We got a Far Cry 4 cinematic trailer via the first five minutes of the game earlier today at Ubisoft's conference, and at Sony's conference just now, Ubisoft showed off some proper gameplay footage—which includes co-op. Assassin's Creed Unity, The Division: I'll go out on a limb and say there's a trend here.
We’re only a day in, but Rainbow Six Siege may stand up as the most pleasant surprise of E3. We’d heard that Ubisoft was moving away from the direction we initially saw in the now-cancelled Rainbow Six: Patriots, but we weren’t sure what to expect from its second crack at rebooting the franchise. What Ubisoft showed at its E3 press conference was absolutely encouraging, but here’s the catch: if players can’t build their own content in what is presumably a systems-driven, multiplayer-focused shooter (we do know that it’ll have a campaign), can we really expect Siege to have a long lifespan?
It's been awhile since we last had the opportunity to play a Rainbow Six game, but Ubisoft looks set to make up for that lost time with the Rainbow Six: Siege, a team-based showdown between the elite counter-terrorism force and the heavily-armed evil-doers who make their job necessary.
A new trailer for Valiant Hearts, the World War One puzzle game, was shown at Ubisoft’s E3 event today, exploring more of the stories inspired by real-life letters sent home from the Great War.
Ubisoft showed Assassin's Creed: Unity co-op gameplay earlier today at Microsoft's E3 2014 press conference, but outdid that demo at its own conference with both a hyper-dramatic cinematic trailer and a long single-player gameplay demonstration in Unity's "systemic open world."
Ubisoft unveiled a new cinematic trailer for The Crew, its massively multiplayer racing game, at the publisher's press conference today at E3 2014. Even better, we now have a date for when The Crew will hit PCs, as well as news of an upcoming beta for the racer.
Ubisoft began its 2014 E3 press conference with the opening cinematic to Far Cry 4, a lengthy, sweary introduction to the sharp-dressed, short-tempered villain known as Pagan Min. The cinematic represents the first five minutes of the game, according to Ubisoft.
Ubisoft showed off new footage from Tom Clancy's The Division at E3 today. As opposed to the gameplay we saw earlier today at the Microsoft event, this trailer dove deep into the human stories that lie behind the broken buildings in the New York post-apocalypse.
Fresh footage of The Division was shown at the Microsoft E3 press conference at E3 2014 today. A squad of four players navigated the snowy streets of dilapidated New York, battling what appeared to be NPC enemies on the way to a huge safehouse. Flamethrowers and strobe grenades were involved.
A few Assassin's Creed Unity details leaked earlier this year, causing Ubisoft to announce it early. This is how it must have intended to reveal it: a gameplay demonstration at Microsoft's E3's press conference which shows off four-player co-op, a first for the series.
Between Microsoft and EA we're well into E3 2014's trailer assault by now, but wait, there's more! Ubi always put on an odd show, but it'll worth enduring the onstage awkwardness if we get another good look at Assassin's Creed: Unity and its four-player co-op mode. We're expecting Far Cry 4 to break cover as well, and Ubisoft also showed its promising apocalyptic survival shooter, The Division, at the Microsoft conference. There may also be some breakdancing and a cabaret of some description, because Ubisoft. Prepare thyself.
Watch Dogs launched with some performance issues on PC that cause serious stuttering and lag on some systems. Ubisoft is still working on a patch to iron out those problems. To see how the game performed for us on ultra settings, we threw Watch Dogs at the LPC and recorded some open world driving, hacking, shooting mayhem with Nvidia Shadowplay.
Ubisoft is struggling to fix another problem with Watch Dogs, this one related to the redemption of uPlay Rewards content that can prevent the game from loading. The short version is that if you download certain Rewards – Eurogamer says the golden D50 gun and the Papvero Stealth Edition car are the culprits – you may find yourself staring at a loading progress bar that gets to around 90 percent and then refuses to budge.
It's a fun quirk of PC gaming that, going into a new game, you're never quite sure what will happen. Take Watch Dogs: I've had no issues with it, whereas, if Tom drives fast enough, this can happen. It can be hard to gauge exactly how prevalent a problem can be, but enough are experiencing lag and stuttering issues that Sebastien Viard, the game's graphics technical director, issued a series of tweets explaining the problem and committing to an upcoming performance patch.
It's Watch Dogs launch day and that means that if you're a dedicated PC gamer, there are decent odds that you're not actually playing it. That's because it requires access by way of uPlay, Ubisoft's Steam-style online game service, and it's not working quite as well as it should be. The Watch Dogs forum on Steam is pretty heavily top-loaded with complaints at the moment, most of which relate to connectivity issues and an inability to play the game. Ubisoft has already admitted that an "extremely high server load" is wreaking havoc on the system.
I'm racing a stolen motorcycle through a sprawling cityscape, cops wailing behind me in pursuit, when I suddenly smash into a car, shoot through the air like a missile, and slam face-first into a wall. Nothing new—I've done this many times, in many games. While I'm sailing through the air, however, my smartphone informs me the driver of the car I've struck is Martin Huntley, age 39, who works as a telemarketer, makes $24,000 a year, and is into autoerotic asphyxiation. OK. That part's new.
The biggest news out of Ubisoft today is that Far Cry 4, which trades a tropical paradise for the cold of the Himalayas, will release in November. The quieter news is that Tom Clancy's The Division, also scheduled for this year, is being delayed. I imagine this decision being made after an old-fashioned Wild West showdown in the streets. "This town ain't big enough for the both of us," said Far Cry 4, menacing a pistol. "Well, uh, see you in 2015?" said The Division, as it jumped on a horse and rode off into the future.
It took me a moment to register that this was real—largely thanks to that audacious suit—but Ubisoft have officially announced Far Cry 4. It's coming to PC, current and last-gen consoles, is due out November this year, and will take place in an entirely new setting in the Himalayas. Don't worry: I've checked, and they do have tigers there.
Ubisoft are doing another one of their '101 trailers', where they painstakingly explain one of the their upcoming games. This time, it's Watch Dogs. Across the 10-minute video, you'll learn about hacking, see a range of multiplayer modes, hear the line "T-Bone doesn't plays by his own rules", and find out what the hell is up with the bizarre spider-tank thing.
Up until now, the marketing campaign leading up to Watch Dogs has focused primarily on its features and technology. If you’re looking for more info on that kind of thing, Tyler got to play Watch Dogs for a few hours last month, and you should read and watch his hands-on impressions. He came away surprised at how much he liked the main character, Aiden Pearce. But there are more people to meet in Chicago, as Ubisoft's newest trailer shows.
