Microsoft has just finished up their E3 presentation and things went pretty well for the company. It was the first briefing of the show that actually managed to grab my attention and managed to show of a few surprises, even with all the leaks over the past few weeks. The new Xbox One S model look neat, even if it looks like a dirt magnet, and the new Project Scorpio is cool, but I have a feeling consumers are going to be very confused come next holiday season. Remember that we saw this before with the Nintendo Wii U and the market not understanding what the darn thing was. Will the average consumer understand a new Xbox is coming next holiday season when a fancy new Slim is dropping this one?

As for the games things look quite fun. Killer Instinct adds some Gear of War love to the series and the Gears of War 4 gameplay looked neat. Personally it doesn’t look all that different from the last installments, but the games press online is saying it looks “incredible”, “amazing” and other buzzwords that make me wonder who their advertisers are. What really is neat is the new “Play Anywhere” feature that allows you to buy a compatible Xbox One game and play it on Windows 10 and vice versa. While this probably should have happened at launch (it could have cemented the large PC fanbase into camp Xbox) it’s nice to be able to buy one copy of a major game and play it where I want.

Something that passed right by me was the new Tekken 7 which looks to be adding some new features that have piqued my interest. A new story mode will blend cinematics and fighting into a seamless mix so that there is no break between the two.  I’m excited to see how this plays out and could see myself really digging it. Also, Akuma from Street Fighter is in a core Tekken game, so I’m wondering about the universe this takes place in.

Forza Horizon 3 looked really pretty. What, I’m not a big race fan as I hate driving, but it looks really nice. Unfortunately I was disappointing with the start of the trailer because I thought Microsoft was announcing a game about Kangaroos and not cars. Also, who the hell drives a Ferrari on the beach? Seems like a really silly idea. Oh, and that fancy drop in from anywhere with your friends isn’t all that new. Test Drive cough Unlimited cough. We also saw some gameplay from Final Fantast 15, but I was more interested in the soundtrack than the actual gameplay that I’ll admit looked very pretty. One real surprise was to see so much time devoted to We Happy Few, a game that I have been following for some time. It’s been delayed, but the thing still looks as trippy as ever.

ReCore was an interesting title to feature, but, and this could just be me, it felt like it was running poorly up there. I’m not sure how to explain, but the game seemed very floaty and stuttery at points. Could just be me, but something about it felt off. Still, it had some really cool robot dogs so I’m willing to give it a chance on that basis alone. Dead Rising 4 also got a full trailer, but since we all knew about this from the leak it sort of took the wind out of Microsoft’s sails. I know the series is well-loved, but I can;t help to think that the fan-base isn’t as big as Microsoft thinks it is. I could be wrong. I usually am.

Scalebound looked like Final Fantasy 15 for a second before turning into an actual game (sick burn). Platinum Games knows how to do things big, but some things kind of irked me. Nothing that would take away from the game, but more and atheistic thing. The lead character loves to talk to himself and say everything that he’s doing (annoying) and when he gets serious he puts on his Beats By Dre knockoffs to get pumped. Seems like that would make fighting hard, but what do I know. The whole thing looks cool, but I couldn’t help to think that this is the Japanese version of those NBA commercials where basketball players put on their headphones right before training wicked hard, bro.

Microsoft then dropped State of Decay 2 which only served to show us how much we want another entry in the Left For Dead series. The game itself looks fine, but it just looks and feels like a poor mans copy of other games that have zombies in it. At least Microsoft has finally let RARE out from the basement to create a new game! I’m sure the guys and gals over there feel good about being taken off the kinect to do something, you know, that people want to play. And while the trailer to Sea of Thieves looked fine with some of that classic RARE charm, the gameplay trailer was a god damn nightmare. Whoever thought it was a good idea to face-cam people for the Sea of Thieves community (how is that a thing when the game doesn’t exist yet?) needs to be fired right away. A bunch of people screaming, being un-funny, and lacking any charm is the most distracting thing on the planet. I couldn’t even once focus on the gameplay because I was so engrossed by how un-natural these players were screaming like the Marki-Pies of the world.

Halo wars 2 was finally officially announced with the standard, overly serious, and artsy trailer that only a Halo game can throw at us. The team did also drop a gameplay trailer that looked really neat. As expected from last weeks leak Halo Wars 2 is having an open beta that will run during E3 week. You can download the game right now and get to playing. On the free game front Microsoft didn’t skimp out in the slightest. During the briefing they announced that the indie darling LIMBO would be free this week, as well as Tekken Tag Tournament 2. Not a bad way to show some love to Xbox fans.

We also saw some action from CD Projekt RED and their GWENT card game which was refreshing after seeing so many Magic and Hearthstone clones in the past few years and saw stuff on Minecraft, because if a company is going to spend a billion dollars to buy it, you better believe they are going to push it. All in all it was a solid presentation and all my jokes aside I did have a good time. GAMbIT will be at E3 all this week, so stay tuned here or follow us on twitter (Gambit_Magazine) to stay up to date on the news. We will be tweeting our thoughts and opinions without any corporate filter, so be ready for some fun!

Oh, and Microsoft announced Project Scorpio their new console that will be dropping in 2017. So, yeah, there’s that too.

Xbox One S

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J. Luis

J. Luis is the current Editor-In-Chief here at GAMbIT. With a background in investigative journalism his work encompasses the pop-culture spectrum here, but he also works in the political spectrum for other organizations.

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