Ubisoft E3 2010 Live Report

Hello! I'm here with Jamin Smith in the cavernous halls of the LA Theatre, awaiting the start of Ubisoft's E3 conference.

Our internet connection has been wheezing along like a couch potato on sports day, but with any luck we'll be able to bring you live, up-to-the-minute reactions to the show.

The lights have dimmed... and we're off!

Looks like we're starting with some Kinect action. A guy on stage is playing a Tempest-style shooter using only his hands, and there's some kind of musical reaction-type deal going on - like Rez. It looks rather pretty too.

Thumping bass now as the game picks up tempo. The player seems to just be controlling a circular reticule, with all the movement on rails. The art style recalls those music lightshow programs you get on iTunes, Windows Media player and the like. Very Jeff Minter... only without the livestock.

Every blast and explosion triggers a sample or musical cue. The tune itself is a sort of twinkly house number with female vocals in the background. It's hugely colourful - like a civil war taking place inside a kaleidoscope.

We have a title: Children of Eden! And here's the developer... Rez creator Tetsuya mizuguchi. Jamin's reaction: "That was incredible!"

Here's our host: Joel McHale, star of E!'s The Soup. Whatever that is...

The theme for today? "Games you can feel". Hmmmm. Joel is talking up the show to come...

Violins. A black screen swept away to reveal a sepia-coloured rural landscape. It's Assassins Creed time!

Whoops and cheers as a familiar hooded face appears.

Rome, 1503. Someone's being carried in a sedan chair through a packed public square. A white-robed Ezio walks through the masses, despatching guards with barely an effort.

Ezio squares off against his target - a smug chap with a beard - who immediately summons an entourage of pikemen. But Ezio has buddies too!

The battle between the assassins and the templars has stepped up, says the game's producer.

A cutscene now, beginning with Ezio in bed with a lady. But his sexy-time is soon disturbed as part of the ceiling comes crashing down. Our hero heads outside to deal with the threat, and to find his allies. Some kind of massive attack is taking place.

Entire buildings are collapsing under the force of the templar attack. Parts of Rome are on fire. Ezio crosses the city on horseback, then climbs up high in typical fashion.

As he climbs to the top of the city walls, a massive vista is revealed. Rome is under siege! Ezio manns a cannon and starts to fire upon the advancing hoards. A siege tower crumbles to the ground after taking a direct hit.Epic stuff!

Ezio moves off to take on the invading forces who have scaled the ramparts. Ezio isn't wearing his hooded getup, by the way - he;s in a causal white shirt, kicking ass and taking names. He just threw an axe into a helpless guard!

Ezio's new nemesis has entered the city, and is talking smack. He has one of Ezio's buddies on the floor... looks like he's done for.

We've jumped ahead now to a final reveal: Ezio standing at the top of the Roman Colloseum. Assasin's Creed Brotherhood looks pretty good! And it'll be multiplayerm too.

Now, back to the present. We're off to the urban jungle, apparently...

A skating game?

A montage of skating footage, cut to excited rock... it's Shaun White Skateboarding! And here's the man himself!

A montage of skating footage, cut to excited rock... it's Shaun White Skateboarding! And here's the man himself!

A montage of skating footage, cut to excited rock... it's Shaun White Skateboarding! And here's the man himself!

A skating game?

Sorry guys, technical problems here. The Shaun White game has a sort of dystopian city setting, all drab grey and shadows. But as you skate around you bring life back to the gameworld. Players are also able to spontaneously create their own skate paths, even where there's no scenery to skate on: you move through the air, plotting a path, and then trees grow up through the floor to support your route. The whole world transforms to meet your demands. Weird!

So, the idea seems to be taking that make-your-own course thing that Skate does, but doing it in a more outlandish, stylised way. The crowd seem to like it, too.

It'll be available in 3d too, apparently.

Joel's just been interrupted by people running down the aisle, zapping each other with ray guns. There's a score being kept on screen.

Battle Tag is the name of this odd Quasar update. Here comes producer Gael Seydoux to explain how it works.

Joel wants to know if it'll hurt when you pistol whip someone. What a wag!

So, this is a shooting game you play with real gun peripherals, and real ammmo packs that needs to be loaded into it, but the console keeps track of the action, somehow. Very strange...

The guns themselves have a futuristic design, with a black, white and orange scheme. Gael is explaining the game they're about to play. Joel has to run back and forth between posts, collecting ammo packs and then shooting at a target. All of this is real world, with the console simply keeping track of what's going on. There will also be a sort of automated Game Master that challenges the player. The game supports 4 vs 4 players.

That was very odd, a combination of contemporary tech and the kind of stuff people bought in the 80s. Not sure what to make of it.

Now here's Tommy Francois, who's here to show off something called Innergy.

This is some kind of stress management thing. Joes is being asked to strap his hands into a cylindrical peripheral.

As Joel attempts to control his breathing, a coloured sphere moves along a wave-shaped course. The idea is to control your breathing, and thereby your heart-rate. It's all drawn out in simple, bright colours.... Oh, and Joel just flat-lined!

Supposedly you can play this on the way to work too, though i'm not sure what screen you're supposed to use while you're doing this. Tommy is selling the benefits these activities can bring to your immune system etc.

Some bizarre stuff at this year's E3. I'm not sure how many of these things are acutual video games...

Now we're watching a montage of Ubisoft developers, talking about how exciting it is that we can control games with our bodies and minds. "The player themselves is a design pillar", says one.

Frederick Raynal: "We are back to the origin of games".

Two Kinect titles up next, unsurprisingly. First video features people dressed as sportsmen walking into a living room full of their mates.

We're watching tow people pretend to ski, save goals and score touchdowns in American football. Graphics look quite nice...

And now the moment all you hardcore gamers have been waiting for! Your Shape: Fitness Evolved. We've been joined by Hollywood trainer Michael George, and brand manager Felicia Williams.

Clever camera tech scans the player and warps their likeness - or a at least a coloured outline - into the game world. Joel is getting excited about the fact that we have to do a complete body scan of Felicia.

Menu selection is done by simply pointing at stuff. You can do martial arts work-outs, apparently, and challenge people online. Or just boast about your fitness, if you're feeling smug.

We're watching a virtual gym with a virtual trainer, with the player avatar standing next to them. Felicia copies the motions for her workout.

The martial arts workout seems to involve punching the hell out of stacks of coloured blocks - good for anyone who's ever been traumatised by Tetris. But it's genuinely healthy, apparently. "The sweat is real!" says Michael. "I can smell you from here!" replies Joel.

Next up, Ubisoft's beloved Rabbids. We're watching a CGI video with the little bunnies wrecking havoic in different time periods: at the dawn of man, the construction of the Sphinx, and at point when King Arthur pulled Excalibur out of the stone. That last one isn't historically accurate, kids.

No gameplay footage for the Rabbids. But here comes a trailer for Ghost Recon...

Slick CGI, with lots of freeze frame and zooming in to admire the detail on guns etc.

Adrian Lacey shows up to formerly introduce Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Lot of real military prototypes have made it into the game, says Adrian. Joel wants to know which real-world army has invisible suits.

Demo level, set on the North European Coast at some point "sooner than you think". Starts with the invisibles soldiers shooting some poor sod in the back of the head from point-blank range. The troops move along a beach towards a quiet coastal village. Augmented reality overlays reveal infor about nearby enemeies. Graphics look slick - dust clouds blowing, dried seaweed clingint to the beams of a wooden promenade. A guard at a gun emplacement gets merked at close range by the players, who has a Predator-style cloaking field that bends light around him.

The player and his squad have left the beach and climbed up into the town. They're hiding, cloaked, right nex to their target. A countdown from three to one, then the squad snuff out and entire group of hostiles in about one and a half seconds.

Inside a building now, sniping at people from the windows. Player shoots out the pilot of a helicopter, causing it to veers all over the place. Zoom in on another guard, then a bullet to his face.

Jamin reckons that with the right marketing, this could be the third-person equivalent to Modern Warfare. The last section features loud explosions, gunfire and gameplay much closer to typical third-person shooter fare. It'll offer co-op play, and stereoscopic 3d. Next up: Driver.

Still getting over how slick Ghost Recon looked. Not sure about the Modern Warfare claim, but it certainly looked very high budget... we're now watching a CGI trailer for Driver: San Francisco. Quite keen to see this one...

Martin Edmondson, creative director, is here to introduce the game. It's gone back to its roots, apparently. John Tanner, hero of the first title, is back. So is Jericho, the villain of the second game.

We jump into gameplay footage of a chase between Tanner and his nemesis. There's an orange-y glow to the action. Licensed cars for the firs time. Much of the action viewed from an in-car view, with desperate hands scrabbling all over the steering wheel.

Edmondson is now explaining the shift system, which allows Tanner to switch to a bird's-eye view, and then zoom in to possess a vehicle. Tanner himself is in a coma, which explains how he can do this. Supposedly.

Feels like things are wrapping up. Joel is back into "yay for Ubisoft". But now he's introducing the company's CEO and President, Yves Guillemot.

Yves introduces Project Dust - a new game from Eric Chahi, the utter, utter LEGEND behind Another World.

A sci-fi landscape. A planet collapsing in on itself. Tribal people. Not much more detail, but it looks interesting. Spring 2011 is the release date.

Um... now we're watching people play with Play-Douugh and drawing stuff. This is build-up for more "creative potential" talk. I'm being cynical, but it actually all looks quite cool.

It's all in adi of the retunr of someone... is Ray Man finally making a comeback?

Woah, yes! Haven't seen you in a while oldboy!

The new Ray Man game looks absolutely beautiful, like a playable big budget cartoon. The title: Rayman Origins.

Only five people have been working on the game apparently. Surprising, as it looks really quite superb.

The next offering is Maniaplanet - a new online gaming platform, supported by a common set of editing tools. Trackmania, Shootmania and Questmania - all offering different gameplay types for the PC. Trackmania 2 will launch the first beta, later this year.

One last surprise from Yves and Ubi. He says that they've signed a legend. SOunds exciting...

Ah, it's the Michael Jackson game! Could this be the dancing we've been waiting for? I know you've all been waiting for one...

No footage of the game, just lots of people bopping around the stage in t-shirts and red trousers.

The dancers put on a good show, to the tune of Beat It. They're the dancers from "This Is It". Aaaaaand... that's it. No game footage. Thank and you and goodnight, says Joel.

Reaction to the show from Jamin: "So far, this has been my favourite show. Ubisoft has led the way, and they've got stuff that no-one expected. With everyone else, it's been stuff we knew about. This show surprised me."

I'm inclined to agree, to an extent. While none of the games were as immediately bombastic as, say, Crysis 2, there was a lot of good stuff here. Even the stranger, more gimmick-y titles seemed to have more going on than Microsoft's Kinect selection.

Our picks from the show: Rayman looked stunning, a proper old-school platformer with delicios visuals. Children of Eden looked like it could be really fun too. Definitely want to see more of that. As Jamin says, "The most important Kinect game so far, bar none."

Assassins Creed: Brotherhood looked pretty solid too, though there wasn't much detail on how the multiplayer elements will work. And Ghost Recon had a lot of swagger too - you can bet that'll be a major release for Ubi this year.

Overall: a much better event from Ubisoft than what we had last year. Quite a bit to keep an eye on, i'd say.

We're off now. It's swelteringly hot in here, and as always at E3, there are a million things to see and do. Don't forget to check back with us later today (UK time), when we'll have a live report from Nintendo's conference. Bye for now!