I'm sure a lot of you will echo my statement. Microsoft came, gave us the same stories we've been hearing for the past week or so, and guess what their big surprise was... A green "halo themed" 360...golly gee...wowzers. The event kicked off with a Halo "tribute" band, caprisomething or the other, performing the halo theme song, which while not horrible by any stretch simply lasted far too long, maybe if they had explosions,Masterchief playing Madden or some other mind numbing frat boy pleasing gimmick it would have come off a bit better on the crowd, but alas eh. Right behind this Halo Cover band came the one of the most "uncomfortable for Microsoft" moments of the night, only second to the "unveiling" of the olive 360, Peter Moore playing Rock Band with the Harmonix developers, wowch, first mistake was them picking some generic rock song which didn't exactly inspire any hope for me in the Rock Band soundtrack (especially now that Guitar Hero 3 has Welcome to the Jungle in their listing), and the second mistake had to be allowing Peter Moore to play..on stage...in front of everyone..., c'mon Pete if ya don't practice your instrument don't go up in front of a crowd of jaded journalists and clunk about hoping for em' to "Cum on Feel the Noize", the clinch however, was good ole Pete pausing the song halfway through, and then being unable to unpause it, wow...

Anyways, Microsoft covered the bases after that, some PGR4 gameplay, a rather uninspiring demo of COD 4 , now with More "Sean Connery" voice over , I put that last bit in quotes as I didn't realize that the Npc in question had a Connery-esque voice until they mentioned it, and even if it was Sean Connery, one well known old man does not equal interesting Demo Infinty Ward, cmon i wanna see explosions and.... running.... and random screaming. Next came Cliffy B with a quick demo of Gears Of War on Games for Windows, now with added content, blah Gears of War didn't grab me in the first place, and then Jade Raymond from Ubisoft (nerds from all over *heart" Jade) with a demonstration of one of the missions from Assassin's Creed, interesting enough stuff, even if I had read a writeup of this exact same demo earlier yesterday, so I wasn't too surprised. The game looked pretty good but had a glitch or two suggesting that a few kinks remained to be ironed out before it's fall release date.

At some point Moore talked about GTAIV and then proceeded to show/reshow the 2nd trailer which all of the interweb has undoubtedly seen by now. He knew this of course and merely added that it was running on the Xbox360 Hardware to try and lessen the sting of us being re-fed old fodder. (no it didn't help*sob* Pete, I want gameplay). Microsoft also showcased a quick new Resident Evil 5 trailer which looked pretty good, showing off the new outdoor setting of Resident Evil in addition with a lil' plot , with the country/nation this installment is set in, apparently in the midst of Civil War.

The biggest moment of the night for the boys at Microsoft, was the Halo 3 trailer, which, thanks to the fact that whoever handles live broadcast cuts at G4 apparently belongs to either the Sony camp or a troupe of retarded Crabcreatures, was cut in half for Ads.....Grr. In any case the graphics looked only slightly better than the multiplayer Beta, and showcased no interesting gameplay mechanic/plot twists (keep in mind that I didn't see the whole trailer and as such am free to shoot myself in the foot later) but looked decent enough.

But wait, where's my Metal Gear Solid 4 announcement, or a price cut, or even new games in development? Nope Microsoft showcased nothing to whet the hardcore gamer's appetite and all in all gave us a fairly generic presser, but there's still hope as theyv'e promised to bring home E3 like they did last year so maybe we'll see a few demos in the coming days, and there's also the third party developers who'll possibly give us a glimpse into the future of the 360. Microsoft has gotta be a little nervous now though , as the other guys (Sony and Nintendo) have a pretty good chance of blowing away this presser, and should endeavour to do so, but please Nintendo, no Super Mario Level 1-1 cover bands. Thanks.