Looking at: Xbox E3 2015

#XboxE3 recap: Mods for console Minecraft goes Tupac The sister in Gone Home eloped into space Ambition everywhere Ceiling car

— Gav (@miracleofsound) June 15, 2015

I'll give Microft one thing, they didn't skimp on the games this year. I don't think the mentioned the streaming capabilites of the X1 once, save for a mention that 360 games will be able to be streamed. Good on you Microsoft, glad you remembered your audience this year. Alright, let's take a look. This will probably be more rapid fire, as it was a longer show, and the EA conference starts in a few hours.

Halo 5

Of course MS would start the show with Halo 5. It looks largely unchanged from Halo 4, which wasn't that different, oh you get it. What was nice was the cast of returning characters, like Buck from ODST. It looks like the story this time concerns hunting down Master Chief and the Arbiter was mentioned so he might make a return to. As for the shooting, it's Halo, they managed to get the shooting right the first time around, although there were a few new weapons teased.

There was also a short preview of Halo Warzone, which sounds like Halo meets Battlefield. That sounds pretty neat, and the Halo franchise would probably work very well in that setting.

Recore

One of the new announced games. This was only a pre-render, so there's not many details yet. It's being made by the director of the Metroid Prime games, and involves a young girl and a robot core that can activate different machines.

Xbox 360 backwards compatibility and new controller

Those fucking liars. Ok, this is a good thing, sure, since it puts the X1 way aheadof the PS4 in my, and a lot of people's books. This also might stymie the flood of HD remakes, but unlikely. What I hate about this is they fucking lied this whole time, and only did this because the X1 is selling like shit. Whatever, good for them I guess.

They also announced the Xbox Elite controller, which might be the douchiest peripheral ever made.

Fallout 4

The new details on Fallout 4 weren't that much more then what we saw last night, in fact the begining of Todd Howard's speech was almost word-for-word. What we did see was pretty neat, including some more Power Armor footage and shooting. The shooting looks much tighter then Fallout 3, and I still can't say how very excited I am for this game.

It seems like there might actually be a reason to buy a Bethesda game on X1, thanks to the promise of PC mods being available on the X1. I'm skeptical since this sounds like a prelude to mod DRM policies, since on PC we have a variety of different mod services. We'll see.

EA

EA talked about EA Access, a service I had forgotten existed. They're adding Titanfall to it, probably because no one plays Titanfall, and Dragon Age Inquisition because people do play that, but don't use EA Access.

They also announced Plants VS Zombies Garden Warfare 2. Again, another pre-render so no details.

Forza 6 and Dark Souls 3

Forza 6 hit the stage with an actual Ford car being lowered down, and the president of Ford Motors speaking. The game looks pretty nice, being a high class racer, but the footage was likely pre-rendered.

Dark Souls 3 was actually announced a few days ago, although it's great to get a confirmation. Again, I'm uneasy at the idea of more Dark Souls, but this one will have the original director back, so I'm willing to wait and see.

The Division and Rainbow 6 Siege

The Division made another showing, but didn't really show any gameplay. They did announce a beta in December, so this game at least still exists.

R6 Siege did show some gameplay, although it was poorly edited into a trailer. It looks like a much more tactical version of Counter Strike, and I'm interested to see how it works in practice. It'll also ship with R6 Vegas 1 and 2 for the X1, so that's nice.

Gigantic and Indie games

There's a game called Gigantic in development, and it involves characters and monsters. That's all I got from the trailer.

Last year Sony touted their indie developers, so it makes sense that X1 would retaliate this year. There was a lot of games talked about, but the most interesting ones are listed below:

Tacoma - Gone Home in Space. Hopefully they remember that a game needs things happening, and the trailer already made it look better then Gone Home.

Ashen - some sort of DayZ clone, minus faces and zombies. There were weird tree creatures though.

Beyond Eyes - an exploration puzzle game about a blind girl. This actually sounds awesome, and I've always wanted to play a game where you're blind, since I feel like it challenges the designer to be creative.

CupHead - a platformer announced a few years ago, based on 1930's cartoons like Popeye. The older build for this game looked like a brawler, but now it looks more like a shooterm which I'm cool with too.

DayZ - DayZ is coming to X1. Hopefully this will kickstart production on it, since right now it's floundering.

Dean Hall - Dean Hall is up to something, and it's an MMO, and it's going to be on X1 and W10.

Xbox 1 early access - taking a cue from Steam, X1 will now feature a version of Early Access, allowing players to play beta builds of games. It's launching today, so we'll see how it fares.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

I hate that name still. No shooting was shown off, and it looks to be very similar in gameplay to TR14. We'll see if they can manage to make a game worth playing, or if this will be another decline for Lara Croft.

One thing we do know is, like TR14, Lara is far from sacred, as it looks like she's going to get beat to hell all over again.

Rare

A collection of Rare classics, and also Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts for some reason, all on the X1.

Even better is an actual, honest to god new Rare game, some sort of pirate based MMO called Sea of Thieves. Even if it's just a multiplayer version of Pirates! it still looks cool.

Fable Legends

I gotta be honest, I figured out it was Fable then took a piss break. Sorry, but the Fable games have been shit lately, so I don't have the highest hopes for this.

VR and Hololense

They kept talking about VR headset technology and touted their partnerships with Valve and Oculus Rift, but the big show-stopper was the Hololense.

Using a special camera, they showed a player creating a holographic image of a Minecraft world and interacting with it. I'm very, VERY skeptical about this especially after everything that went wrong with the Kinect, and at best this technology is in early beta. We'll have to wait and see if this really is another step in the gaming world, or just more flailing arms in the living room.

Gears of War 

First, they announced a Gears of War HD collection, or at least I think it's a collection. At the very least it's the first GoW game in HD, running at 60fps.

The final announcement of the show was Gears 4. From what I could see, it looks very similar to the old games, but with a new protagonist and new enemies. I say "from what I could see" because the gamma was turned so fucking low I really couldn't make anything out.

That's all for Microsoft. I need some lunch, so join me again at 4pm for the EA conference.