E3 2011: Gee... weren't expecting Far Cry 3 to be announced... but hey we also have more on Ghost Recon, Driver and many more... odd titles.
2:15pm: Okay, so the Ubisoft wi-fi is either getting hammered, or is woefully inadequate – we just can’t get a connection. But Ubi was nice enough to fly us over here, we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. However, we’ll persevere with a semi-liveblog of the show, which will have to be posted after the fact. We’re at the Los Angeles Theatre on Broadway (which we have dutifully given our regards to) in smoggy Downtown LA.
I’m guessing that a lot of the show today will be about Kinect enabled titles, and really hoping to see a lot more of Ghost Recon and it’s very interesting implantation of motion control. EA managed to get through their demo without resorting to child labour, so here’s hoping Ubi follows suit… though we expect much the same level of celebrity whoring from the usual host XXX.
2:31pm: Yves Guillemot is in the house! He’s a busy man, and thoroughly Quebecois. The big skew of the preso is Ubisoft’s 25 years in operation, which is not a bad effort. Go Yves! “I look forward to creating the next 25 years of entertainment with all of you.”
And we’re leading off with Rayman: Origins and Michel Ancel, Ubi guy. Who immediately makes the worst Shakespeare pun in the history of the theatre. Ubi, or not to Ubi?
Should have gone with not.
Origins is classic whacky arcade, sidescrolling action, but it also shows off some neat co-op gameplay, with Rayman and… a big blue thing. Also cute is some great game references, like a jumping puzzle that has to negotiate a game of Tetris. It’s not really our flavour, but it’s a slick and artistic looking game with a twisted sense of humour.
And it has an airship that could be stolen right out of Final Fantasy. Win.
2:41: Aaron Priceman, Ubisoft and caffeine guy. Also, a serious evangelist. Double also, it appears that XXX has been abandoned. Sads.
Aaron’s launching on a nostalgia walk to when Ubi kicked off, and then segues into some lame jokes about women in gaming. But, hey, he’s not the one who called the Wii the Wii, so we can’t entirely blame him.
The heart of his talk is gaming, though, and what makes it tick, before riffing on what Driver would look like in old-tech. And then…
2:44pm: Driver: San Francisco. This game’s odd hook – that you’re in a coma and kind of, well, imagining the whole thing – is still a little odd, but having now played some more recently, it’s growing on us. Regardless, it’s plain that Ubi’s betting a lot on those for its AAA stable.
2:47pm: Dan Hay and Jamie Keen – Ubi dudes – and.. wow, Dan has a REALLY deep voice. So what are we looking at hear…
Lots of jungle, vast, open jungle. Dudes with guns, doing bad things, and our hero photographing bad men with guns.
The next Far Cry, maybe? It’s kind of intense, really, especially once you get captured and lectured by some crazy dude, while some other dudes kill a mess of other dudes. It really does have a Far Cry vibe. It also has the most lung-shatteringly intense underwater sequence that had us quite short of breath.
It’s quite a long demo, with gunplay, some serious knife-based fatalities, and then a chopper theft and subsequent crash… and yes, it’s Dar Cray 3. Neat. Looking very neat, actually.
2:56pm: Randy Pitchford, Gearbox guy joins us! He’s always great, and he’s talking up the themes of Brothers in Arms, and world war 2 fights. This is leading to something…
“Our partners at Ubisoft challenged us to come up with a new take on WW2 shooters and games…” We’re very intrigued now. “The story of this squad is legendary…” And the game is called Brother in Arms: Furious 4.
Holy… it’s basically Inglorious Basterds on crack. A LOT of crack. Chainsaws, tomahawks, humour… we don’t get to see a of it, but it looks a lot of fun. And, yeah, fresh.
2:59pm: Ooh, Steven Spielberg on a video presentation… and Peter Jackson… talking about Tin Tin, the new Ubi spin-off game. Both PJ and Spielberg come across very clued in on the game they’ve helped make… keen.
The gameplay looks like a very polite, clean, bloodless and jolly version of Lara Croft. Ubi’s done a few movie tie-ins, but they’re a hard thing to pull off.
3:02: And now we’re on to what I’ve been waiting for… Ghost Recon, though not before another “What would it have looked like 20 years ago” vid. Apparently, a lot like Syndicate.
In fact… it really looks like a game we’d want to play!
3:04: Tommy Jacob and Roman Campos Oriola, Ubi guys. Again, an odd pair – one bald, the other the hairiest man I’ve seen in LA. And now, gameplay…
“Get your AR online.” Man, the tech in this game looks awesomely hardcore. And, also, the demo is four player co-op. And, curiously, it’s all played third person – I wonder if this is a shift in the game’s focus, or an option you can turn on and off.
We get to see the target designating and timed takedowns, and some great steathsuit action. They really should just call this Ghost in the Shell and be done with it. It looks very good though, and the precision use of future tech and serious firepower looks like it’ll place Future Soldier quite apart from the wider crop of shooters.
Ooh… thermobaric ordnance. Sexy.
2:13pm: “Back on PC, and better than ever,” says hairy man, talking up Ghost Recon Online. It’s free-to-play and looking interesting. Better than the free-to-play Battlefield that EA released, anyway. It will also be linked to Future Soldier with Achievements. Interesting.
2:16pm: And now the story is sharing, and online connectivity, with Adrienne Pechere from Nadeo, and maniaplanet and Trackmania2 action. And it’s just PC, which we love to see. There’s still some things that console cannot do, and it looks like TM2 is really going to leverage the computing and social power of the PC.
Trailer time, and we’re told the footage is all in-game, and the content all player created. And can I just say… holy moly, this looks keen Great graphics, some insane tracks that will make even Wipeout fans (points to self) will find challenging.
And, interestly, we’re also getting a shootmania and questmania in maniaplanet. An FPS version of the Trackmania model?
Just say yes.
2:20pm: Burly men, building a lounge room on stage… for Raving Rabids: Alive nad Kicking, and Antoine Henry, also beardy. Funny preso, though, as he’s being interrupted by the game, which is basically an AR Rabid-bashing game, that makes them pop around your lounge.
Now we get some four-player co-op action, which revolves around creating a shape… after which the Kinect takes a photo of you and your mates looking like dorks. Naturally. It’s a kinda neat use of the tech.
Though, of course, you’ll never catch us playing it.
3:25pm: Oh Gods, kill me. Dancing… and of course what a dancing game would habe looked like on a C64. Answer: better than it does in real life.
So, we’re talking Just Dance 3. And, I’ve got to say, as we get to watch a mess of people dancing in a mess of loungerooms, that no one who has a Cure poster in their house would be caught dead playing this. Just sayin’.
Tony Key, Ubi dancing guy, joins us. He doesn’t actually look like the kinda guy who gets his groove on. But he’s actually talking about Rocksmith. “I mean a real guitar, not with buttons, but one you can actually learn to play.” Now this we can get behind.
Dave Navarro’s on the video! Man, he has one sharp beard. And, when he says “plugging my instrument into the machine” it just sounds dirty.
It’s coming out this year, and we’ll be kinda keen to have a look at it later in the show. Although when he says it’ll be available “in North America” this year, we worry. Oh well.
3:32pm: Oh, yay… YourShape: Fitness Evolved. When we see that, all we can think of is Your Chief: Combat Evolved. Thought I’d share that, as it beats the hell of playing a fitness game.
3:33pm: Assassins Creed, all retro-like looks like Prince of Persia. Which means… AssCreRev time, and we’re joined by Alexandre and Martin (whose last names are just too damn long), Ubi dudes.
They have neat matching red-lined black hoodies. I want one.
Revelations, though, is looking neat, and the usual music video trailer kicks arse. It’s got some wicked CG, brutal kills and a set of lamellar armour I would kill at least half of my readers for. Oh, and a dude who looks like Medieval Val Kilmer.
The demo shows off a very good looking engine – it’s still improving. The game also now has 100 per cent more belly-dancers. And smokebombs, which suddenly seem like a massive oversight in other games; these fog the entire action, leaving you with only moody outlines of you and your enemies. An interesting touch.
Funnily, it looks like they’re playing on easy mode – the AI’s just standing around watching as the player calmly murders his pals.
Oh – Greek Fire. Nice. I love the fact that a simple mission to get out of the city leaves an entire fleet and most of a city in flames. Subtle… and then, a very intriguing tease of a glowing computey door… Revelations is set to reveal a lot of the past and future of the Templar story.
Aaaaand we’re done. I’m pooped.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012