E3 2015: Ubisoft Press Conference Impressions

2014 was a less than stellar year for Ubisoft's reputation as Watch Dogs fell far short of its hype and Assassin's Creed: Unity was shipped as a broken mess.  Despite Ubisoft's best efforts to fix the situation, many felt betrayed by Ubisoft's transgressions.  So the French publisher had something to prove coming into E3 2015.  The question was: could they deliver?

For how many games Ubisoft crammed into a 60 minutes, the conference moved at an incredible pace.  The hour flew by before you knew it as Ubisoft. much like Bethesda, let the games do the talking for them.  For every minute spent talking, three or more was spent showing live gameplay or pre-rendered trailers.  While I do prefer gameplay over trailers any day, the trailers that Ubisoft showed at their conference were short, sweet and incredibly produced.  My personal favourite was Trials Fusion Awesome Level Max's trailer, which saw a gun-toting cat riding a fire-breathing unicorn.  No, I'm not on crack!  It really happened!

The biggest plus from Ubisoft's conference was most certainly the live demos.  Seeing all those titles played live, including the newly announced For Honor, The Division, Rainbow Six: Siege and TrackMania Turbo, gave me a much better impression on all of them.  I'm actually excited to play all of them.  From a medieval melee combat to a tactical shooter to an arcade racer, there was incredible amount of diversity between the titles demoed and on the show as a whole.

Also, I have to praise Ubisoft for being the only publisher in the video game industry that can actually keep a secret.  There were no leaks or rumours about South Park: The Fractured But Whole, Ghost Recon Wildlands or a new IP in For Honor being set for Ubisoft's press conference.  Not having any prior knowledge on those games made all the surprises feel special, something that rarely happens nowadays.

It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows at Ubisoft's press conference.  There were some problems when it came to presentation.  It has become par for the course that Ubisoft brings in some celebrities to host, make appearances or even sing, but it never usually ends well.  The same can be said for this year's show.  Aisha Tyler tirelessly tried to inject some humour into the conference, but seemed to make things awkward ever single time.  Angela Bassett talking about her role as Six in Rainbow Six: Siege was completely worthless.  And to top it all off, Jason Derulo showed the world that he cannot sing—or he might of just hit puberty—in a moment that was so gloriously awful that it came off as being incredibly funny.  Like watching a train wreck, you couldn't turn your attention away from it.

Despite the problems with the conference's presentation, Ubisoft's press conference was a highly entertaining show.  It let the games stand as the sole focus and kept Aisha Tyler's on-stage shenanigans to a minimum.  You know it's going to be a good show from Ubisoft when the only reference to Tyler's girlwood is her necklace.

Grade:  A-

Off the Newsstand: Game Informer Issue 225

It has been noted that I have been busy with a lot of things these last couple of months.  As work calms down after the holiday season, I am busy reading a whole lot of magazines.  With the newest issues of Nintendo Power, EGM and Game Informer about to come in the mail and an issue of OXM that I received from a friend, January is going to be a busy month full of reading.  Good thing I just finished my last issue of Game Informer last week.

As the first issue of Game Informer's calendar year, you would expect a big reveal as the cover story.  Last January, Game Informer got the exclusive first look at the new more mature Tomb Raider game, which was amazing.  This year Game Informer's big exclusive reveal was a South Park RPG.  It maybe hard to convey through words, but when Game Informer revealed this cover I was not amused.  Right now some people are jumping for joy at the fact that there will be a South Park RPG, but all those people are probably too young to play this game or even watch the show.  The cover story was neat, but all it really told me was the basic premise for the story, that the game will have the same art style as the show and Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park, are writing the script.  Cool tidbits of information, but there were plenty of better articles in this issue of Game Informer.  The article on the Witness, Jonathan Blow's new puzzle-adventure game, took a short, but rather pleasing look at the Witness' puzzles and unique take on the adventure genre.  Also the in-depth interview with Dan Houser, vice president of creative at Rockstar Games was very enjoyable.  We got some really good previews on games that are releasing within the next few months and reviews on the biggest games of this holiday season.

At the end of the day, issue 225 of Game Informer is just an okay issue.  Personally I hold Game Informer's cover stories in high standing and this issues' South Park RPG cover story fell flat for me.  The rest of the issue was a good read, but I would not go out of my way to recommend anybody go out of their way to buy this issue unless you are a big of South Park fan.  There are much better issues of Game Informer you can read than this issue.