Ubisoft now. Started at 7, ended at 8:30. Time for dinner now. Gotta make sure I get up in the morning for Nintendo and Sony. They're starting early. So here's Ubi's conference:
It’s time for Ubisoft. Most recent news: The new slimmer Xbox was announced to be the same price as the Elite bundle out now ($299)…except the Elite drops by $50 tomorrow morning. So that promise was only true for less than 24 hours. By the way, as much as I rather wish I could actually attend E3, I’m kind of glad I can’t, because I don’t think I could handle it. It’s tiring enough keeping up from home. I’d probably collapse from exhaustion. Or overdose on caffeine, which I don’t drink.
Reading some manga in between conferences while I rest my eyes. Working on Afterschool Charisma right now, a really cool new title from Viz Media. By the way, Olivia is conspicuously missing from the G4 coverage. Everyone else seems to be there. Not that I’m complaining (I’m so not). Just taking notice. Morgan is looking very smart in her skirt/suit thing.
7 pm CT, welcome to Ubisoft. Starting off with Kinect right away. It’s a guy waving his hands around and directing these flashes of color on the screen. It’s some kind of little shooting game on an acid trip. It’s neat. I’ll never play it, but it looks pretty cool. Reminds me of the Gummi Ship battles in Kingdom Hearts 2. Lots of shapes, bright colors, upbeat music. …. And G4 screwed up their feed. Yay. Jumping over to GameTrailers. Child of Eden by Tetsuya Mizuguchi.
Joel McHale again. Uggggggggg. Why does this guy keep hosting shit? FYI, he’s the guy from The Soup on E! He does not work for Ubisoft. He is not funny.
He’s gone (yay( and now there’s a fancy trailer for an Assassin’s Creed game. Brotherhood. Nice looking and totally useless trailer. 1503 Rome (oh there’s more!). This is still Ezio…I thought this was a handheld? The graphics are incredible…. His enemies are dropping like flies as Ezio’s team takes everyone out. And big battle between assassins and soldiers in the street. November. Vincent and Patrick from Ubi here to talk about it. Ezio is a leader now…oh and still a lady’s man apparently. Yup. He’s in bed with his chick. And a body falls through his roof. So it takes place after AC2 and his home is being attacked by the Templars. Ezio runs through his villa as cannon balls fall around him. Advanced horse riding and combat, they’re showing some of it off. He’s playing this on the PS3. Ezio’s shooting his own cannon off at the enemy. Some neat, new stuff. AI is more aggressive now. Threw an axe at some huge armored guy. BORGIA! That’s his enemy. Sweet. The Borgia’s are super interesting. Wowzers. Except, uh, spoiler there at the end. I’m still a little confused about what this game is supposed to be. I had thought it was some in betweener handheld or arcade game or something, but it looks like a full title.
Joel again to announce a “20th century urban jungle” title. Oh, some skateboarding game. Are they still making these? Shaun White Skateboarding. Shaun is there to talk about stuff. Skateboard against The Man! Oh, now I know why I was confused about the new AC game. I was confusing it with Bloodlines, which IS a handheld title. Though that doesn’t leave me any less confused on what the game supposed to be. Will likely pick it up though; I really liked Ezio, much more than Altair.
Oh…Shaun White is in 3D too. Joy of joys.
Joel is talking about technology and video games. He is interrupted by music and some kind of laser tag-ish game demo. Ubisoft is making toys now? Battle Tag it’s called. “Something lots of gamers have been waiting for.” We have? The developer guy is basically saying it’s a real life FPS game. It’s got a chest piece with a sensor, big plastic guns, and ammo packs. So yeah, it’s just fancy laser tag that you can connect to your computer or console or whatever. You can set up targets too. 2 guns, 2 harnesses, 4 tags (the target things) come in each pack. That’s nice.
Joel is now making bad jokes and announcing Tommy Francois for Innergy. It’s a game to reduce stress. …. Isn’t that what they all do? It’s got a sensor, like the Wii vitality sensor but it’s Ubi’s thing. A little bubble goes up and down a rainbow telling you when to breathe in and out. Bright rainbow colors are not relaxing, Ubisoft. It’s made to plug into any computer. Or you could just do yoga breathing exercises for free.
Video from developers to talk about…Kinect I assume. Revolving the game world around you. Ah, some of these guys have hilarious accents. Using your mind and body to play. Now 2 new Kinect titles. This one looks like a sports game. Snow skiing, soccer, football. Motion Sports. Live demo of Your Shape (which was shown at the MS conference). It’s the same two people from the MS demo. It looks like it may be the exact same demo…Felicia’s even using the same dialog from earlier. They are talking a bit more about the online features though. But it’s all the same demo from earlier. I would probably get something like Your Shape; it’s nifty.
Joel is announcing the new Rabbids game now. “Now they will go…where no Rabbid has gone before.” Back in time apparently. Give a caveman fire, break the nose off the Sphinx, keep Excalibur from being pulled from the stone… It’s called Raving Rabbids Travel in Time. November on the Wii.
Ghost Recon Future Soldier. New weapons, new tech like optical camouflage. “The Soldier of the Future is an F-16 on Legs.” The producer and game designer are on to talk about it. See tomorrow’s soldier. Demo now, making good use of the optical camo. Lots of close quarter combat, perfect for the new camo feature. Quick and clean assassinations. There’s a voice over giving commands to you (“Take out the guy on the left while so-and-so gets the guy on the right.”). Wraps up with a big shoot out. You can play the campaign with 4-player co-op and…3D. Did he really just say this one is in 3D too? This has got to stop.
Joel announces a driving game now. Driver: San Francisco. Big car chase on a crowded bridge, plenty of carnage. Good looking game. Mostly rendered stuff there though. Martin Edmondson the creator is there to talk. Tanner vs. Jericho. Martin keeps talking about how they’re going back to their roots with this game.
CEO of Ubi, Yves Guillemot. First is Dust, a game for digital distribution. By Eric Chahi. Some old civilization, very Atlantean. Spring 2011. I guess it’s some kind of strategy game. Next is a presentation about creating art…leading into a new Rayman game. Rayman Origins. Only 5 people have been working on it apparently. The third project is a platform. He’s talking about UPlay from last year, but they have a new one, ManiaPlanet. Video about user-powered gaming and Track Mania, which has user generated content. User-Powered PC Gaming Zone. Shootmania and Questmania coming next year.
Now Yves is talking about a new product, learning from the experts. It is a…Michael Jackson game? It’s another dance game using Kinect I think. I dunno, there’s just some guys dancing around onstage with Beat It playing, but nothing happening on screen. Still dancing. Be nice to see the actual game. They did the whole dang song. ……….. So uh. That’s the end of the conference. What the hell was that for?
Well, they kind of ended with a thud there. The dance was cool, but they didn’t even say what it was for. Looked like maybe that dance game from the MS conference. Oh, no, wait, sorry, that was a Harmonix game. Quick check on Kotaku…they think it’s Just Dance. Oh well, at least they had that awesome Assassin’s Creed thing there at the beginning. That’s all for today. Sony and Nintendo tomorrow morning/afternoon. I forget which is first.
No comments:
Post a Comment