Day #2

We left the hotel via Hummer limo at 8:45 and were taken to

Microsoft’s Millennium Campus.  The

building itself was very modern and sterile. 

It was a very odd feeling, being in a building where they made Xbox

games.  In a sense, I felt dirty. 

We were escorted to a room where they had 8 HDTVs setup, with a pile of

Xbox development kits networked, and the best damn office chairs available. 

We ogled the hardware while we gulped down breakfast, and then the gaming

began.

The

silver Xbox prototype

The

Setup

Getting ready to get our game on

Microsoft demoed the following games for us:

• Unreal

  Championship

• Tom

  Clancy’s Ghost Recon

• Sega

  Sports NBA 2K3

• Sega

  Sports NHL 2K3

• MechAssault

• Moto

  GP

• Midtown

  Madness 3

• Steel

  Battalion

A

producer demonstrating Midtown Madness 3

To be quite honest, out of all the games we played, only

two games really stood out for me, and one of them wasn’t Xbox Live

compatible.  I really enjoyed

MechAssault, and I don’t normally like mech games.  It was very simple to pick up and play, and it was damn

pretty.  I have a feeling I’ll be

picking this one up.  Steel

Battalion was also unbelievable, but at a hefty cost. 

The game with controller is a whopping $200.  I’m a real sucker for wacky controllers, but the price tag

alone will probably prohibit a purchase.  That,

and I think Microsoft should give free drivers education lessons with purchase. 

Figuring exactly how to use that sexy controller is going to be half the

battle with this game.

It

may be big, but damn is it beautiful!

As far as the rest of the games, they were rather ho-hum. 

I’m not a fan of Sega Sports, so those games I wasn’t impressed with. 

I’d rather play Unreal Championship on my PC with my mouse/keyboard any

day, but it seemed to be an okay port, nothing too special. 

Ghost Recon didn’t wow me either with its shoddy textures and boring

gameplay.  Moto GP’s controls were

too loose and very hard to adjust to.