X’10
Chapter 1 – The Rockening
By Jorge Figueiredo - August 19th, 2010
The first thing I noticed about X’10 was that it was much bigger than X’09 had been; a larger area was occupied by HDTVs (we’re talking multiple floors here) and the air was awash in the green light that I associate with the Xbox 360′s colour scheme. It was like being a kid in a candy factory; the only problem I was having was figuring out where I was going to go first. A nice lady from MTV Games entered the picture and led myself (as well as Rich and Don from GameNorth) to the Rock Band 3 booth.
Rock Band 3
I’ll admit it: I’m not really a Rock Band guy. I’m not a musical snob, nor do I lack the ability to play; I just don’t have the room in my house for large instruments, so I don’t really get a chance to play all that much. That being said, I am not against playing the game, especially when I’m with two of my gaming friends. We stepped up onto the podium and gave it a spin.
The setlist seems impressive, spanning a number of decades with hits such as Break On Through (To the Other Side) by The Doors, The Power of Love by Huey Lewis and the News, and Combat Baby by Metric. The guitar controller that I was using wasn’t really new (that I noticed), but I was eyeing (hungrily, I might add) the pro guitar controller leaning against the wall (which, unfortunately, didn’t work with the build we were playing). As usual, Rich was on drums. Don, however, opted for the keyboard, which forced him to relive some childhood musical trauma. The folks running the booth commented that some of the higher-end pro instruments could actually be used as real ones: the pro guitar, for instance, could be plugged into an amp and used to rock out for reelz; the keyboard is MIDI compatible and can be used as an actual keyboard.
We enjoyed playing a few songs, after which point the nice folks from MTV Games/Harmonix walked us through some of the changes. The pro instruments made the game a lot more realistic and challenging. The keyboard, for instance, has several “regions”; on the lower levels, you just need to hit the associated coloured areas matching the prompts on the screen to continue the song. However, if you bump up the difficulty, your fingers will have to do a little more walking, until you eventually end up playing 1:1; the screen displays a section of your keyboard and indicates which keys you will have to play, which is challenging; what’s even more challenging is “shifting” the keyboard range so you can play beyond what was originally on the screen.
A similar rationale applies to the other instruments: playing pro instruments on high levels will result in a more solid enjoyment of feeling like a rockstar; or a brain hemorrhage – whatever.
Kinect and New XBL Integration
Shortly after my stagebound adventures, I settled into a seat next to a Microsoft rep who was demonstrating how Kinect will be integrated into a new-and-improved Xbox Live. The control scheme is pretty interesting; using a series of gestures and vocal commands, you will be able to navigate your way through XBL without requiring a controller.
To use the gestures, you simply raise your hand and the Kinect camera will detect your motion, rendering a small hand on-screen as a placeholder for your cursor. As you move your hand, the hand on the screen moves as well. Want to select something? Just hold your hand in place for a few seconds and your selection will be made. The gestures can be used throughout the XBL platform to control quite a range of commands.
I mentioned at the start of this section that XBL was new-and-improved. One of the new improvements to XBL is the family membership package. One price (which is lower than 2 XBL Gold memberships) will get you gold-level memberships for you and three family members (one primary account and three sub accounts); it’s a great deal for those families that like to play together.
Also, there is the Zune service, which allows access to an extensive video-on-demand library. XBL is shaping up to be pretty great with some nice new features and Kinect integration.
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