A Green Mushroom

The Ubisoft Press Conference was mixed for me.  There were a couple games that piqued my interest, and of course I'm always excited for a new Assassin's Creed (it's a weakness) but I didn't really see any games that are a guaranteed day one buy for me. For the most part I'd like to hear more about these games from the journalists who will get to play them this week on the show floor. I want to know more about Rainbow Six Siege, The Division, and Assassin's Creed.  Hopefully we'll get to read some good impressions as the week goes on. The thing that impressed me the most with the Ubisoft press conference was the amount of real gameplay footage and live demos.  It seemed like almost every game had real gameplay footage to go with it.  They're not hiding behind pre-rendered CG trailers for their games and they deserve applause for that. Now I'm going to wait for the Sony event to start.  I'm really excited to see what pops up in that one.

During my latest exploration of the XBLA offerings I not only picked up Clash of Heroes but also stumbled upon a gem called Outland.  Outland is a platformer that any metroidvania fan would feel right at home with.  Throughout the course of the game the player slowly gains more abilities which in turn open up more sections of the map. The real fun starts when polarity is introduced.  Obviously drawing inspiration from Ikaruga , the hero can be in one of two states, Blue or Red.  Or, in the mythos of the game, "good" or "evil."  The important part is that projectile attacks don't hurt the player if they are the same color as the hero and only enemies of the opposite color can be hurt.  This leads to a continuous on-the-fly adjustment of polarity between colors. This is one of the few games lately where I've lost myself in the flow of the gameplay.  Figuring out and executing complex patterns of polarity switching while running, jumpin...

I love to see innovation , polish, refinement, and new gameplay experiences in gaming.  But it's hard to find games that do these things well.  One of the things I always take into consideration while looking at new games is the game's pedigree.  Which is to say that I pay attention to the developer of the game. Halo 3 developed by Bungie When I look at the developer of a new game that hasn't been released, a lot of the time I can tell if it's going to be good based on previous games the developer has made.  Take my post the other day on Halo Reach .  I'm debating whether I'm going to buy it, but I can guarantee that it will be a highly polished and well executed game.  I know this because I've played all the other Halo games that Bungie has made and they're all examples of high quality games.  Bungie has proven themselves to me. World of Warcraft developed by Blizzard Entertainment I know a lot of other developers that I can count on to make gre...

Much less impressed by the EA and Ubisoft press conferences than I was by the Microsoft one. EA showed off a bunch of shooters.  Same old same old.  Bulletstorm at least had a gimick: kicking enemies away and pulling enemies close.  It looked like different kills awarded different points.  Whatever, it might be fun... maybe.  EA also showed off mixed martial arts stuff which holds zero interest for me.  Madden goes in that category too.  Sports are not my thing.  There was nothing really impressive about the EA conference except for the new Star Wars: The Old Republic trailer.  It had no info on the gameplay but it got me excited for the game.  Again, I'm letting my Star Wars fanboyness shine through.  At least I'll admit it. Ubisoft has me interested in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood.  I liked AC1 and loved AC2.  It looks to be the story of AC2's main character many years later once he has an entire brotherhood of assas...

This makes the game look way more exciting than it actually is. The Forgotten Sands is a lesson in being underwhelmed.  I wanted to love it, I really truly did.  I loved The Sands of Time, The Two Thrones, and the re-imagined "Prince of Persia" but I just couldn't make myself enjoy Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. It's all been done before by other games in the Prince of Persia series.  The Forgotten Sands has the same old platforming without any new or interesting mechanics.  I got the same feeling I did when comparing Bayonetta to the Devil May Cry series.  It's the same gameplay mechanics with a new coat of paint. The combat feels extremely out of place.  It amounts to a generic hack and slash.  Most of the time the combat flow goes like this: hold x for 2 seconds, release, hold x for 2 seconds, release.  It got in the way of the platforming and probably should have been left out altogether. The platforming isn't anything new....

I'm keeping an eye on Ubisoft and their DRM.  I really hate DRM because it ends up hurting customers who pay for the product and basically adds incentives for pirates to acquire games illegally.  Ubisoft launched their new DRM with Assassin's Creed 2 for PC last month.  It requires an active internet connection to play.  This makes no sense since AC2 is a single player game. Syp had a great summary of the situation up over at Bio Break.  Also worth looking at are the two Joystiq articles about Ubisoft DRM running into some trouble already. All worthy of your reading time.  Also, Penny-Arcade's cyclical argument with a literal strawman .