Toronto - Being a gamer, I was quite excited to get an invitation to Microsoft’s X’08 event here in Toronto on a sunny Thursday afternoon. Nothing like neglecting the summer light and immersing myself in the darkness that is known as Circa. I was also excited that the invitation said free drinks and a delicious dinner. The promise of new games to try out, free food and free booze was more then enough for me to haul ass over to the nightclub after work. Here is my report.

First of all, the free food was essentially burgers, however, these burgers weren’t bbqed, rather served in those steam trays you see at a lot of buffets. Pass. Burgers should only be eaten off a bbq. Most avid gamers probably don’t have a healthy diet as it is, providing them with burgers - not the best idea. What about the free booze? Well, here were my beer options - Bud, Bud Light and Labatt Blue. Am I at a Nascar event? Shite beers. Still I can’t complain, it’s free.

Let’s take a look at the games, because that is what we are here for.

Gears of War 2 - The big one. I played this for 10-15 minutes, and yeah, it has all the makings of a classic. The graphics are crisp, the controls are the same and the new features (hostage taking, chainsaw battle) are all welcomed features. We played some new gametype too, it was called Wingmen or something. I don’t know, I just shoot everything I see on the screen. You were going to buy this game anyway.

Fable II - I played this for about 10 minutes, it has a lot of the same controls as the last game, which is good. The level I played, I had a dog with me and a GUN. I had no clue you can have a gun in Fable. THUG LIFE. The fighting on it seems to be more refined and although I didn’t get to do any of the RPG elements, the game looks slick and well, you have a pet.

Too Human - This game felt like a button masher, and I am not a big fan of that. The menu system looked horrible, and the graphics were okay. I am not really a fan of this style of game, so I can’t say much about it.

NHL 09 - This game looked f’n nice, unfortunately, there were some douchebags in line who decided to play an entire game and thus creating a massive lineup that I avoided. It looked nice though.

Rock Band 2 - Poor Guitar Hero, sure they had a setup, but everyone was about the rock band 2. Check out the drums:

The formula is tried and true, and it’ll sell.

Some EA Sports Cartoony Boxing match - Ridiculous. After the awesomeness known as Fight Night, they come out with this bullshit boxing game that is clearly not Fight Night. I can’t see how this game will supplant Fight Night as the go to boxing game.

NBA Live and Fifa 2009 - Both these games looked very pretty, but I am biased towards NBA 2K9 and Winning Eleven, so I didn’t really give these a chance. I just can’t see these two series supplanting the other two. Case in point, I couldn’t even find the hop step button on NBA Live when I was driving with Jose Calderon. Calderon then made a racial gesture at the screen.

Golden Axe - There was a 3d version of Golden Axe now. It was not that good, basically you run around killing stuff in a gory fashion. Not my style of game.

Call of Duty 5 - If Call of Duty 3 and Call of Duty 4 had sex, and then one of them had a baby, this would be it. Nothing special, just same old, same old.

Spiderman game - Mid Air fights looked pretty awesome, and the graphics look fantastic. You will probably spend hours just swinging around Manhattan.

That’s about all the games I had time for (and my free beer tickets ran out).