Ubisoft Conference 2010 Round-Up

Last year’s Ubisoft E3 conference was as dull as watching paint dry. Actually, no. It was worse than that. It was as boring as listening to a film director talk for way too long about a game of a film without showing any screens from the game or film whatsoever, with breaks scattered in by unfunny Joel McHale. Yet we were supposed to believe what was being worked on is a good thing. To be honest, most people had begun sleeping by then. For us, it’s late at night, with the Ubisoft conference starting at 1am UK time. Feel safe in the knowledge that this yet again awful conference has been summarised into a friendly little list.

I joined at the mental stuff, missing out on Child of Eden. Shame, it was the best game shown. The Ubisoft staff are much more over the top than the EA group. “Wow!” is repeated a number of times and I already hate them. Oh God. It’s that Joel McHale guy from last year again. Please no. Not ninety minutes of him. He always tries to make jokes that are not funny at all. I’m sitting here with a hot chocolate, at sleeping time, and I want to cry already.

Brink

It was mentioned. A trailer was all we got, and I had just come back from the kettle. (clearly, Brink is being published by Bethesda – this video was an advert on one of the streams… -Ed)

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

Ezio is older, wiser, but still a ladies man. You’ll be using the horse to run through collapsing streets, end-of-the-world style. Ezio will be able to use a number of machines, including the cannon shown. I like the little man who runs in front of it every time you fire to put a new cannonball in. Brotherhood will see new moves and fight mechanics to make it easier to fight off more enemies at a time. Coming 16th November 2010.

“I would like that now!”, “Wow!”,  “Awesome!” and “I was in the brotherhood for a while” are just some of the things Joel has to say.

Shaun White Skateboarding

What looks like a tacky powerpoint comes on repeating the word “Skateboarding”, making me want to cry. I do so. After this, I listen to a difficult interview between Joel and Shaun White. The normal chatter about ‘no boundaries, no limits’ were thrown in there for good measure. “Limits are always a bad thing, for instance I have a restraining order against my mother in law” Joel comments. Someone get me a taser. The game’s focal point is ‘transformation’. The player can change the environment in real time, which actually works really well. The story behind the game is that you need to change a safety-concerned world into something colourful and fun, by skating through a black and white city, with every few feet turning the world to colour. People around you start skating and all safety propaganda is turned into skating images. Forget anything realistic. This really is about creating your playground as you go. Buildings, railings and everything changes as you jump around near them to be more skateboarding-orientated, or to morph to the path that you took while you were grinding on them.

Battle Tag Working Title

People run about lazer shooting each other amongst the audience. It looks lame, or a lookback to the tacky games of the past. Turns out it’s a ‘next-gen’ game. The idea of this is to take the game away from the screen, with people playing normal lazer shooting, but the game on the screen will take back all the information from the weapons you hold and instruct you on what challenge to do next. In the example, the creator and Joel run between two markers that they set themselves. A marker is just a plastic block that you can put anywhere in the house. Once you reach the marker, you swipe it against the gun and ‘shoot’ the Kinect. Battle Tag is the name we’re assuming this game is called. None was given as far as we heard.

Innergy

This game isn’t just about fun. It’s about feeling well. Someone clips on a sensor to the finger which looks like one of those hospital things we saw last year. The player looks at a psychedelic image on the screen with a bubble character moving up and down a wave, respresenting the player breathing in and out. You can plug it into a computer for any time you want a “break or to charge yourself up”. You’re told how relaxed you are. Argue with it what you will.

He’s still saying wow.

Kinect

One big video with all the Ubisoft team commenting on how amazing Kinect is. That’s it. Move along now.

MotionSports

A woman comes along to show off what Ubisoft are doing with Kinect. She puts herself inside a virtual world. It looks quite good, although the other TSA writers are already comparing it negatively to EA Sports 2. You’ll be able to send challenge invitations to your friends through facebook and twitter. A 3D blob-like version of the body is placed into a 3D world with lots of fitness challenges that genuinely look a little fun. “The available DLC will be endless”. Apparently that’s a good thing to say.

Raving Rabbids Travel in Time

Just a trailer showing the rabbids tampering with different events in time. Looks quirky, but all CG  and no more information. Coming 9th November to the Wii.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier

This time round it’s all about being invisible. Literally. From the gameplay demo, it looks like you’ll be spending most of your time using Solid Snake’s stealth camouflage. Having said that, we also see a sniper taking out a helicopter pilot without using invisibility, but the stealth camo does seem to be an integral part of the game. What’s also noticeable are the destructible covers, looking as good as Black on the PS2. Certainly, hiding behind crates just won’t do it these days when some big robot thing is shooting at you. Future Soldier will be stereoscopic 3D too.

Driver: San Francisco

Not the first time we’ve heard the phrase “back to the roots of the game” in this year’s E3. That’s right, EA were saying the same thing with Need for Speed. John Tanner is back from Driver 1, and arch enemy from Driver 2, Jericho is back. Ubisoft have finally got a lot of real licensed cars, and got them all fully playable in the game. When you chase a car (yes, you’re chasing other cars, like NFS) its rear red lights blur behind it making a sort of trail leading you in the right direction in case you’ve lost sight of it. What Ubisoft are happy to spoil for us now is that Tanner is in a coma. Did someone shout Life on Mars? No, just me then. In this coma-like state, he can do whatever he wants. That means if you see a car you like, you can select it very quickly and instantly be in the driving seat of that vehicle. So you could be driving one way and see a car driving the opposite direction to you. Forget U-turns. Just “shift” into the other car by quickly selecting it from a radius map, and you’re driving the other way. Zoom out a little on this map, and you can see all 208 miles of diverse roads. San Francisco is coming to PS3, Xbox 360, Wii and PC.

Yves Guillimont, CEO of Ubisoft walks on to make the announcements for the games Ubisoft have been secretly working on.

Project Dust

Here’s a trailer that at first reminded me of Populus, with a tribe of people running away from an earth crumbing into itself. No more information, just a teaser. Coming Spring 2011.

Rayman Origins

“Rayman is back” the announcement begins. “Only five people have been working on this project”. So the trailer beforehand showing us what looks like children and adults’ doodles, their drawings have been animated into this 2D game? Yes. Although, it doesn’t look too bad. I think this is a PSN XBL game. No more information.

Mania Planet

A PC platform to combine Trackmania, Shootmania and Questmania. The first you may have heard of and may already own. The other two act exactly the same: Shootmania allows you to create your own shooting games while Questmania allows you to create your own quest games. A beta for Trackmania 2 is releasing in Q4 2010, with betas for the other two coming next year or later.

Michael Jackson Dancing Game Working Title

Dancers all come on the stage to do a little dance. Apparently there’s a Michael Jackson dancing game coming at the end of the year. No name is given, no platform is given, and no screens are shown. This is an announcement as bad as Avatar last year, just shorter in explaining nothing.

Wow – and that’s coming from me this time, sarcastically. Well that was interesting. Joel has left the stage and I can breath again. Perhaps I need Innergy to tell me I’m not calm? No, I don’t think that would help. I’ll just spend the next hour or so cleaning up the tears from my keboard and making sense of the text amongst all the screams that I typed out in the draft of this round-up. Ghost Recon looked pretty fun. It’s just a shame I missed Child of Eden, that looked insane.

Find all the upcoming conferences, including those from Nintendo and Sony, here.