Rock, Paper, Shotgun

By Alec Meer on June 6th, 2011 at 5:31 pm.

EDIT: FINISHED! EA liveblogging – actually live from LA – from 8, tune in then.

H! I’m not in LA. I’m in Brighton. It’s much nicer here. I have a glass of beer in my hand and a cat sat next to me. Aw. It also means I have a much better view of the Microsoft press conference than anyone at the Microsoft press conference, because I’m watching a live-streaming video of it from the comfort of my own home. Granted, it’s primarily an Xbox-centric conference, but stuff like Skyrim, Bioshock Infinite and Mass Effect 3 should be showing up in it, so I shall watch them then say things about them RIGHT HERE. Yes!
Edit – now with proper liveblogging software. Simply watch below to see what I say LIVEish – no refreshing required. Editedit – It’s over. See the whole horrorshow below.

AS IT HAPPENED:

17.30: I’m watching a video on GameTrailers. Men keep talking, but I’ve not see any games yet.

17.32: It’s Modern Warfare 3! Some soldiers are muttering at each other. Now there’s diving. And the word FOLLOW in big letters. Does that mean the player has to follow the other man? In a Call of Duty game? Never!

17.34: Still diving. Still dark. Still muttering. Still following. THIS IS THE WORST COD EVER!

17:35: Oh, we’re above water at last. There’s a bloody big city out there -New York, presumably. Looks immense and devastated, very impressive but then that might just be the low bitrate talking. Now there is shooting. The shooting of men, by other men.

17.37: Corridors! How I’ve waited for the day that a highly-anticipated first-person shooter featured corridors.

17.38: Lots of scripting and incidental animation. Does seem a little more lavish than earlier CoDs, even if it’s quite obviously a pretty similar experience.

17.39: The waters outside New York are a mess of flaming metal. Looks like it’s basically doing 21st century Pearl Harbour, with you in a speedboat darting around the devastation and picking off Bad Men in Bad Speedboats.

17.40: Developers are on-stage now, and that TwoFourSixEightZero guy or whatever he’s called. They are truly humbled by how much you like/buy Call of Duty, apparently.

17.42: Ok, it’s going to be loads of stuff about how many Xboxes they’ve sold now. Expect radio silence here for a little bit, unless I hear some marketing speak so insidious that I just can’t help but post it.

17.43: Oops, my mistake -they’re onto Tomb Raider now. A British man in an upsettingly salmon-coloured shirt is introducing it.

17.43: Lara’s held captive, strung upside down and making what are either gasping or sex noises. The player seems to need to sway her left and right, until she moves into some fire so her ropes burn away and she falls to the ground, into a puddle full of water and bones. One of these bones jams into her thigh, and she rips it out with a frankly horrible sound.

17.45: Can’t tell what the enemies she’s fighting are. Appears to be topless shouting men. Is she on a British beach holiday? Anyway: weaponless, she manages to kick him in the teeth and escape.

17:46: Lots of use of fire – she makes her own torch from a handy brazier and uses it to see in this dark, watery grotto thing. It’s full of huge contraptions and raddled walkways that look like the towns in Fallout 3.

17.49: And she’s outside. There’s some sort of heartbreaking piano music, and huge views of a crashed galleon as she climbs a hill. The dev’s promising open environments and survival mechanics. Interesting and lavish stuff, definitely a true departure from previous TRs.

AND THEN I SWITCHED TO SOME LIVEBLOGGING TECH THAT SORT OF WORKED BUT MESSED UP COMMENTS: