Ubisoft
Ubisoft seems to be having a slight identity crisis as of late, and E3 is better off for it. While the other companies are closer to your college educated younger sister who somehow graduated from pharmacy school with honors while keeping up an extremely active social life and scattered attempts at dating your friends (hypothetically, of course), Ubisoft is closer to that buddy of yours who’s obviously a genius, but would rather spend time getting hammered and yelling obscenities out of the car window. When he sobers up, he’ll return to his job volunteering at a children’s hospital (in what I can only assume is an effort to neutralize his karma).
Chaz: Allow me to sum up Ubisoft with one word: fuck. Ubisoft has been running around like a mad person who’s been off their meds for a few weeks as of late. I don’t say that as a negative. Everything about them was so over the top that I thought it was directed by Sylvester Stallone. Far Cry 4 absolutely blew me away and has the potential to be the coolest thing on the floor just from what we saw right there. The new Rainbow 6, outside of my disappointment that they didn’t announce Beyond Good and Evil 2, looks fantastic. Everything about that game seems to be just absolutely amazing.
Chad: Although getting into the event proved to be a bit of a pain in the ass, Ubisoft was probably my favorite of the bunch. There was so much energy in the crowd and the company just has so much personality. I’ve been forced to become a fan of what they do and they’re now one of my favorite developers in the industry.
Far Cry 4 simply blew me away and is my number one game of the show so far. The Crew is something I didn’t have much interest in, but after seeing the trailer, I really want to play it. The introduction starring the Rabbids was great as well. I’m not so sure about the exercise game since I don’t really want to put my Kinect on the floor, but we’ll see how that plays out.
Chaz: The Crew caught me off guard. I don’t get into racing games, they’re just not my thing, but it’s so refreshing to see a racing game that’s not trying to hit me over the head with attitude about “being extreme” or “Mountain Dew,” it’s simply a racing game. It’s about customization and racing and challenges. I’m really excited to see what it’s going to do, but I’m just a bit worried that it’s going to try to do too much that it’s just not going to do any of it really well.
As for the exercise game, I’m automatically against any title that makes me jump up and down since I live on the third floor and I have neighbors. Maybe since it’s a fitness game they’ll be too afraid to bother me when I’m getting my “swole” on from doing pushups with whales on my back ,or whatever other nonsense we’re doing, but it’s raising questions that I just don’t have answered yet. I also feel like I’d be failing as a journalist if I didn’t point this out. Aisha Tyler came out and claimed “That’s how we do things here. We start off big, and then we go bigger.” So after Far Cry 4, we got Just Dance. Something’s wrong here.
FINAL GRADE
Chad: You’re absolutely right. They started off with the biggest thing they had and then they kinda fluctuated between really awesome projects and small stuff that could have been perceived as filler. Even Rainbow 6 wasn’t as big as Far Cry, so they really started out big and everything was slightly worse by comparison. Overall, I’d give them a B+, bordering on A-.
Chaz: The entire thing felt a lot like spending a night in with my girlfriend. I come on really strong at first, but now I’m kinda tired and just want to go to sleep. There was so much going on here that I felt exhausted trying to keep up. I’ve got the highest hopes here for Far Cry 4, but I’m going to have to go with B- simply because they didn’t do what they said they were going to do. They shot themselves in foot here; they said they were going to go bigger and just never did. Had they reversed the order, we’d be looking at an A.
Next Up: Sony