21st September 2010 - Finished Halo on Legendary and need something new to look at? Or still craving more from Bungies opus; All Age gaming was fortunate enough to earlier this month not only preview Reach, but also the next year in gaming- Specifically, live demos of Kinect and some finer information on the Windows 7 Phone. Surley the highlight though, came from none other than real life rocket man himself, Buzz Aldrin! All Age Gaming was on the floor and the following is a transcript of events as they happened, complete with pictures: Welcome to Noble Team.
The following is a transcript of the night Wed September 1st 2010. Behind closed doors at University Technology Sydney. Microsoft has an announcement to make: September 1 2010 / : Join Noble Team
6.30pm: Remote control car races around the Halo: Reach 'level'. Mini Warthogs and Spartans are cool.
7.00pm: Doors open.
7.10pm: The presentations kick off. Turns out this is actually going to be a press even with keynotes.
7.15pm: Talking about 2011 as the year of XBOX. Fable III, GEARS IIII and Halo: Reach? He must mean the financial year ….
7.20pm: XBOX on Windows 7 phone. Everyone buy a windows 7 phone please. Will support a variety of games on launch but more importantly, achievements. Rack up achievements on the phone and get them moved directly to your account on the console. Seriously, it's like the internet.... on your phone!
7.20pm: Kinect... live demo. Australian Release date: Nov 18th! Demo of Kinect Adventures, free with the Kinect bundle. Dudes are just buying time, the system seems to work though and the camera is doing what is supposed to. Apparently talking to the XBOX is still a feature they will have, not sure how responsive actual hand movements are. FYI: Buzz Aldrin is in the front row.
7.30pm: Finally, Halo:Reach. Live demo of Mission 4 Tip of the Spear. This one has already been doing the rounds in America. The guy can't play and we can't hear him over the speakers so they keep pausing it. He keeps using the 'new' grenade launcher for some reason. Oops, just tiipped over the Rockethog, Rockethog looks like fun for taking down vehicles. Spartan sitting next to the player character is female and has a skinny robotic arm instead of a real one. Also the players armour is bright yellow. Explaining how all those Spartan customisations from the Beta carry over to single player now.. which is actually good. So they are not just for multiplayer customisation.
7.45pm: Demo ended very suddenly, possibly because of sound issues. I do love how things right next to you (anti air craft batteries) are shooting at things well far away in the background (ships) and destroying them. Backgrounds are nice. Menus have good looking artwork.
7.45pm: Make a Wish foundation? Time to spruik some Halo:Reach merch. Turns out 100% of all money for Avatar items sold for Halo: Reach will be going to Make a Wish Foundation. This makes me very happy. Most people wouldn't even realize. Apparently Halo and Buzz Aldrin are joined by Make a Wish who uses Buzz a lot in their charity.
8.00pm: Buzz Aldrin finally comes up. But not before a montage of 60s footage that his wife made. Forget Halo:Reach Buzz is the 'Real deal'. Talks a lot about the decline of funding for space travel, his work trying to get people in and around mars, some good ideas that are practically sustainable for the current president.
8.10pm: Buzz is making a lot of funny jokes. Keeps ripping on America telling people that if they want to go into space go see the Russians. Buzz likes Russians. Apparently he has a phone in his pocket. But its still not powerful enough to through in the air and map stars and send them back in real time. Seriously. Buzz actually has some good points about real time and how we are only just closing the gap on data transfers and signals from space.
8.20pm: Lets wrap this up. Oh no, the MS dude asked him about his line of Nike Shoes...? Buzz is too smart for that. He deflects by talking about dancing with the stars. Apparently we don't know what this is and it might be some sort of reality tv show. Lol. And that's it.
8.30 Buzz doesn't want to leave the stage. Not without telling us about his book. I better go buy it.
The Full details on Microsoft partnering with the Starlight Childrens Foundation can be found HERE
All Age Gaming would like to thank Microsoft for the snakes, water and opportunity to be apart of the behind closed door event (not to mention the free beer and pizza at Microsoft HQ for a sneak peak at Halo: Reach and Kinect)
Article Written By Ian Crane