E3 2012 – Ubisoft Press Conference Summary

Ubisoft opened their press conference with a fantastic demo of how the Wii U tablet and the Wii Pro controller can co-exist.

Rayman Legends is the next game in the series, coming out for the Wii U. Alongside 4 friends playing traditional platformer style on the pro controller, one player will use the tablet’s touch-screen for a an extra character. This player helps out the others by slicing ropes for others to swing on, free caged mobs that are followed up with a punch from Rayman and other such useful co-op actions. It’s worlds away from the barely-there co-op support of Super Mario Galaxy and I like it a lot.

Splinter Cell Blacklist – This was revealed in the morning’s Microsoft briefing. Ubisoft showed off the single player with Sam Fisher as the leader of a team with the authority to operate outside the law. This team is called 4th Echelon and wield a host of exciting weaponry. We saw them shoot rocket launchers, set up zip lines and generally look bad-ass. Weirdly, Fisher wears his night-vision goggles in full daylight and there was a distinct lack of stealth in any of the action. Hmm…

Assassins Creed 3 – As well as the rock-climbing branch-hopping rope-dart murdering action that’s been in all the previous trailers, we saw Connor destroying troops in a battle line, hunting a deer for meat as a camp-supplying side-quest and fighting off a pack of wolves. Here’s the gameplay demo:

The Avengers: Battle for Earth – This game is a superhero brawler for Kinect and Wii U featuring superheroes like X-Men’s Wolverine, Spiderman, Storm (with enhanced boob plate armour), Hulk and many more. Here’s the trailer.

ZombiU – This was a fascinating cinematic trailer of frozen moments. Slow-panning cameras revealed the human reactions to an oncoming zombie invasion in London. The game will be a Wii U exclusive and a survival horror but with no gameplay yet revealed, I think we’re all hoping it’s not just another bit of Dead Island-style marketing.

Watch Dogs – Presented by Ubisoft Montréal Creative Director Jonathan Morin, this new title could be very interesting. The Watch Dogs introductory trailer set the scene – a city in which lights, traffic, phone signals and personal data are all centrally controlled. You play as a man who controls the system for his own ends. The most fascinating part was the reactions to people in the busy world as our protagonist jammed phone signals, wrought havoc by changing traffic lights and scanned faces in a club to pull up information on addictions, criminal records, employee information and more. Here’s the gameplay demo. I’ll be disappointed if the gunplay forms a significant part of the action.

Shootmania Storm – Ubisoft are embracing e-sports with this online team shooter. The demonstration itself was rather a mis-step pitting men against women in a game with rather old-fashioned graphics and they did a poor job of explaining what game mode we were watching. If you’re into e-sports there’s a good spectator camera. More info on the Shootmania website.

Just Dance 4 – Another sequel to the popular dance franchise, this one will include Wii U support. By the looks of the very small clip we saw, one player with the Wii U tablet can be the puppetmaster during multiplayer dance sessions – they can choose which dancer goes next in the battle or co-op modes.

Your Shape – A Wii U version of the fitness franchise. Expect to waggle the tablet around a lot.

Rabbids Land – Yet more Rabbid shenanigans. Again, a very short clip. Most likely another set of mental mini-games, this time using the touch screen.

Summary

Ubisoft have some incredibly strong games in development and the most interesting implementation of the Wii U so far. This doesn’t even include Far Cry 3 and the Vita’s Assassins Creed III: Liberation (both shown at the Sony conference). I love the way they’ve showcased their new brands alongside the familiar franchises.

Catch up on all our E3 2012 coverage here.