Ubisoft invited The Buzz Media this year to their Media Briefing. Below are out individual impressions.

Riyad’s Thoughts

We want to thank Ubisoft for inviting us to their media briefing today and giving us glances at what they have in the pipeline leading up to Q1 2012.

Going in, Patrick and I were trying to rack our brains about what we would see besides Assassin’s Creed (which we were already excited about). I felt that the list of games Ubisoft show cased was really solid. Everything ranging from casual family gameplay with Rayman Origins to social weight-loss with Your Shape to gritty intense action with Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.

One of the stand-out titles (and soon-to-be franchises) from Ubisoft that neither Patrick or I had ever heard of was the announcement of Trackmania 2… 2? What was 1? What is trackmania?!

Well from the in-engine-rendered trailer we saw it looks like a fun-as-hell, over-the-top free-form track building racing game with a huge social component not unlike Little Big Planet with voting/ranking/sharing of the tracks you made. Trying to get a better idea of exactly what this surprise-franchise was about I looked up Trackmania on YouTube and found this:

Which got me very excited for Trackmania 2 (see how excited? I am no longer writing it in italics).

Ubisoft had a handful of other titles that will be popular in other demographics: Rayman Origins looked like a must-have for everyone that every enjoyed Little Big Planet (very much the same style of game play, but 2-player and a much more arcade/cartoony/funny experience). Your Shape is a weight loss and fitness game with a big social/friend tie-in to help people motivate each other, was really impressed to see them dabbling in that. Raving Rabbids on the Kinect looked like a total blast to play with your kids or anyone else that wants to stomp around their living room smashing and kicking Rabbids to death with an Xbox Kinect en-tow.

Ok, now that all of that is out of the way, for the folks that want to know more about the Triple-A titles that Ubisoft has lined up, there are 3 of them that we saw in action: Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Far Cry 3 and Assassin’s Creed Revelations. Now I will give you my thoughts on those 3 titles… inside a section already on my thoughts. How meta!

Ghost Recon Future Solider

Gritty, intense, polished, tech-toys… I loved what I saw. The sound designer at Ubisoft that worked on Future Soldier needs a big bonus check, what came pumping out of the speaker system of the LA Theater was deep, powerful and sharp. Every crack of a rifle was powerful and deep, implying general deadness in the area it was pointed.

Squad control is back and sharp as ever. A combination of the previous Ghost Recon mixed with all the advancements in targeting/marking shown in Conviction. You can mark your target and have your team automatically mark other enemies in the scene; all focal points (who is targeting who) is shown with white overlaid laser-sight-esque effects so you can see who is ready and who is still trying to line up the shot. It looks like when you open fire,the rest of the team executes on your mark and takes down their respective targets.

Contextual kills are there; sneaking up behind someone and breaking a neck is the order of the day it looks like. Tight cover system and cover-transitions including vaulting and running/sliding are all in place as well. Makes traversing a battlefield very smooth and effective.

Very action-heavy sequences like something you would expect to find in a more focused title like a Battlefield are there, but with all the trappings of a Ghost Recon with the tactical overlay, cover system, square control and gadgets to play with.

Far Cry 3

Image the polish of Far Cry 2, married with the graphics of Crysis 2 and sticking the whole thing back in the jungles where Far Cry was born… that is Far Cry 3.

I will make the disclaimer that I very firmly believe they played this demo on a PC rig with some solid hardware in it. The scenes they were rendering in the forest were beautiful. I have my doubts that the PS3 or Xbox 360 have the fill rates to push scenes like that.

The game feels like Far Cry 2 in that there is a primary bad guy that you have a few close interactions with that give you some purpose for slogging around the jungle, but what is different here in Far Cry 3 is the character/backstory given to the main character (it seems to make him more tangible and less faceless) and the sequences you have with the main bad guy are really satisfyingly disturbing.

For example, in one sequence he is talking to you, and then kicks you off a cliff with a cement block tied to your feet and you fall into the water, sinking to the bottom, in a sea of other poor souls that have been drowned in the same spot alongside you.

The gun play looks solid. More of a hybrid between Crysis and Far Cry. A bit more “sharp” than Far Cry 2 for whatever that means to you.

Contextual kills and stealth kills look to be-house with the player executing a stealth-drop kill by landing, knife-in-chest, on someone after jumping down on their heads from a cliff.

Sweet.

While I thought Far Cry 2 was technically a very accomplished and polished game, it lacked that “color” or personality that makes you pick a game up over and over and over again. Far Cry 3 looks to be much better in that regard, but without hands-on time, I won’t be able to comment on how much yet.

Assassin’s Creed Revelations

The first thing I noticed about Revelations after seeing the gameplay demo begin was that the graphics engine must have gotten some polishing because textures popped more, looked sharper and some grandiose scenes that take play in a bay full of ships ran smooth as butter.

Fighting looked slightly modified, with some more aerobatic take-downs, like a tackle-stab-tumble maneuver that looked impressive.

It’s hard to type anything here that actually contributes to the human condition. By now, you are either the biggest Assassin’s Creed fan and want to continue playing just to see the story continue down the amazing path that it has dug out for itself, or you’ve never been interested in the title and this will not be different enough to suck you in.

For the fans out there wondering “how good did it look?”, it looked sharp as hell. A pre-order for sure.

Conclusion

Once again, a great first day and a big thanks to Ubisoft for inviting us to their media briefing and delicious cupcakes on the way out. We had a great time.

Patrick’s Thoughts

Going into the press conference I didn’t really know what to expect aside from Assassin’s Creed Revelations and the line up we were treated to was generally solid with a pretty decent distribution of genres and audiences represented. I am not really into the casual gaming on Kinect or Move at this point so some of the announcements and videos catering to that demographic failed to impress me much but it was still good to see that Ubisoft is taking care of all of its customers as opposed to focusing just on the hardcore gamer or just the casual gamer.

A few games really stood out though and in at least one case completely surprised me by existing at all.

Ghost Recon Future Soldier

I am not really a big fan of the Ghost Recon series. They have always looked pretty but the game play was a convoluted mess that I didn’t really care for especially. Watching the material for Future soldier it becomes immediately apparent that things have changed. The graphics are still very pretty but it would appear the gameplay has followed suit. Where as I felt like previous titles were hard to grasp from a gameplay perspective and the squad controls were difficult to sort through, this new iteration seems to have really cleaned up the interface to make the system simpler to execute and beefed up the AI to do what they are told in an intuitive way. This will go a long way toward bringing me back to the game and as it stands I am pretty interested in it. It also can’t be said enough that this game looks really gorgeous and I am glad that there seems to be a game play experience to mach the looks.

Far Cry 3

This one really surprised me. When the demo started and we were taken to a lush jungle teeming with life and movement with realistic character models, fantastic lighting and  terrific voice acting I was asking myself what this could be. With Far Cry moving away from as much of an immersive, narrative driven experience in the last title it never occurred to me that it was swinging back around aside from thinking that this looked a lot like what made Far Cry really badass (it should be noted that I was operating on roughly 45 minutes of sleep at this point).

The narrative here is very cinematic and really hardcore and disturbing. The guerrilla leader you have fallen afoul of is legitimately creepy as he explains the nature of insanity to you before kicking you off a cliff into a pond with a cement block tied around your ankles. Even more disturbing is the view under water as you see other bodies down there who’s owners weren’t fortunate enough to be the lead character in a video game. When your character gets free and starts handing out payback it is difficult not to feel grimly satisfied. The intensity of the context sensitive kills and stealth kills really help.

Far Cry 3 was a big surprise for me and looks super polished. I am really happy they are getting back into a narrative with an actual character as opposed to a faceless cipher from the previous title. Everything looks like it is coming together on this one and if it turns out the way it looks like it will then we will be in for a treat.

Rayman Origins

This one isn’t really in my wheelhouse as I am not so into side scrolling platformers anymore but I can’t help but to give Ubisoft props for putting together something that looks really nice and which looks like some creative things are going on. The action offers multiplayer in veing of old school Sonic titles with players on the screen at the same time. The platforming itself looks challenging and fun. A good illustration of the sort of feel they are going for is a segment featuring descending blocks from Tetris with the familiar music accompanying it. Again this is not really my sort of game and I haven’t played Wii in awhile but this looks polished and fun for those who are into this sort of game.

Assassin’s Creed Revelations

This is a tough one to write about only because it is such a forgone conclusion. The game looks wonderful with even better visuals and more details than Brotherhood and seems to play more or less the same way. There are some new moves both on the locomotion tip and on the combat tip that should really help make the experience feel fresh and keep the excitement up. There are new options offensively from a slightly reworked combat system to the ability to build your own grenades. Still, this is not a massive overhaul of what we have seen in the past. There is nothing really earth shattering going on but given that, since number 2, Assassin’s Creed has been one of the most consistently solid franchises out there that is really not a bad thing. This is apparently the final tale of Ezio and Altair so I wouldn’t have expected them to reinvent the wheel. In fact, had they changed things too much I would be pretty upset. As it is, it looks like I will be very, very happy this November…or whenever I manage to play this…sadly it is releasing four days after Skyrim so it might have to wait a minute…but not too long.

Conclusion

Ubisoft had a lot to show us this year and it was generally pretty solid. They had titles in their line up I am not really interested in but look to fill the needs of most gamers. Sure there are a lot of complaints about casual games versus hardcore games but Ubisoft really seems to have both of those extremes in hand. For the hardcore gamer the outlook is very, very bright. I am very thankful to have been invited to the press conference.