E3 2010: Everything's coming up Kinect at E3, but Ubisoft still has core games like Ghost Recon: Future Soldier up its sleeve, plus a few surprises.
Okay, so wireless here sucks, so this is going to be not quite live, but we'll keep it steam of conciousness anyway.
Anyway, Ubisoft really belives that gamers love acid, and that's what Child of Eden is all about - a mammoth acid trip of a game from the guys who brought you Rez. That opened the show, and then Joel McHale read from a teleprompter - and badly, before we got to something interesting.
Assassins Creed Brotherhood - or a trailer of it at least, full of stabbiness and nasty ways to kill horses.Then Vincent Pontbriand comes on to tell us a bit more about the game and its setting. And then more footage - of Ezio getting it on. This is actual gameplay, showing off the Templars attacking Ezio's Villa. Hmm, cannon.
Looks like you can now ride in cities, and Vincent promises us some advanced horseback fighting features. Though, I have to say, leaping on a horse like that must hurt your balls.
Then there's a sequence where you get to control a cannon. Very Red Dead, actually. There's a lot of new gadgets and machines coming in Brotherhood. But it's all about the fighting and leaping, and that still looks really impressive.
And look! A Borgia! Nothing like a good villain to get things interesting.
Now Joel's back, and still sucking at teleprompter reading.
And here's Shaun White's Skateboarding, and Shaun White himself. Yawn! Is that harsh? And Shaun's even worse with the teleprompter. But eventually, they stop talking stiffly about themselves and get to the game.Which is basically a rip-off of the classic Jet Set Radio Future. You need to fight The Man with the power of skateboarding. By skating, you bring colour to the world and ohmigod I might retch. The more you skate, the more you free the locals and turn them into skaters.
Proving once and for all that skaters are a disesase. Truth.
And now some screaming people with Laser tag guns invade the theatre looking like idiots... but what's interesting is that it seems to be tied into a PC-based scoring mechanism. The game's called BulletTag, apparently.It's the classic gun and harness system we all know, but it even features power-ups, and you can create content to change the game and its rules. You can even design checkpoints into the game... damn, this is hard to explain without visuals!
The set comes with two guns and harnesses, and four 'tags' which can be programmed to be whatever you want - ammo, checkpoints, whatever. Huh. That's kinda neat.
Now we get Tommy Francois, New Concept Director at Ubisoft, talking about a game called Innergy. What are these guys all smoking?!
Innergy is a stress-reducing game... it basically puts a lie detector type device on your finger, and... breath. At the game. To make stuff happen. Uh... Yeah. Interestingly, the device can be used on any system - it seems to be software-independant. As hippy as the game (if you can call it that), that's cool.
And on to the Kinect titles.
MotionSports is another take on the wide open sporting games - football, skiing, all the usuals. And all controlled by flailing like an epileptic tool.
And then we see the same Your Shape demo. But we do learn the game's going to come with a lot of DLC and user-generated content in the shape of challenges you can send via Facebook and Twitter. Huh.
Once again they talk up the Martial Arts challenges, but we suspect that anyone who learns their forms via Kinect and the Xbox is in for a surprise at their next MMA bout.
And of course it wouldn't be Ubisoft without Rabbids - who are now travelling in time and re-writing the arthur myth. RIght.
And now... Ghost Recon Future Soldier - oy my this is looking good. We get a taste of some of the awesome tech in the game - exo-skeletons, smart ammo, gun drones and of course that sexy optical camouflage. The sex.
Ubi's been working with a lot of companies and military types to get an idea of what technologies are being worked on and could be possible. And here's some live play. Neat. We get to see the Ghosts in action, taking out a high value target. The stealth system seems really overpowered, but kudos to Ubi for playing it that way - it should be. There are a lot more close quarter kills and takedowns. The game also features a stucky cover system, so this is looking like the most tactically challenging game in the series.
And it'll feature full four-player co-op, which might in fact make us happy in our pants. We got so excited we forgot to even take photos. Poo.
I could stand to see a lot more, but instead we move on to Driver: San Francisco. Muscle cars, car chases, and, we're told, a real seventies car chase feel. All the cars are fully licensed, and the game will feature a neat hook. Tanner, the main character is actualy in a coma, though he doesn't know it. And it means some interesting gameplay options, allowing different views of the environtment - which is GIANT - and even shift between vehicles.
Life on Mars, anyone?
Yves Guillemot's on the stage - president of Ubisoft. This could be interesting... What's he telling us...
He's telling us about Project DUST. Interesting - very phsyics-based game all about controlling the elements. Next... oh, a new Ray Man game. Ray Man Origins, and... well, it's still Ray Man. Mania Planet, however, sounds interesting: a collaborative platform for game creation, inspired by Track Mania. And it's PC centric, allowing users to create FPS, RPGs and racing games, using the same set of tools.
That looks intriguing. Nice one Yves.
But one last announcement... a Michael Jackson dancing game?! Yes.
Kill me now. Actually, don't kill me, 'cause I hear that Jane's Addiction is playing tonight's Activision event. That's worth living for.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012