Far Cry Weapon Mod

E3 Day One: A good day for gamers (poll)

Microsoft had some great announcements, but most of them leaked out. The highlight of the day was that Microsoft announced that it will launch Halo 4 in 2012 and will launch a remake of the classic Halo Combat Evolved game from 2001 later this year. The Halo 4 game picks up where Halo 3 left off and includes Master Chief and Cortana. It will be part of a new trilogy. Microsoft also leaked a Disney Adventures Kinect game and Star Wars Kinect the night before. With so many leaks, it was hard to say we learned anything new at the Microsoft event.

Epic Games also showed a good demo of Gears of War 3. But the company was pretty light on exclusives for the Xbox 360. Many of the titles it showed, from Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 to UFC Undisputed, will be on other platforms. Microsoft devoted a lot of time to Mass Effect 3, Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Minecraft, and Tomb Raider as well. Those titles will be available on the PS and PC as well. So while they looked good, they don’t help Microsoft’s cause of exclusivity.

The company has sold more than 10 million Kinect motion-sensing systems, mainly on the strength of casual games such as Dance Central. But today, the company trotted out hardcore Kinect games. For instance, Mass Effect 3 uses Kinect voice commands so you can dispatch your companion characters to attack enemies. The Star Wars Kinect game also looked like it worked pretty well. And Kinect Fun Labs looked pretty funny.

Curiously, Microsoft didn’t even mention at its event that it has launched cloud storage for gamers on Xbox Live so that players can store their saved games. Maybe it didn’t say anything about it since Sony made that announcement on the PSN first.

Microsoft also took its cause of taking over the living room further with the announcement of new Xbox Live features, such as YouTube on Xbox Live and Bing voice search.

Microsoft has clearly been investing a lot of money in its core hardcore games — Halo and Gears of War — and its Kinect titles. But it didn’t seem like it had a broad line-up of exclusives.

Electronic Arts

EA showed off nine major games that were very impressive. The highlight was Battlefield 3, the first-person combat shooter that will do battle with Modern Warfare 3. The game looks like it will have better vehicles (tanks!) than MW 3, and it will have a gamer’s social network that will be available free of charge. (Activision Blizzard plans to charge for its Call of Duty Elite social network). To me, this was the best demo of the day.

E3 2011:Dead Island Hands-On – Just when you thought you were sick ...

I was finally able to get some hands-on with Dead Island at this years E3 and I can tell you two things. First of all, it’s probably not what you’re expecting…at least not if you put a lot of clout into the CGI trailer. What I can tell you, however, is that even though the game itself bears little resemblance to its trailer counterpart, it’s also bloody good and resembles other games that have had a lot to offer in the past.  The feel of the game remains true to my earlier predictions made after seeing gameplay online.  It plays like a zombie FarCry .  The mixture works, even if the combat itself seems to still need a little work.