions thrown in too. The biggest surprise was the announcement that Microsoft would be releasing The Master Chief Collection, featuring Halo 1-4 for the Xbox One, with Halo 2 in particular given an HD remake with multiplayer on Halo 2 brought back to life, having 4000 gamerscore, 100 multiplayer maps, and the beta for Halo 5: Guardians. To say this was a huge announcement is a complete understatement. I'm not even a fan of Halo, but hot damned fans must be pissing themselves over this announcement. 

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We also were shown a lot of previously announced games like Dragon Age: Inquisition, which looks great,  Assassin's Creed Unity got its first demo with 4 player co-op, and Project Spark had a new showing, though I personally don't care about it. My favorite of the preannounced games was Sunset Overdrive, which looks adrenaline fueled, crazy, over the top, action packed, and just plain fun. Insomniac knows how to put life into games, and this is no exception. I may just be tempted to get an Xbox One is this game is as good as I think it is. 

But on to the new stuff! What has Microsoft been cooking this past year for 2014 and 2015? Well, how's about a new Tomb Raider for you? Yes, Rise of the Tomb Raider was announced at the Microsoft press conference in a rather chilling trailer. No gameplay was shown, but it most definitely exists and we'll hopefully get more details about it in the week and it most likely will be for both PS4 and Xbox One. We also had the reveal of Phantom Dust, a game on the original Xbox that's getting a new sequel exclusively on Xbox One. I don't know much about the original game, but the trailer did look very appealing. Platinum Games showed of Scalebound, which looks to be a crazy action game where you kill giant monsters and dragons in a jungle. Looks interesting to say the least. And finally, they closed the press conference with the reveal of a new Crackdown in a kickass, over the top trailer that harkens back to the original and not Crackdown 2.

On the whole, they were asked to deliver games, and they did. They needed to have a bunch of games to sell the console and they most certainly did. And not even any Kinect games! There weren't any must have games for me personally, but I'm certainly pleased with what they had to show. 

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