Xbox’s E3 2009 games line-up

Posted by: Jane Douglas

Look for in-depth coverage of Microsoft’s games roster shortly. For now I’ll share the bare bones Xbox E3 games line-up, as revealed at the Microsoft media briefing. If you’re an Xbox 360 owner you could soon(ish) be playing:

1) The Beatles Rock Band (see earlier post)

2) Tony Hawk Ride
The Tony Hawk franchise reboot with wireless skateboard controller packing infra red sensors and accelerometers to give responses "like a real skateboard," according to Tony Hawk, who put in a stage appearance to show off the hardware.

3) Modern Warfare 2
One of the show’s multi-format heavy hitters.

The live gameplay demo showed the player character (‘Roach’) traversing an icy mountain ledge and climbing an ice wall with picks and crampons, following Captain (formerly Sergeant ‘Soap’) MacTavish.

The demo centred on a mission to plant explosives at a runway fuelling station in the same snowy environment followed by a spectacular snowmobile chase. If anyone can pull off the trick of great first-person driving-while-shooting, we hope it’s Infinity Ward.

  4) Final Fantasy XIII
Producer Yoshinori Kitase and director Motomu Toriyama introduced the "world’s first look" at Final Fantasy XIII running on the Xbox 360.

They highlighted a dynamic battle system in which "we have four active time gauges; that way you can attack the enemy consecutively with wider tactics."

Final Fantasy’s turn on stage also brought us the world’s first look at summon monster Odin in action. Square Enix is "targeting a spring 2010 release."

5) Gears of War: Shadow Complex
Cliff Bleszinski and Don Mustard hit the Xbox conference stage to show us Gears of War: Shadow Complex, Epic’s first Xbox Live Arcade title.

The live gameplay, taking place in a large underground complex, showed off stealth and combat action, a foam gun used to build a handy instant staircase and a colossal Tarantula boss battle. The main campaign will be about 10 hours long, says Bleszinski. Look out for it this summer on Live Arcade.

  6) Joy Ride
A cartoony, avatar-based Live Arcade racing game. It’s free to download and play but there’ll be upgrades and items to buy for the custom cars.

We’re betting on a micropayment system Xbox hopes will turn lucrative.

7) Crackdown 2
Just a cinematic for this title, but warmly received by the crowd all the same. Looking very, very good.

  8) Left 4 Dead 2
With the original Left 4 Dead still fresh in our minds (and with the disc still sitting in some of our Xbox trays) Xbox brought us the cinematic trailer for the sequel.

We’re looking at new Survivors and new weapons (chainsaws!), all set in the South (think New Orleans and thereabouts). The game will be with us as soon as November 17 and we still can’t wait.

9) Splinter Cell: Conviction
Some fresh moves in Ubisoft’s long-time-coming latest Splinter Cell title: graphic, video and text elements of the storyline and missions are projected into the game, appearing live around Sam Fisher on the walls of the environment.

  10) Forza Motorsport 3
Another big one, and it’s shipping in October.

The game’s director Dan Greenawalt wants us to know that Forza Motorsport 3 will be "the definitive racing game of this generation" and that although, yes, the game looks gorgeous (it does), "we deliver much more than good looks."

There’s also "the largest roster of the hottest cars", alongside new accessibility features such as one-button driving and gameplay rewind and a new focus on community and player-created content, including an in-game video capture, edit and upload function.

Not to dwell on those looks, but an all-new graphics engine does have the game running at a sweet 60 frames a second. Ships in October.

11) Halo: ODST and Halo: Reach
Two Halo games: the familiar ODST and the newly revealed Halo: Reach.

Bungie is mining the existing Halo universe timeline for material, with the former title set some weeks before the start of Halo 3, the latter seemingly before the start of the first Halo.

Reach only came in the shape of a short teaser and the news that a multiplayer beta invite would come with copies of ODST, out September 22.

The brand new ODST co-operative mode, Firefight, will be on the show floor at E3 – look out for more in due course.

12) Alan Wake
The near-mythical survival horror from the makers of Max Payne will indeed see the light of day. In spring 2010.

The live gameplay demo showed us TV-like plot framing ("Previously on Alan Wake", "Tonight on Alan Wake"), torchlit exploration, spooky whispering, junk flying, trees falling, axe-wielding, light-averse lumberjack enemies and malevolent bats.

13) Metal Gear Rising (see earlier post)