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If you thought the game industry was all war games, fitness games, dance games, and sports minigame compilations, oh man were you wrong. It's also Laser Tag!
Please find enclosed the various highs, lows, and dizzying mediums of Ubisoft's E3 2010 press conference. And if you already watched the stream, well, let's reminisce, shall we?
Auspicious: What better way to open a press event than with Rez/Lumines creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi demoing some insane new game about flashing lights and loud music? The game in question looked liked Rez 2 and sounded like Rez 2, except it was called Child of Eden, and is for Kinect (update: not Kinect only, though). I'm a little worried about how it plays — Mizuguchi mainly looked like he was just waving his hand back and forth for five minutes. Still, Rez 2! I mean, Child of Eden! This was arguably the high point of the whole conference, depending on how much you like games inspired by illicit substances.
MC for life: Actor Joel McHale (Community, The Soup) ran the show for Ubisoft again this year, and man, there is a reason executives are in the spreadsheet business and not the comedy business. McHale is the sort of person grandmas would call a treasure, and he did a heroic job, considering.
More creed: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood looks pretty nice. We got a live demo, although I would bet it was probably more of a 'here's a guy holding a controller while we play a movie of in-game footage.'
Passing the Tony Hawk torch: Shawn White Skateboarding seems like old-time Tony Hawk — over-the-top arcadey skating, but as you land tricks the environment changes from drab to skateboarder's paradise. You can even create a rail as your grinding it, and control its shape and destination with an analog stick. That part looked a bit more like something the super hero Ice Man would do than Shawn White, though. Joel McHale to White: "Did they motion cap your hair?"
Back to the future, and the future sucks: This is where shit got weird. Did you know Laser Tag is back? Because I did not, and neither did anyone else in the room except for the people who suddenly started playing it, and the producer who was talking about how cool it was, and McHale, good sport as always. To sum up: Battle Tag is a thing you buy (or not — you could also not buy it, I think I might try that actually) that's basically two laser tag guns and some sensors. And then I guess you shoot some things (or not!) and hook something up to your computer and it tells your Facebook friends that you beat someone at Laser Tag today. That'll go over well.
That looks familiar…bad familiar: You know what's good after a nostalgic game of Laser Tag? Relaxing with something very much like the Wii's Vitality Sensor on your finger, but it's called the Innergy Sensor. I'm not going to go into it, but this really happened and I don't think it's meant for you.
Oh, sports! Hey look, a compilation of sports minigames for Kinect! They call this one Motion Sports.
Look, he's right there! In Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, you and your dudes can go semi-invisible thanks to your magic camo cloaks. But you have no trouble seeing the distorted outline of your fellow soldiers as they run around…why can't the bad guys figure it out when your blurry butt's standing right in front of them?
It was all a big coma: The conceit of the new Driver (apparently this isn't a spoiler, because they announced it at the conference) is that main character Tanner is actually in a coma, he just thinks he's driving around San Francisco again. Which is why he's also able to pull an Agent Smith and jump into the bodies of other motorists, I guess.
This is…it?The conference ended with an announcement about a Michael Jackson dance game. Which would be fine, except that instead of footage we just got a lengthy dance number.