News - Ubisoft @ E3

- Ubisoft @ E3 -

A summary of sorts

Farcry 4

Nnnnnheelllloo

Start strong and open with a bang is a good philosophy ey. So here we are watching an intro cutscene of some unseen manface on a bus in the Himalayas and ooooo there's a monkey there trying to steal your passport. First things first the game looks rather nice from what they're showing now, so the trailer goes like this - You're on a  bus and then there's a checkpoint and people get shot and then the bad guy shows up and is once again quite mad (but let's be honest he's not Vaas) and then he stabs some guard because....something. The old ones are the best for Ubisoft I guess since this is running a lot like Farcry 3, annnnnnyway they didn't show us anything other than this cutscene and it ends with the villain telling us we're going to have so much fun together whatever that means..just keep waiting for the Sony conference since that's where all the juice is for this game.

Aisha Tyler strides onto the stage to greet the masses

Quake beneath my mighty tread!

EUGHHHHHH but at least she seems somewhat genuine unlike some of the other presenters they shove on stage. Also it seems that swearing is totally fucking professional for Ubisoft so fuckin ey right.

    

Just Dance 2015

Twat central

Do you know why I despise these trailers? It's because they're hyper unrealistic, firstly nobody has friends like that, nobody plays games like that and who the hell has that much living room space to fit 12 people in their mid 20's pretending to have fun and cheer each other on with hip young phrases!? Not only is all of this just horrendous BUT we were forced to bare witness to an awful collection of people on stage dancing with their damn phones because that's right you don't even need a console to play this now just a smart phone with a gyroscope in it and friends who don't mind dancing like twats. Oh there's also this great new feature where you can download other peoples dance videos and judge them like the awful person you are. Awful awful person

The Division

What year is this!?

No gameplay to see here instead it's a whole new trailer of a guy getting shit kicked then saved by the resistance and then future nazi soldiers or something appear to try and kill you because this whole shebang is the result of a virus of some description and you need to be purged I guess. The trailer was pretty good though, not because of any of that but because it starts with an apartment interior and pans around constantly changing from pre-incident to post-incident which was interesting to see how quickly it changed in the months between from apartment to fortified living space and from city to warzone.

The Crew

My oh my, what a big wing you have...

Well well well it's good to see this game again. For those not in the know The Crew is a form of MMO-driving game where you can drive from coast to coast (in the U.S) with absolutely no loading screens and set up races and other unknown activities with your Crew/group of friends. Sadly not much more to see this year but the cars are indeed shiny and the beta registration is open now and oh yea it comes out November 11th for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

Assassin's Creed Unity

Duck, dodge, dip, dive and dodge

This time we get to see some more gameplay in the form of a co-op trailer. At a first glance the free running has been improved and looks much more fluid when traversing a city and your hidden blade has been all fancified just like your gun which has two barrels because Assassin's. Speaking of which there are no ladysassin's in this game which I'm sure Tumblr will just have a field day with.

We get to see Mr. Arnold stalking through a building looking for the target and it's here that we see what I'm pretty sure is a new snap to cover system and actual crouching, I could be wrong about these being new but either way they work and again the stalking looks smooth enough right now. It's also interesting to that there was no mini-map on the screen, instead it looked like you could flash up icons directly in game, I can only assume that you'll be able to set waypoints to them that way...or they were just hiding the minimap.

Shape Up mother fucker!

WORK YOU SLACKERS

No prizes for guessing that this is a fitness game given the name and all...The pitch for this was making fitness fun which having spent a lot of time in gym with people trying to motivate me to move my lazy arse is something I know cannot be done through conventional means. The difference is that in the game you can punch asteroids or do some kind of dance dance revolution style thing or do sit-ups till you shit yourself. All this can be done either against your past performances or against a friend both of which sound equally hellish and yes this is the first game to use the Kinect or even mention it whichhhhh is quite the shocker. It raises many interesting questions though, can fitness be gamified? Does gamification change our perception of the subject? Could you really do a press-up with a whale on your back? Hmmmmm

Valiant Hearts

I am a man with manly tears!

Definitely takes the prize for most depressing trailer of the show god damn, go watch it. Made in the UbiArt engine, the same one used for Child of Light and Rayman Legends, this visually stunning game set during World War 1 tells the tale of war from a dogs perspective (I think). It was a bit confusing to see so just go watch it and be saddened by it. It looks fantastic and you'll be able to play it June 25th.

Yves Guillemot is small

I don't know who made this but I love you

We love you alllll blah blah blah well done to us we're Ubisoft OH and here's one more game...

Rainbow Six Siege

So many dicks will be shot into the walls..I can see it now

Well bugger me I didn't see this one coming at all, maybe a new Splinter Cell or..something but wow here we are with a new Rainbow Six game on the tables. The 'gameplay' we got to see was allegedly alpha or pre-alpha or conceptual alpha or something but I'd bet my bollocks to a barn dance that they're full of shit, alpha doesn't look anywhere close to that good and once again it's a tactical shooter with some awful voice chat going on. 

A simple hostage rescue is the premise of the gameplay here, to make life easier we'll call the teams the Terrorists and the Counter-Terrorists. The game begins with the CT's scoping out the house with mini remote controlled cameras and planning the assault with maps of the house looking for entry points, while this is going on the T's are fortifying weak walls and barricading doors and if at all possible destroying the mini cameras sent in by the CT's. Assumedly after a certain amount of time has elapsed it's all systems go as the CT's get into position to bust in through a window or blow a hole in the side of the house.

Tactical team shooter y'all that's what we're dealing with here, if you get shot you're probably going down on the ground and if somebody doesn't pick you up in 5 seconds you're out for the round and your team will hate you so don't fuck it up. The interesting or potentially awesome thing about this game is that they were showing a lot of destructibility within the house, more than just shooting holes in walls, you can use your breach explosives to bust giant holes in walls or better yet you can blow a hole in the ceiling and descend like an angel of death into the room amidst the confusion.

It looks like it will be a lot of fun assuming you've got a group of friends to play with who all use voice comms and will essentially role play..yea have fun with that. No date on this one but I would guess late 2015 and hopefully it looks great and plays as fun as they've made it look with this.

END!

Summary

Bravo Ubisoft you actually had a good conference with minimal cringing brought on by bad scripting...Sony next up! 

News - Xbox @ E3

-XBOX @ E3-

A summary of sorts

So here's what's going to happen, I'm going to rattle off everything that happened during the Xbox conference in the order it happened then give some kind of opinion...lets go

Boom Phil Spencer

Swish

So Phil Spencer exploded onto the stage to open the show and began with the usual spiel of "thank you all" "you shaped the future of Xbox people, YOU DID!" oh and "we're dedicating the entire briefing to games"..Well fuck there's the first shocker, then the non-shocker of starting with their biggest profit churning, racist simulator..

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

Not the bees! Not the BEEEEES!

So we got to see some new footage of the yearly genocide simulator and it actually caused some levels of internal excitement for myself, it wasn't anything to do with the usual gruff militaristic dick swinging characters and it damn sure wasn't the overly emotional trailer where somebody gets exploded and we lose an arm or something. No. It was the fact that Codaw is set in semi-near future and there's fucking cyber suits and jetpacks and lasers and Kevin Spacey and homing rocket grenades and god damn robot bees that swarmed around for some reason not yet known! ROBOT BEES PEOPLE! 

It looks like CoD so nobody is going to lose their shit over that, the trailer showed us a nice quick transition between cut-scene and gameplay which I'll tell you now is a frequent theme in every damn conference this year. Yes it's nice and shiny and at least the new studio will bring some fresh life into the game..though really who gives a toss about the single player in Call of Duty games, you could cut it completely and not lose any money from the hoards of screaming children who have to play it on Xbox live in order to be cool

Cut to..Forza 5

Another quick speech about thanking the community followed by a track they forgot to put in the game to begin with, The Nürburgring, everyone's favourite track because most people can't name any other. They really wanted us to know how much effort they put into this, capturing the tracks curves millimeter for millimeter and such, oh and it's free, and you can get it now. What are you waiting for!! Nobody cares about Forza 5 though because there's...

Forza Horizon 2

Carrrrrrrrrr

Over 200 of your favourite cars that you'll never manage to afford because you're just not that special also look at this exclusive Lamborghini because cars you fuck! Apparently they're having a day night cycle with dynamic weather allllll in 1080p and fear not your drivatar will be waiting for you. 

Did you ever want to create a group of people for your driving, a club if you will, or rather a driveclub..*cough* yeaaa well now you can apparently. I don't know, Forza is just a racing game, the cars are shiny and so its the scenery and that's great and all but really cars can only look so much like cars and really I couldn't give a flying ball-sack about it. Nevertheless the "road trip of your life" begins September 30th so you better pre-order now before you can't buy it day one anyway.

Evolve

Ooo I'm tingling

Coming to you at some point in the future is this game from 2K wherein you can assume the role of 1 of 4 classes: Assault, Trapper, Medic and Support and in all likelihood ignore your entire team and run off to solo victory. Doing that however will end with you getting buggered sideways by the monster. Nothing of major interest to see here right now so I guess we're just sat here waiting for some gameplay which I'm sure we're all violently desperate for right...right?

Assassins Creed Unity

The four douches of the revolution

Hark, it is the sound of the yearly outing into the exciting life of an Assassin only this time it's in wonderful, exotic FRANCE. Set during the French Revolution you are Arnaeu/Arno/Arnold some studpid named guy who for an assassin stands out way too much in a crowd. The selling point this year is that you can play co-op with 3 of your friends making the combat even more trivial than it ever has been, don't get me wrong it looks like a  great way to spice up the gameplay and if you can go through the story missions with friends I'll be made up, if it turns out to just be specific co-op missions then that's a little less exciting.

Definitely have to give a circular clap to Ubisoft though because their crowd tech is damn good from what they showed here, like I said though the whole being an assassin thing doesn't work the further forward you go. They just stand out in every damn crowd, it worked great when you were skulking round Jerusalem in the first game but the French revolution? Come on. Well, it can't be worse than 3...

Dragon Age Inquisition

Rawr

Absolutely no gameplay to see here people move along. Things to note though, there are actual dragons in it and it's shiny looking, also there's premiere content first on Xbox so there's that. Morrigan will be disapproving everywhere October 7th

Sunset Overdrive

Eugh

Fuck all the grim dark mythological nonsense this games got blues and greens and a main character that makes me want to rip his eyes out. Sunset Overdrive is weird to say the least, it's totally ludicrous and self-referential and looks hella fun. You get to zip around on wires and jump on things and shoot carbonated beverages at zombies, why? Because fuck you that's why. You don't even have to do it alone, 8player online co-op with dedicated servers for all your zombie killing city traversing needs. Look for this slice of colourful pie October 28th

Super Ultra Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix Hyper Edition DX Plus Alpha 

...

Yes that is the actual name of the DLC for Dead Rising 3 which is available right now. You'll be able to cosplay as your favourite Capcom character and fight the zombie masses using a ridiculous array of super moves and power ups with 4player co-op so go fucking nuts.

Dance Central Spotlight

Xbox exclusive, digital only annnnnnd who cares it's a dancing game they're all the same.

Disney Fantasia Music Evolved

No idea but it's coming out in Fall or Autumn for the real people out there.

Fable Legends

Legendary..

Ohhhh what fresh hell is this, it looks like Fable and smells like Fable and hell it even sounds like Fable, that is to say it sounds like terrible English accents from Ye'Olde merry LANDAN. What we were shown was some terrible looking multiplayer that was a bit Diabloy but not as good. You can either be Agar the standard strength warrior man, Rook the thief rogue person or Winter the incredibly obvious mage. If any of that sounds frightfully boring then you can always play as the villain/dungeon master/evil overlord and set traps and monster spawns and bugger it you could just play Dungeon Land because it's the same thing only the dungeon master gets a laugh button soo yea. Though the freeze and shatter effects looked nice...Multiplayer beta coming Fall/Autumn only on Xbox.

Some stupid cutaway nonsense with people talking about favourite games or something equally useless.

Spark/Project Spark

Well well well what is this game? Some kind of world creator with a shiny look to it withhhh multiplayer and co-op campaign and space and Conker of all the random characters to drag out of the retirement home. Not a damn clue but I like world creation so hopefully there will be more to see soon.

Ori and the blind forest

Enough fun it's time to get serious. Again it's a trailer that said very little but damn it did look pretty. You're some kind of fox/Eevee thing and either you're trying to save your giant panda buddy or rescue him or he's died or something but regardless you're going to go on an emotional roller coaster and probably feel quite bad for all these pixels at some point..assuming you have an Xbox One because it's exclusiveeee.

Halo, is it me you're looking...4?

Well, apparently it was kind of a big deal as far as franchises go so it seems only right that they reskin and re-release Halo 1,2,3 and 4. November 11th you'll be able to revisit those big floating rings in space to wipe out alien species for whatever reason. They talked a big game with this one, retouched graphics, switch between new and classic graphics, multiplayer is the same as it was and all this applies to all 4 games. In total we're looking at over 100 MP maps, every Halo map ever released on running on the original engines at 1080p all on lovely dedicated servers mmmmmmmmmalso if you like achievements then guess what there's a few with this..4000 gamerscores worth. Yes 4000.

After all that we were shown some Halo Nightfall, some digital series that leads into Halo 5: Guardians. Speaking of which the beta for that starts in December, oh and it will run at 60fps on dedicated servers because they're the right way of doing things god dammit!

Phil Spencer changes his shirt and really loves that hip new indie game Limbo

"oh hey look at all our betas now look at all the shit coming out in 2015 starting with something from the guys who made that hip new indie game Limbo"

Inside

Well what can I say, much like Limbo this game looks dark, miserable and oppressive. Lots of grey palettes at work here (probably).

ID@Xbox

Apparently these guys love indies which is why they threw a giant compilation of indie games at us that are all coming to that Microsoft console:

Aztez

Knight Squad

Plague Inc

White Night

Earthlock Festival of Magic

Cuphead

Drifter

Lifeless Planet

Slash Dash

Fru

Lovers in a Dangerous Space

Mighty no.9

Grave

Threes

Fenix Rage

Woolfe

Idarb

Hellraid

Below

annnnd then that ended...

Cut to more terrible filler about people who love games

Rise of the Tombraider

Tense..

Well, the professional antiquity thief is back. Fresh from her last romp Ms. Croft is now in therapy and we are told all about her nightmares and flashbacks which we can assume are all related to that island she removed all the inhabitants from. Well whatever the case she's bound to end up going somewhere else and stealing more ancient shit. Also the name is god damn awful.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Mmmmm

Holy balls and hell fire what a preview, Gerald is back once more doing some straight up witchin and shit. The footage we were shown was from 10 hours into the game and showed Mr.G quick footing around some forest and grasslands on the hunt for a big ass gryphon, on the way we see some fantastic decapitation of bandits at a camp. This game looks spec-bloody-tacular, it's one hell of a good looking overworld we see with fluid movement and traversal.

This damn game is going to murder my PC (because why would you get it on Xbox) and I'm fine with that, even more fine with the fact it's been pushed back to 2015. I want CD projekt Red to take as loooooonnnnng as they need to make this game everything it needs to be so we can bang all the ladies across the world.

Phantom Dust

So I was completely lost when this went down, never heard of it, never played it, never knew it was a big thing. Random cutscene of angel vs demon fight aside it is or was at least a card action game of sorts apparently so there's that.

Random BS about hours played on live 



The Division

Ahhh Ubisoft sure do love their weird future tech games don't they, almost as much as they love to hype up a game then delay it then it end up to be disappointing..anyway. The division is some kind of third person cover based shooter set in a world where some kind of virus is killing people and then the army nazis are killing the infected and stop me if this starts to sound familiar. We're not killing zombies or anything though no no, killing other people trying to survive is what we're in this game for though you can bet your balls that the other people trying to make it in the new world are painted as evil violent bad guys.

False promises go hand in hand with terribly commentated on-stage multiplayer and it's possible they took the cake with this one, it always comes across as completely false and disingenuous and just down right bad. "Ok I'm going to flank from the right, John you storm the front and"blahhh blahhh bollocks. Stop doing this, please, it really hurts my insides. Anyway The Divison will be getting all new content first on Xbox One along with all it's damn lens flare.

Scalebound

Well fuck Platinum games are out in full swing on the batshit-o-meter. We're treated to some hipster douchebag wearing headphones listening to his phat beats in a jungle or forest of some form and then BAM dragon dinosaur alien thing! and then BAM the hipster turns into a fucking knight who's all scaly (LIKE THE TITLE GET IT?!). But then, a new challenger approaches, a giant hydra with heads everywhere. Sounds horrific and un-winnable until your hipster jumps on the dragon thing and rides into battle like some kind of glorious..thing! I need this and I want this and Platinum take my money you wonderful people.

Crackdown

Well I didn't see this happening but it did and ooooo it looks shiny and cartoony and explodey. No gameplay to be seen but if I can drive a truck covered in C4 into a building in order to blow said building up to crash into the adjacent building and kill a guy like the trailer shows then sign me up now. If we get even half as much destructibility as the trailer implies then this game will easily surpass Saints Row as the new dicking around simulator.

Phil Spencer changes his shirt again
Blah blah thank you all, thank you we love you thank you etc etc who cares.

END!

Summary
Well credit where credits due Microsoft really did well this year, they had to after the severe beating they got last year so yes well done. Some promising exclusives on the horizon for the Xbox One so the competition is on like Donkey Kong.