LOS ANGELES — Here’s everything else that Ubisoft brought to the table at E3.
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier
Ubisoft is working on a new Ghost Recon, and gave us a demo of it at E3. The game is set in a slightly futuristic setting. Your team has optical camouflage using nanotechnology. Though the enemy has some tricks to combat the camouflage, they have technology such as thermal glasses. Though in the build they showed off the thermal glasses were not able to see you if you didn’t move. The camouflage also has the limitation of not working if you are running, or attacking.
Where the game really looked interesting was the synchronized shooting. You can lay out your targets, and see where the other people on your team are shooting, and then in single player the computer will count down, or if you are playing multiplayer one of the players can communicate to the others when to shoot so all the enemies go down together. The game is designed for 4 player co-op to effectively use this feature.
Driver San Francisco
Another interesting game that Ubisoft was presenting at E3 is a new game in the Driver franchise, Driver San Francisco. The game is currently running at 50 frames per second, but they are working to get it up to 60 frames per second, for the release. They made it realistic, with the hands moving along the steering wheel as the player turns the car. They also licensed the cars used in the game, so you can smash up cars that you recognize. The interesting part of the game is the shift ability, where you can shift from one car to any other car in the game. This is interesting since you could be chasing after a bad guy, and then shift into another car to help catch them. Such as shifting into a Big truck to block a road ahead of where the guy is heading, or to collide head on with the bad guy.
The shift ability was fairly easy to work when they let us try it out, you just hit a button, and it slows down time, and you can see everything from above. As you progress in the game it allows you to shift over greater distances. They also include the fact that when you shift into a car, it has real people in it, so you can see into their world, seeing a quick video of the passenger of the Car. The game is scheduled for Q4 on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC/Mac, with a special version available for the Wii
H.A.W.X. 2
Ubisoft was also showing off a new Tom Clancy game, called H.A.W.X 2. This is designed to be more of a realistic fighter simulation game. The game includes takeoffs, landings and even in air refueling. They added more up-close dog fights than the first one, and 4 player Co-op. The game takes place with a rising insurgency, and the Player will take the role, as Russian, British, and American Pilots throughout the game.
The game has a few other improvements over the first one, with the detail of the ground and aerial targets breaking apart on impact, and an overall improvement in the AI for enemies. They really worked on the realistic with these improvements to details, with people moving on the ship, as they would preparing for the launch of a plane. They increased the details of the terrain since it was a major complaint with the first one, and included animation of ships sinking when they are hit.
One of the features they were pushing when they showed off the game was precision bombing. That they feel the game is the most realistic, depiction of a bombing run. They also tried to make things that in real life would be hard, harder, like landing on an aircraft carrier. They didn’t want it impossible though, so they show horizontal lines for elevation as you land and have red and green lines to depict to high an angle, or too low. They also force the player to control speed and altitude as the plane comes in. This makes for an interesting aspect of realism.
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