E3 Day One: Ubisoft Media Briefing

The second of the two publisher to present, Ubisoft’s conference was filled with new gameplay from franchise favorites as well as new announcements for their upcoming partnership with Nintendo for Wii U titles as well as a brand new game.

Opening up with a dance number featuring a musical number from performer Flo Rida, Just Dance 4 was announced. Afterward, hostess Aisha Tyler introduced one of Ubisoft’s four major games this conference: Far Cry 3.

Making its return for the second E3 in a row, Far Cry 3 is a first person shooter that stars Jason Brody as he is forced to fight for survival on a chain of tropical islands filled with deadly creatures, insane gangs of pirates, and a lot of hallucinogenic mushrooms. While hard to watch at times, the game is pushing the envelope with its risk factor and still has that gritty, high-pressure atmosphere. The game’s producer Dan Hay explained that in the gameplay in Far Cry 3 is exspansive. “Exploration, hallucinations, open world, and a cast of insane characters,” he said onstage. “And that’s only the beginning.” The game is scheduled to ship on September 7, 2012.

Next up was the official trailer for the freshly announced Splinter Cell: Blacklist. As the gameplay demo was shown during Microsoft’s presentation this morning, during Ubisoft’s presentation fans were excited to see a brand new trailer where protagonist Sam Fisher stealthily fought through enemies and grappled to buildings with new gadgets. All while wearing his trademark green night-vision goggles.

Ubisoft also announced a slew of games that would be making their way to Nintendo’s brand new console, the Wii U. The titles YourShape, Sports Connection, Just Dance 4, Assassins Creed 3 Rabbids Land, all coming to Wii U. Along with these titles include ZombiU, a first-person survival horror zombie game as well as the beautifully fun 2D platformer Rayman Legends that perfectly showed the innovation of the Wii U’s new gamepad.

Assassin’s Creed 3 was shown off with a new gameplay demo, where the new protagonist Conner Kenway fights wolves, scales mountains, and stabs Redcoats with a musket. The latest installment in the Assassin’s Creed series is scheduled to hit American shores on October 30, 2012.

Last but not least, Ubisoft showcased a brand new game IP, which has become a rarity for the last few years. Titled Watch Dogs, the game takes place in an open-world city, where players have the power to control an entire city’s infrastructure via powerful computers that run everything from data records to power lines. Using futuristic hacking, players can find out target’s names, occupations, salaries, as well as listening into phone conversations. Combat-wise, players can also use the computers to chance a target’s violence probability.

Though Watch Dogs looks interesting, as a well as franchise favorites it appears that for the upcoming year Ubisoft is focused on padding the Wii U launch with third party titles aim for a wide variety of audiences. Whether or not the Wii U can compete with Microsoft and yet-to-present SONY is still a mystery until Nintendo’s conference tomorrow morning.

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