Ubisoft Press Conference
Microsoft had an Usher performance for Dance Central 3, so Ubisoft also had to splash the cash and get Flo Rida to come out live and rap and attempt to dance for Just Dance 4. The actual dancers were all fairly attractive women wearing tight shirts and short shorts (probably to make up for the fact that Just Dance is generally thought of as the inferior dance game).
And then, more boobs. This press conference was very uncensored, strange considering how early in the day it was, but hey ho. The Far Cry 3 trailer opened with a topless woman writhing on top of you, and then there were guns, bows and arrows, knives, tigers and fire. Damn Cry Engine is good at fire. Then there was a sequence where the character was injected with something, then started tripping out and was walking through a dream world on television screens and then he shot the bad guy, but his face changed just before he did it. I'm not entirely sure what was going on, but it looked interesting and I'm enough of a fan of the previous games to be pretty excited about this one.
Probably the most underwhelming trailer of the conference was for Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth. It showed some fights between some recognisable Marvel characters, but not much else, and it was barely talked about.
Rayman Legends was next, and suddenly became my most looked forward to game of the show so far (although that didn't last long, you'll find out why later). It was demoed on the Wii U, with a new character shown to be controlled using the touch screen controller, while two other characters used normal Wiimotes to platform. The touch screen was used to move around the screen and manipulate environments to help the platformers. Then there was a sequence when things on screen were happening in time with the music, and it was very impressive. Definitely something to look forward to on the new Nintendo console.
It's the Queen's diamond jubilee this weekend, so there was a trailer with the British national anthem playing over it! God save the queen! Oh God, zombies are killing everyone in London. Zombi U is the new winner of worst game name of the show so far (the previous holder of the title was Lococycle, although strangely that also held title of best named game), and apparently it's a zombie game, because that's a revolutionary concept.
Assassin's Creed 3 had a large segment of the show, and deservedly so, as it looks very (I'm going to use this word again) impressive. Being able to free run over trees instead of building is fresh and looks very cool. New mechanics such as firing squads and not being able to run as fast in deep snow and so on all look like they are going to make this game one to watch this year, despite my trepidation of it only being a year since the previous game. Also the shape of Connor's tomahawk is still awesome. His unexciting name is still not.
Trackmania 2 was one of my favourite games of last year, I love the speed, I love the craziness and I love how janky it is. So when Shootmania Storm was announced a few weeks ago, no one was more excited than me. Ubisoft had a live demo, with 'famous' names from the world of eSports taking part in a girls vs boys match of Elite Mode, where each round is 1 v 3, with the one person having the advantage of using a one shot kill gun. And the boys won, woo.
Finally, Ubisoft had a new IP to tell us about, and God damn it looks cool. It seems to be a third person action game, where the protagonist has access to a wealth of technology, as well as guns. The tagline is that "the city becomes your weapon", and that certainly seems to ring true, as we see the main character hacking in to traffic lights to cause a car crash involving his target, being able to gain someone's personal information just be looking at them, hacking into phones or turning off all signals in an area to cause a distraction and more. Then there was a twist at the end of the gameplay demonstration as the camera switched to another character, who certainly had what looked like a multiplayer gametag above his head. On top of all this the city the player roams around looks gorgeous, with great lighting and weather effects, and there are some top notch long coat dynamics. Watch Dogs got the largest cheer I've heard so far at the show, and rightly so, we love new games that looks awesome! The one thing I will say is that I'm unsure whether Ubisoft are targeting current generation platforms with this game, but if they are, sweeeeet.
EA Press Conference
I didn't realise the finale of Game of Thrones was going to be longer than usual, which is annoying as it made me miss the Dead Space 3 reveal. Apparently they were touting a co op campaign and a new playable character. I loved Dead Space 2, and I hope this one will live up to that.
Do you know what else I loved growing up? Sim City. And EA are making a new one, super excited. Did anyone say "roads that aren't straight"? The one downer of this presentation was that it's not coming out til next February, booo.
EA then rolled out their sports games, Madden and Fifa, which I talked about in my first post, so go and click that link on the right if you haven't already.
Battlefield 3: Premium was announced. Right now you can pay the low low price of $50 and get access to 5 unreleased expansion packs! I'm not a fan of this whole "pay now and you can get stuff later!" payment model of late, but who knows, maybe the new stuff will be super amazing.
EA's other big war game came out next. Medal of Honor Warfighter showed itself, and damn it looks pretty, that Frostbite 2 engine is niiiice. Other than that though, it looks like...a war game. We've already got BF and CoD, and the new MoH doesn't look revolutionary, which is a shame.
Then EA announced a few year and multi game partnership with UFC, which I don't really have an interest in, even though they hammered home the point that apparently it's the fastest growing sport in the world. Good for them.
Criterion make some damn good driving games, and Need for Speed Most Wanted looks like it will keep up with the trend- wait a minute wasn't that the name of a previous NFS game? On the current generation of hardware? Weird.
They closed out the press conference with Crysis 3, what else? It looks nicer, but the gameplay looks veeery similar to Crysis 2, which is a fine game, but I'd like something a bit fresher like what Ubisoft are doing with Assassin's Creed. Also, I'm guessing that Cry Engine has some new bow and arrow technology, as both this and Far Cry are using them...
So that was EA and Ubisoft. I'll be back later with Sony and Nintendo! Thanks for reading, have a good day.
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