E3 2011 continues to roll on as we just finished checking out Ubisoft’s Press Conference, here’s the lowdown.

Yves Guillemot CEO of Ubisoft came out on stage and addressed the public commemorating Ubisoft’s 25th year in the business. After a quick speech we moved onto the games.
Ubisoft started strong with Rayman Origins. Michel Ancel the creator of Rayman came out to demo the game. Origins is a side-scrolling platformer that has a charming, cartoony art style. The entire game can be played co-op, and as we saw you and your partner are free to slap each other around for fun. We got to see a large variety of stages; ranging from a cave, a lava area, and underwater section, and flying through the sky. The whole game looks like a joy and even had a funny little Tetris joke. We didn’t get a release date though.
The conference took a bit of a downer there as our “host” Aaron Priceman (aka Mr. Caffeine) came out, and just wouldn’t leave. I know the press conferences are about the games but you need someone who can move things along smoothly, Mr. Caffeine could not do this. Anyway, we then got a quick history of Ubisoft’s time in the games industry. There was a really cool running bit throughout the event where we got shots of what current Ubisoft games (ie Driver, Assassin’s Creed) would’ve looked like 25 years ago, with some of them actually looking fun to play.
We then got to see the newest outing from Reflection Studios, Driver San Francisco. The Bay Area was lovingly recreated and looked beautiful as cars ripped through and tore the area up. There will be a new multiplayer mode for Driver San Francisco though we haven’t heard anything on that yet.
This led us into Far Cry 3, the gameplay demo we saw opened up with a truly terrifying scene as your hands and legs were tied up to a giant rock, followed by being tossed off a cliff into a lake by an incredibly well acted maniac. From there we took a tour of a beautiful jungle, knifed many a soldier and stole a helicopter. Far Cry 3 can be expected sometime in 2012.
Gearbox President Randy Pitchford made his way to the stage after Far Cry 3 to introduce the latest Brothers in Arms Game, Brothers in Arms: The Furious 4. In what many are calling the videogame version of Tarintino’s Inglorious Bastards you’ll be part of a squad of Nazi killers. Gruesome hatchets to the head and chain gun goodness abound in this trailer. Again though, no release date announced just sometime in 2012.
We also got to see Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg talk about the new movie based game The Adventures of Tintin, from what we saw it looked part platformer, part beat ‘em up. Still to early to tell, the two famous movie icons though seemed pretty enthusiastic.
One of the biggest games Ubisoft showed off was the new Tom Clancy game, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. This newest third person tactical shooter in the Ghost Recon series set off a lot of peoples badass radars. Invisible camo, saving civilians, intense firefights, literally millions of options for weapon customization, and four-player co-op all help make Future Soldier an amazing package. That wasn’t the only Ghost Recon game to show up though, Ubisoft also announced Ghost Recon Online. Few details have been released about it so far but we do know that it will be free to play.
Trackmania also made its triumphant return; Trackmania 2 was shown to the public. One point of interest is that every track in the demo was created by users. Trackmania will now be getting some siblings with an RPG version called Questmania and a FPS version called Shootmania. These are all part of the Maniaworld series.
Of course it wouldn’t be Ubisoft with Rabbids, a new game starring those adorable psychopathic bunnies is in the works, this time for Microsoft’s Kinect. Raving Rabbids: Alive and Kicking, will be another collection of mini-games the one we saw had a bunch of the developers working together to make obscure shapes with their bodies. Just Dance 3 was also announced with a star studded cast playing the game with the Kinect, the Wii, and the PlayStation Move. Just Dance 3 will be released on October 11, 2011.
We had three more games shown off before Ubisoft’s night was over. Rocksmith, the music game that teaches you to play guitar, was announced although it’s hard to look at that game and not see the Rock Band 3 guitar. We also saw the follow-up to Your Shape Fitness in the form of Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012 for the Kinect. While those types of games are not for everyone they do have their audience.

Finally, closing out the night, Ubisoft showed the game that got an audible gasp from the audience. Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. The last Assassin’s Creed game staring Ezio will take place in Constantinople, and it looks gorgeous. We got a trailer showing off an old Ezio with grey facial hair still being awesome. We then got a brief snippet of gameplay where we saw Ezio zip line to a ship, use a hand crank flamethrower to destroy other ships and then hop and crawl across the wreckage to escape the area. The trailer we saw also showed a ghostly image of Altair further hinting that he will have a presence in Revelations.
Ubisoft had a very impressive show overall, with Ghost Recon: Future Soldier and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations stealing the show. What was your favorite part of Ubisoft’s Press Conference?