GDC: Microsoft showcases big Xbox 360 titles for 2008

With business expansions and announcements out of the way during the early portions of Microsoft's keynote speech, the company turned to showcase some of its big titles for the year. We had a chance to take a good, long look at software line-up and managed to walk away with some decent impressions of what's to come as well.

Confirmed to be arriving this year for the Xbox 360 were a number of high-profile titles, including Too Human, Halo Wars, Ninja Gaiden 2, and Fable 2. A lot of attention was given to Ninja Gaiden 2, in particular, as Tomonobu Itagaki himself came on stage to demonstrate a GDC-specific build of the game. He also announced a North American release date for the title—June 3, 2008—as part of the June worldwide release plans.

Itagaki began by explaining that he had heard that "Japanese gaming has lost its vitality," and so he flew in to show "the most exciting title in Japan." The new build showcased a dark environment that was host to a menacing canyon leading up to a huge, pyramid-shaped temple. The environment itself was huge and populated, with tons of on-screen creatures. The environment itself appeared to be more complex than the one in past games, suggesting that Ninja Gaiden 2 is less linear than its predecessors.

Itagaki demonstrated a number of different weapons during the short demo. Fluid combos and the all-important combo counter were the results of the sharp weaponry. And, as you can imagine, the weaponry certainly produced quite a bit of gore: more than once during the demo, the screen was painted with rainbow of red shades in the form of a stream of blood.

One of the most impressive new features that the team showed was the recording feature, which allows users to capture game data and upload it to world leaderboards. Players can then download replays to see how top players manage to best the game so effectively.