Kurt Shintaku's Blog

As usual, here are my observations and photos from my quick perusal of E3.

HALO 4
There’s no question, upon entering the Microsoft booth, who the big dog is.  Halo 4 featured a massive theatre showing gameplay demos of the upcoming title, featuring a new enemy – the Forerunners – the apparent creators of the Halo ring world network.  Two things stand out about the demonstration and the upcoming title:

1) The Halo engine appear to have had, yet another, detail & frame rate upgrade.

2) Multiplayer is gonna be cwwwazzzzzy.

The line to get into the Halo 4 preview was around the booth and down the hall, with a wait time of more than 2 hours so regardless of what you read or hear about a lack of "attention” paid to Halo, I can assure you – there was a lottttttt of people waiting to see it.  So much so that I couldn’t get in.  Even when using my badge. Wah.

DANCE CENTRAL 3
The undisputed ‘best’ dance-oriented game on the market is Harmonix’ Dance Central.  The introduction of 2 player dancing in the last release, Dance Central 2, provided multilevel fun with major Top 40 titles from Florida, Lady Gaga, and other high profile performers. 

This year however, it’s clear that the emphasis is on improving the depth of the music in the catalog including what I think is exclusive license to much of Usher’s music and Usher’s dance moves.  There is also the introduction of the greatest dance hits from past eras going back to the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and 2000 decades.  They’ve also made some emphasis on changing the player avatar’s look and feel to embrace the era of the music being played.

I honestly wasn’t that enthused by the direction this title was headed until I heard the music they were showcasing and suddenly it made sense.  While other titles are double downing on current titles much like what we’re doing with Usher, we’re also grabbing rights to major floor hits like Gloria Gaynor’s, “I Will Survive”, “Doin’ the Butt”, & “Electric Slide”.  If you hear some of these songs, you can’t help but start tapping your foot.  You might not like Katy Perry… but you’ll like these songs & the proof is in the album sales.