Ubisoft has been notorious to have the most inconsistent press conferences in E3 history. Going from super serious shooter like Ghost Recon right into the hilariously horrible laser tag ripoff or having James Cameron go on about Avatar for 40 minutes straight without any gameplay footage or screenshots to speak of. It would usually end up being an incredible disaster or somehow luck out with the good far outweighing the oh so bad. This year was different for Ubisoft. Other than a few slip ups, which I will get to later, their conference was the best so far. Most of the stuff that would weigh down past Ubisoft conferences were put in short montages or little clips on the big screen. Ubisoft got to what gamers wanted, which was core games. The first demo was Far Cry 3, which was fairly interesting and enjoyable. It really showed off how Ubisoft was taking the definition of insanity, which was a huge focus of last year's E3 demo and making it into an entire plot point. It was very interesting to say the least. Next up was a trailer for Splinter Cell: Blacklist as the amazing gameplay demo was shown off at the Microsoft Press Conference. While not as amazing as the actual gameplay demo, it was very good and kept things rolling at a good pace. Then Ubisoft showed off a couple of their exclusives for the Wii U. They showed a full-on gameplay demo of Rayman Legends, which I can proudly say is exclusive to Wii U. It was the best demo of the conference as it showed off how Ubisoft is using the Wii U's unique controller to interact with the environment in real time. My only question is how will somebody play Rayman Legends on their own? During the stage demo had one person using the Wii U Gamepad and another using the Pro Controller. While I do have some questions, the gameplay in that demo was just phenomenal. Next up was the Assassin's Creed III demo, which surprisingly did not close out the show. The demo really showcased how Ubisoft Montreal has really improved on every aspect of Assassin's Creed. The combat flowed in a way it should have always been like, stealth and action seem to blend perfectly and the game overall looks to be much more fluid and fast-paced, which is a good thing. To end the show, Ubisoft revealed a brand new game by the name of Watch Dogs. You are a hacker in an endlessly interconnected city. Everything is connected to a central computer and you are able to hack it to do whatever you want. Search up information about anybody in the city, cause electronics to malfunction and eavesdropping on phone conversations is just a few examples of what you can do. It looks like an incredibly interesting sci-fi world that I personally would love to explore in the near future. Even with all the good, there was a few bad parts of the conference. The Just Dance 4 opening concert with Flo Rida was completely unnecessary, the host was annoying beyond all reason and the ShootMania e-sport competition was soo bad that it almost derailed the entire press conference.
Overall, the Ubisoft E3 2012 Press Conference was the best press conference so far. It had a few bad moments, but they made up for it with their great gameplay demos and reveals. It was an entertaining one and a half hour conference that Sony and Nintendo have to strive to out do.
Grade: B+
No comments:
Post a Comment