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Xbox One Preview – Hands On in London

by on September 2, 2013
 

Three months on it’s safe to say Microsoft’s unveiling of the Xbox One was not met with the fanfare they had hoped.

The time since the reveal in late May has been all about damage control. No company has ever back-pedalled with as much urgency. It was a shambles, but now Microsoft and the Xbox One are in a far better position, as the games themselves take centre stage.

I was lucky enough to be among the first people in the UK to play Microsoft’s next gen machine at an event held in London recently and I witnessed first hand how things are shaping up for the eventual November release.

Xbox One Kinect featured

Kinect 2.0

The day began with a look at how the new Kinect sensor will work. It’s impressive, scary stuff that will no doubt excite and bewilder developers like never before. Of course with it being bundled with each console it needs to work a lot better than the original and it’s safe to say that it absolutely does.

After carefully sitting down the half dozen people for minimum disruption, the demo began with a nervous-looking rep jumping, dancing and waving on cue. As well as a 60% increase to the field of vision, the new Kinect now works in pitch black and cancels out ambient light. Scariest of all, it now reads the mood and heart-rates of players, which was sold as important for thriller/horror games and fitness titles.

Despite gamers turning their noses up at the original Kinect the technology at work was clearly impressive, if hard to get the best out of. The tech is no much improved, but as good as Kinect 2.0 is as a navigation tool, the real test comes how developers use it.

kinect sports rivals

Kinect Sports Rivals

“Has anyone played Kinect sports before?” asked a Rare developer. I mumbled something incoherently and he must have noticed because before I knew it my face was being scanned into the Xbox One.

Your character model in Kinect Sports Rivals comes from a face scan that throws onto the screen a glob of pixels that shape to your head. I was prompted to look around tilting my bonce as the “wonders of next gen processing power” made a sportier version of myself… with sexy results!

The jaw was a little on the massive side, but I was happy with the result and it even detected my glasses. This was my only use, however, as for the actual demo they let two children brought along for promo shots have a go, and they chose to play the Jet Ski game.

After a lot of time getting to grips with the motion controls and slamming into walls the kid finally got the knack and started to dominate the final lap. He was pulling off backflips and charging ahead. His younger brother was less than impressed however, saying in anticipation of his turn: “I’ll make him wish he’d never been born.”

Turns out he was rubbish.

Project Spark Featured

Project Spark

Children in tow, the group was shuffled along to see Project Spark, which we didn’t actually get to spend much time with as once again the children were in control. When asked by the developer what they wanted, the answer was simple: they wanted guns, but in lieu of any actual modern weaponry the developer did their best to make-do. They still wanted guns.

Project Spark remains a very intriguing prospect but to truly understand it would require a much longer demo, which we didn’t get as a handful of us were quickly moved on to Forza 5.

Forza 5 

It’s hard to pinpoint what to actually say about Forza 5. Without trying to sound dismissive or reductive of the work of Turn 10 Studios, it’s a racing game. It feels just as smooth as Forza 4 or Horizon, and looks as fantastic as racing games always do when they launch with a new console.

So let’s talk about that new controller, which I got to grips with for the first time. It was smaller than I was anticipating, and lighter too. It feels just as natural as its predecessor but with a nicer matte-ish finish.

Ryse: Son of Rome

Of all the games Microsoft showed off when they first announced the Xbox One, Ryse probably received the most flack. The gameplay offered up was slow, plodding and had quick time events up the wazoo.

I didn’t get to play the single player, instead being shown the co-op multiplayer arena mode. Taking place in a coliseum, the action is dictated by waves of enemies, the obstacles in your path and the methods by which you can dispatch foes.

As it was in the age of Rome, this is as much about the performance as survival. Combos build your meter and allow for special moves, but this is pretty basic stuff in all. Gameplay was more free-flowing than the E3 demo, but action was reduced largely to button mashing. There was little room for chaining moves or killing in any truly spectacular fashion.

Many cited Ryse as Microsoft’s answer to God of War, but in reality they actually have little in common. They feel entirely different, and that’s the point – it’ll be interesting to find out more as this game comes closer to release.

Dead Rising 3

My experience with the Dead Rising series is a bit of a strange one. I love the idea; love it, but I’ve never played a Dead Rising game for longer than two or three hours. For whatever reason I’ve never played one extensively or to completion.

And yet I still love the idea, so when Dead Rising 3 was announced at E3 I was among the fans disappointed in the apparent new direction of the series. It was dreary, brown and humourless, so, much like the Xbox One event on the whole, I went into the Dead Rising 3 demo wanting to be won over… and I was.

I questioned the representative about the backlash that befell that initial footage, and his response may as well have been the demo itself. It was bonkers, with all the series tropes present and correct, as well as some new features.

These new features included the ability to customise and combine vehicles just as you can with weapons, so if that steam roller is too slow for your liking then why not combine it with a bike and add some flamethrowers for good measure? It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but as Saints Row IV has proven: that doesn’t matter one bit if the ultimate objective is fun.

Each of the games at the event was keen to tout their SmartGlass compatibility. For the most part this meant in-game features on a phone or tablet, it was boring stuff, so trust Capcom and Dead Rising to perk things up a bit. If you use SmartGlass with the new game then you get exclusive missions that are piped in as phone calls to whatever handheld device you’re using.

It’s a step up from the No More Heroes idea of having the Wii controller ring as your phone, only with a genuine use and sense of worth. These missions will unlock new weapons, uncover parts of the map and include characters that won’t be part of the core game.

Other improvements to the game include being able to choose customised weapons from your safe house’s inventory and an RPG-style levelling of skills. Players will also be able to bring in AI companions either from safe houses or whilst out in the middle of the action.

The demo had some issues with frame-rate, but there’s still two months of development time and with so much going on some slow down would seem inevitable. Should the final product run smoothly, Dead Rising 3 is looking like a fun launch title and one that has got many rightfully excited to pick up an Xbox One.