And yet, they chose to start their show with a very impressive arcade shooter using Kinect that combined visuals and music unknown since Rez. They just send the guy out on stage, and with his back turned to us and wearing white gloves he leads us through a demo of this very trippy game. It ends, reveals itself as Child of Eden, and the creator of Rez and Lumines playing it. Looks like the perfect game to play on an acid trip. Or ecstasy.
Then we get to our host for the show, none other than Joel McHale from Community and The Soup. Apparently he hosted last year as well, so he should at least bring some added fun to the show, right? While McHale does have many great quips throughout the show, he unfortunately looked woefully unprepared for most of it, stumbling his way through the teleprompter and looking more awkward than anything. Like a fan of gaming who knew nothing about the behind the scenes of gaming being thrust on stage and told to be funny. Oh well.
They quickly recover from his awkward intro with an awesome looking trailer for Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, followed by an even more awesome demo. One would think that in the year that has passed since AC2, they could'nt have done much with development. The demo quickly proves that thought completely wrong. While the graphics still look a little shaky, all of a sudden Ezio is dodging cannonballs, riding horseback through the crumbling street, shooting cannons back at his attackers, and stabbing, shooting, and throwing axes at enemies in what looks like a much needed improvement to combat. In short, it looks nothing less than amazing.
Now, I've never understood the appeal of skateboarding games, but anyone who does and enjoy them a lot will probably enjoy Shaun White Skateboarding, which looks like it's bringing something new to the genre with transforming environments and the ability to change the direction of rails you're on. It at least is trying to be different, which I applaud, but otherwise it looks like any other last generation Tony Hawk game.
Then poor Joel McHale gets completely surprised, confused and gets even more awkward when a bunch of people start playing laser tag in the audience. And that's the game. Portable laser tag. Basically you run it on a PC or console, which will then keep track of hits. You can also scan in ammo packs to the gun as well as checkpoints, and you can set up targets to fire at. Looks like a lot of fun, but of course, it's laser tag, so how could it not be?
Ubisoft's focus on getting gamers up off the couch and feeling more healthy becomes apparent as they bring out the video game equivalent of something known as biofeedback. This is a system where a sensor tracks something like blood pressure or breathing, and then gives you something to focus on to try and optimize it. If you've seen the Star Wars force trainer, it's the same concept. But this one focuses solely on reducing stress. It's also highly portable, allowing you to plug it into any computer and, as the designer said, "level up" anywhere anytime.
More sports titles for Kinect. These ones at least don't look like blatant Wii ripoffs. They also look like they have no value whatsoever.
Then comes the rather incredible Your Shape: Fitness Evolved. They showed this off during the Microsoft conference, and didn't really show anything new, but even so the tech they're showing off looks to make full use of Kinect. At all times you see a kind of infrared version of the girl demoing it that looks to follow her movement almost 1:1. At first she was doing simple exercises with a trainer, and if she wasn't doing them right, it would give her immediate feedback by, for example, showing her a line on her body where she should be lifting her knees to. She also did some kickboxing by punching blocks that appeared in spaces next to her, and did some zen yoga where Kinect tracked her skeleton to make sure she was doing it right. I'm not that into fitness, but I still see the very high appeal of this. Be sure that when this comes out, all those WiiFit owners will be kicking themselves.
Raving Rabbids in Time. Nuff said.
Almost every gaming pro coming into E3 was raving about Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. This was my first look at it, and I can see why. Skillfully combining stealth, firefights, squad-based planning, and futuristic tech, Ghost Recon looks to be a wonderful experience for anyone who is a fan of the series or of tactical shooters in general.
Next up is Driver: San Francisco, which returns to the roots of the series, namely 70s style car chases. Yet it also introduces quite a change to the system known as "Shift" in which you can literally shift between cars because the main character is in a coma....screw the reason. The point is it's a cool twist and adds a whole new element to racing, especially since it will be available in multiplayer, and can encompass the entire city when upgraded, which looks HUGE.
Finally the CEO of Ubisoft shows up and reveals some very interesting titles. It all starts off with a trailer for Project Dust, which looks to be a beautifully artistic title, possibly some kind of RTS. Keep an eye on this one. Unfortunately our dear French CEO's accent is quite thick and his english quite poor, so it's hard to tell exactly what he's showing off, but from what I could gather it appears to be a set of tools for developers to release new content quite easily online. The firs title to be created from it? A new Rayman, which looks SPECTACULAR. The really spectacular thing about it, however, was that only 5 people worked on it. It looked more polished and put together than many games that have had thousands of people and thousands upon thousands of dollars thrown at them.
To further support developers, he declared a new platform from maniaplanet, which I had never heard of but which apparently has the largest PC racing community in the world, which will allow anyone to build their own FPS, racer, or RPG using simple tools. Essentially, it looks to be a less Sackboy influenced Little Big Planet 2 for the PC. While no actual content was shown, I certainly like the idea, so we'll just have to wait and see where it goes.
And for the big finale....a Michael Jackson dancing game, showcased only by a bunch of dancers performing to "Beat It". Take from that what you will.
Overall Ubisoft's conference was kind of a mixed bag, with the awkward comedy stylings of Joel McHale, some odd games, and some awesome games. One thing's for sure though: there's quite a bit of creativity coming from Ubisoft, and I have no doubt that if there's anyone who can figure out how to best use Kinect, it'll be them.
Then comes the rather incredible Your Shape: Fitness Evolved. They showed this off during the Microsoft conference, and didn't really show anything new, but even so the tech they're showing off looks to make full use of Kinect. At all times you see a kind of infrared version of the girl demoing it that looks to follow her movement almost 1:1. At first she was doing simple exercises with a trainer, and if she wasn't doing them right, it would give her immediate feedback by, for example, showing her a line on her body where she should be lifting her knees to. She also did some kickboxing by punching blocks that appeared in spaces next to her, and did some zen yoga where Kinect tracked her skeleton to make sure she was doing it right. I'm not that into fitness, but I still see the very high appeal of this. Be sure that when this comes out, all those WiiFit owners will be kicking themselves.
Raving Rabbids in Time. Nuff said.
Almost every gaming pro coming into E3 was raving about Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. This was my first look at it, and I can see why. Skillfully combining stealth, firefights, squad-based planning, and futuristic tech, Ghost Recon looks to be a wonderful experience for anyone who is a fan of the series or of tactical shooters in general.
Next up is Driver: San Francisco, which returns to the roots of the series, namely 70s style car chases. Yet it also introduces quite a change to the system known as "Shift" in which you can literally shift between cars because the main character is in a coma....screw the reason. The point is it's a cool twist and adds a whole new element to racing, especially since it will be available in multiplayer, and can encompass the entire city when upgraded, which looks HUGE.
Finally the CEO of Ubisoft shows up and reveals some very interesting titles. It all starts off with a trailer for Project Dust, which looks to be a beautifully artistic title, possibly some kind of RTS. Keep an eye on this one. Unfortunately our dear French CEO's accent is quite thick and his english quite poor, so it's hard to tell exactly what he's showing off, but from what I could gather it appears to be a set of tools for developers to release new content quite easily online. The firs title to be created from it? A new Rayman, which looks SPECTACULAR. The really spectacular thing about it, however, was that only 5 people worked on it. It looked more polished and put together than many games that have had thousands of people and thousands upon thousands of dollars thrown at them.
To further support developers, he declared a new platform from maniaplanet, which I had never heard of but which apparently has the largest PC racing community in the world, which will allow anyone to build their own FPS, racer, or RPG using simple tools. Essentially, it looks to be a less Sackboy influenced Little Big Planet 2 for the PC. While no actual content was shown, I certainly like the idea, so we'll just have to wait and see where it goes.
And for the big finale....a Michael Jackson dancing game, showcased only by a bunch of dancers performing to "Beat It". Take from that what you will.
Overall Ubisoft's conference was kind of a mixed bag, with the awkward comedy stylings of Joel McHale, some odd games, and some awesome games. One thing's for sure though: there's quite a bit of creativity coming from Ubisoft, and I have no doubt that if there's anyone who can figure out how to best use Kinect, it'll be them.
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