E3 2015: Ubisoft

Something about buttholes and Jason Derulo.


Well, that was certainly interesting. A lot of surprising reveals, demos, gameplay, trailers, and failed attempts at humor. Yup, it was an Ubisoft press conference, and it was the best conference thus far. If I haven't gone on the record yet, allow me to say that I publicly do not like Ubisoft. I don't like their franchises, their policies, their horrible tendency of releasing broken games, I just don't like them. However, every single time E3 rolls around, they manage to make me at least a little bit more optimistic towards them, even if I will eventually be disappointed. Still, nothing could deny they had a solid show this year.

The best way to start of this press conference was with a game no one expected, but I loved none the less. South Park: The Fractured but Whole was announced, and now the kids are going to be superheroes! SUPERHEROES! I loved the original game and thought it was a short, but immensely enjoyable RPG, and I'm happy to see that Ubisoft wants to make a sequel. Props to them and I cannot wait to play this game.

The one thing that immensely impressed me was just how good the showings were this year for Tom Clancy's The Division, Rainbow Six: Siege, and Assassin's Creed: Syndicate. I have absolutely no interest in any of these games, but their trailers, gameplay, and demos made me believe that these games may just live up to the hype. Not only that, but we got October release dates for both Syndicate and Siege, and a March 8, 2016 release date for The Division. Effective, simple, and very strong.

Then we had Just Dance 2016 with a special appearance by Jason Derulo. I honestly have nothing to say about it but that Just Dance 2016 exists. There was also DLC announced for Trials Fusion and The Crew, both of which seemed odd in separate ways. Trails Fusion had an odd fire breathing unicorn with a cat riding him. It was "awesome" in name only, since the actual Trials Fusion is about motorcycles and not, you know, unicorns and cats. The Crew's DLC is going to release in October, almost a year since the original game released. I just don't know if the long wait would be worth it and why the DLC would take nearly a year to release.

Ubisoft also had its patented final game announcement. In 2012 we had Watch Dogs, 2013 was The Division, and last year was Rainbow Six Siege. This year we had Ghost Recon: Wildlands. It's trailer showed a pretty interesting mechanic to attack a mission from multiple angles and multiple methods. You could go stealth, recon, assault, or a whole variety of other methods. It looked interesting and touted that it was an open world game, so we'll see. Still, the over reliance on Tom Clancy military shooters was pretty noticeable, but the games looked like they were at least of good quality, making it somewhat more acceptable.

Finally, there was the new IP announcement of For Honor. I'm pretty confused about the game, but for different reasons than one might expect. Essentially, the game looks like a Western Dynasty Warriors with medieval warriors, some samurai, and other historical time periods. It looks like it has the same style as a Dynasty Warrior's game, but the action of Assassin's Creed. What puzzles me is that it was from a new genre that Ubisoft has never done before, but what genre is it? Fighter? MOBA? I have no idea.

Minor qualms aside, I had a good time with Ubisoft's conference. All of the games looked promising, and with the exception of The Fractured but Whole, there wasn't any huge surprises. That seems to be a running theme this E3, but I'll take good games over surprises.