Ubisoft kicks off E3 about as well as they do every year. And by that i mean weird. Very god damn weird. Look, guys, I make fun of you a lot, but you don’t have to keep throwing me softballs like that. The show kicks off with Just Dance and a dance party of stupid proportions. We know you have money, you don’t have to throw it away on stunts when it could be going into development of Beyond Good and Evil 2…

There was some good news in that the Nintendo NX was finally mentioned at E3. The bad news was that it was for Just Dance 2017. The game looks about the same in this new iteration, but I wasn’t really paying attention as giraffe man was undulating around like a dying whale.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands got the first major trailer and gameplay of the day. The game was one of my picks from last years show and this new trailer didn’t disappoint, well mostly. The action looks fine and the tackle things how you want is fine, even if the open-world thing is getting stale. The real problem was in the voice overs used in the gameplay trailer. Ubisoft is a bunch of fucking liars when it comes off to showing things off as they are. They had actors talking like they were working together in the game, but normal people don’t talk like that.  A bigger issue is that so many people on twitter were saying how amazing the voice work is in the game, thinking this was something in the game. For same, Ubisoft.

Up next we got news on the next The Division update in Survival. I’m not a fan of The Division so I don’t care, no matter how much our contributor Miles tries to convince me how good it is. The trailer just looks like they added some weather effects to make things harder. But if you are a fan of the game then I’m sure you’ll be excited.

My pick of the show was Star Trek Bridge Crew and the company didn’t skimp on the production. Star Trek games are known for blowing and the last one that hit last generation consoles was a glorified turd (yes I played it, yes I liked it, yes I admit it’s terrible). The team showed off the game by bringing together some Start Trek alums in Levar Burton, Jeri Ryan, and Karl Urban to play the thing. It’s my killer app for VR, well, my killer app anyways, even though getting four friends with VR units is going to be near impossible. Game looks fun and exciting and we’ll be playing it on the floor, but I’m a huge Star Trek mark so I won’t be reviewing it when it does come out.

For Honor was next and was pretty brutal. The game looks solid, but it looked a lot like RYSE and we can all remember how pretty that game was, yet how lacking in actual content. One hopes For Honor can be really good as it does look quite interesting, but we can’t say much until we play the thing this week.

What was really fun was seeing South Park The Fractured But Whole being shown on stage. The Stick of Truth was a lot of fun and seeing the story continue in superhero form could be just as funny. The combat has been enhanced and we got a taste of the story in the trailer that Trey Parker and Mat Stone debuted.

Grow Up looked really cute and I was glad that Ubisoft gave some love to something that they aren’t known for. The original was a lovely indie title that surprised a lot of people, so this one should be fun. We poke fun at Ubisoft, but they do sometimes back some cool things. Glad to see it was up on stage surrounded with all the tower climbing simulators Ubisoft does.

Trials of the Blood Dragon was a thing. Look, I loved Blood Dragon, but this whole retro inspired comedy is getting tiresome. I skipped the first Watch Dogs because of the downgrade Ubisoft is known for and being a modern day Assassins Creed without jumping. Watch Dogs 2 looked really nice, but it felt like more of the same with these open-world games.  I like the setting of San Fran so I’m all for giving this one a try. Lucky Palmer also did some VR thing with Eagle Flight VR and it looked silly. I’m not spending $1000 to play as a pigeon in a CTF game. Hell, I love Star Trek and I’m still on the fence on buying into VR.

The show closed in an interesting way by showing off Steep. Much respect to Ubisoft for spending a good amount of time on the snowboarding, skiing, flight sort of game. It’s really gorgeous looking, but I’m wondering how long it can last with everything looking so similar. We shall see how this one turns out.

All in all Ubisoft has a good show punctuated by a lot of weird shit. Oh, and they bored everyone to tears talking Assassins Creed movie.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands Trailer: Cartel Cinematic

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J. Luis

J. Luis is the current Editor-In-Chief here at GAMbIT. With a background in investigative journalism his work encompasses the pop-culture spectrum here, but he also works in the political spectrum for other organizations.

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