E3 2011 – Ubisoft Press Conference Highlights from COIN-OP TV:

Ubisoft was celebrating 25 years of being in the business and they wasted no time reminding us of this over and over again (mostly from host ‘Mr. Caffeine’).

The show kicked off with a surprisingly fun and colorful demo of the upcoming Rayman Origins. Rayman Origins looks to take games like Little Big Planet and Kirby up a notch with side-scrolling co-op adventuring. At first glance it is easy to see that Ubisoft is raising the bar on this genre of games – we hope the final product ends up as clever!

Driver: San Francisco was showcased as well. We saw a long cgi trailer that did nothing to impress at first glance – more needs to be seen on this game to come to conclusions.

Far Cry 3 was given a live-demo and walkthrough by their dev team. Unfortunately Far Cry 3 looks like an old fashion first person shooter with not much new to offer in an already over-populated space.

The biggest surprise of the afternoon went to Brothers in Arms 4: Furious Four. This time around Brothers in Arms is a four-player co-op with extreme renegade-like soldiers fighting Nazis (think Inglourious Basterds minus Brad Pitt). Mix reactions from our friends on twitter when this game was shown – however it could tap into the crowd who bought Bulletstorm.

Our champion of the Ubisoft Press Conference went to Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. We witnessed a four-player co-op live demo of the game which featured beefy tactical assault and looks to be the type of game that Brink wanted to be. Gameplay featured the ‘camo tech’ using lots of stealth but when the action got hot and heavy it was intense and well paced. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier looks to be a nice balance between full scale attack and cover/advance styles of play.

Just Dance 3 was revealed and will be on all platforms. This will be the ‘dance game’ of 2011 and most likely in everyone’s stocking come holiday season.

Finally – Assassin’s Creed: Revelations was showcased as the finale to the Ubisoft Press Conference. The cgi trailer looked like a billion dollar production – you can tell that the AC franchise is their biggest title these last few years. The game continues to look beautiful – it’s going to be hard to improve upon already impressive graphics.

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ROBERT WELKNER is COIN-OP TV’s guy-who-does-everything, founder, writer, host, producer and editor-in-chief. Robert launched COIN-OP TV as a way to meet and interview classic gaming experts and collectors in 2004 and now develops content that spans the entire video game industry.