E3 Press Conference Impressions: Ubisoft

Ubisoft’s press conference was by far the strangest one of the bunch. It was basically a handful of highlights in a sea of awkwardness and disinterest, which makes more sense since they are the publishers of the Imagine series of games.

Child of Eden opening the show was by far the best moment of the entire conference. Tetsuya Mizuguchi is spearheading the game with Q? Entertainment. It felt very much like a spiritual sequel to his much-lauded Rez, which I personally adore. To seemingly get more Rez from the man who created it himself is fantastic news. I can’t wait to see more.

The biggest game of the show by far was Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. The game looks great, and multiplayer Assassin’s Creed is intriguing, but I can’t help but feel like it’s a stopgap release between the numbered sequels. And as I wasn’t a big fan of Assassin’s Creed 2, I may have to move on from the franchise. And while I respect what Ubisoft is doing with Shaun White Skateboarding, which was shown afterwards, between the downfall of Tony Hawk and the rise of Skate, is there really room for more skateboarding games? Does anyone want more?

By far the most ludicrous moment of any conference was the reveal of Battle Tag, since it was revealed by a group of people in the auditorium actually playing it. It’s actual strap-it-on-your-chest laser tag, not a video game at all. It’s still not clear what it was doing here, other than that Ubisoft is releasing it, but there you go. To keep the insanity going, Innergy was shown, which was some sort of breathing sensor. It’s not really worth discussing, since it’s not really a game.

And yet another Rabbids game was announced. To be fair, this franchise has slowly been getting more entertaining, so it’s fun to watch where they take it. From basic minigame collections to full releases, the Rabbids are arguably bigger than Rayman at this point, the game from which they spawned. We’ll see how far they go.

The other highlight of the show was Ghost Recon Future Soldier. It’s been several years since Ghost Recon was around; nothing’s been lost, and everything is better. Showing a demo that included a stealth camo suit as new gameplay, Ghost Recon seems to have been revamped for the better. Aside from Child of Eden, it was the best game at this press conference.

Driver: San Francisco is a reboot of the classic Driver franchise. Personal taste, but I never got into the franchise back then, and nothing I saw today got me excited to try it. However, the game does look solid, if somewhat unremarkable.

Yves Guillemot then came out to present a few more projects coming from several areas around Ubisoft’s studios. One is tentatively named Project Dust. Not much was shown aside from a concept trailer, so there’s not much to say. The bigger news was the reveal of a new Rayman game, called Rayman Origins. It seems to take its cue from web-based Flash games, which is a good or bad thing depending on your view of web-based Flash games.

Finally, in the second strangest part of the show, some dancers came out and danced to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” which seemed to be announcing some sort of Michael Jackson dancing video game. Since this is the publisher of the monster hit Just Dance, it’s not surprising to see this happening. This game alone will fund the next three Assassin’s Creed games, I’m sure.

All in all, a very confusing press conference. The highlights were there, if very few, but between the madness of laser tag and the weirdness of the closing dance act, they got a bit overshadowed. Not the worst press conference I’ve seen (or even worst of show–Microsoft gets that award) but not nearly the best.