E310: Ubisoft Keynote Impressions

The Ubisoft Keynote started quick and with no delay to getting straight to the games, beginning with an Xbox 360 Kinect demo of Child of Eden, in which Director Tetsuya Mizuguchi was playing.

An wonderful looking game with beautiful colors and graphics in what seems to be a follow up to Mizuguchi’s Rez, but this time around you control the game with your hands. Something those thinking about buying Kinect should most definitely be keeping on their mind.

The shows host, Joel McHale (Web Soup, NBC’s Community), made his way to the stage to continue the keynote. He quickly went on to the next huge announcement about the new Assassin’s Creed game, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. They showed actual gameplay and it’s believed to have some sort of multiplayer or co-op mode. Dope indeed.

They went on to show Shaun White Skateboarding in which Shaun White actually came out to show off the game. Actual gameplay was shown and it was an entirely different skateboarding game than you would think. You can actually alter the environment in which you play while skateboarding, giving a whole new meaning to skateboarding anywhere and anyhow.

Next up was a laser tag kind of game called Battle Tag, in which you actually play the game without really playing on screen. It’s literally laser tag, but controlled from a PC. Then they went on to show a game called Innergy that uses a pulse monitor sensor that you put on your finger (Nintendo’s Vitality Sensor?) that aims to relieve stress. Kind of weird, but that’s all we really know about it now. They also showed some other games that will be using Kinect called MotionSports and Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, both titles are extremely similar to Nintendo’s Wii Sports and Wii Fit games.

Another huge title, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier was shown and was it exciting. They showed in-game footage of soldiers with stealth camo in use, sneaking up to enemies and quietly exterminating them. The game will also have four-player co-op campaign. An overall impressive showing of the game and easily one of my favorite titles coming up from Ubisoft.

The Driver series gets a remake with Driver: San Francisco, starring the original protagonist, John Tanner, and Driver 2 antagonist Charles Jericho. The game will feature a new way of “shifting” between cars and taking over the minds of other drivers. This should be an interesting title, especially for fans of the series.

Shorts clips of a new Rabbids title, Raving Rabbids: Travel in Time, and a comeback for an old Ubisoft character, Rayman Origins, were both shown. Other upcoming titles in the works from Ubisoft were briefly shown, including Project Dust, a game that takes place in a tribal community and has something to do with natural disasters. The other was called Maniaplanet, which will be a service similar to Trackmania in which users create their own content, but will feature two new genres with shooters (Shootmania) and RPGs (Questmania).

Last and, most definitely not least, had to be the Michael Jackson game they announced with dancers coming out on stage dancing to Beat It. Nothing was discussed about the game, but if I had to guess it might be a Kinect game in which gamers can practice and learn different MJ dance moves from his most famous videos.

Make sure to check out the Ripten Ubisoft keynote live blog transcript page for our thoughts on everything that went down as it happened. Sam, Dylan, Gavin, and Demi did an excellent job of not only delivering the information, but also sharing their genuine (and often funny) opinions on the announcements.