E3 2018 - Ubisoft

Soulless corporate stooges and transparent fake pally businessmen step aside, the masters of cringe are here. Within seconds I'm looking at a dancing tool in a panda ringleader costume relegated to an alleyway but sadly not a dumpster. More preening pantomime humiliations convulse all over the place and I try to escape early to be met with another empty chamber. After being absorbed into one dancer's stomach we finally reach a stage but not an end to the costumed carnival of cheese.

I get that this is Just Dance's shtick but by Christ I cringed the skin on my face inside out. They didn't even show the fucking game either.

Was really hoping one of these chucklefucks would get devoured by a street-sweeper.

A CG trailer for Beyond Good and Evil 2 shows...honestly I don't even know. I didn't play the first but was it always full of awfully voiced, horrific looking animal people? I thought it was about taking photos.

A producer and narrative designer arrive on stage to show 20 seconds of footage alongside a lot of rambling about the seedy sci-fi world they've created. Then suddenly Joseph Gordon Levitt bum rushes the stage and explains his new company HitRecord and the slightly unclear way it allows the community to be a part of creating the game, which sounds...convenient for Ubisoft.

The giddy devs then exit the stage and while they think they "nailed it" the person in charge of their microphones clearly didn't.

A new bloke appears to praise Rainbow Six Siege before introducing Another Mindset. Unfortunately not a literal mindset that could perhaps convince Ubi to have less circus shit at their conferences, but what I think is an emotional documentary about pro-gamers of Rainbow Six Siege. Was anyone asking for that? Will that footage not essentially be a Let's Play with occasional live action scenes going to get more Relentless from the corner shop?

The onesie gimp duo from last year apparently got divorced and only one of them got custody of the tiny dirt bike.  Arriving very slowly in an Evel Knievel get up before climbing on stage and eating shit face first into a collapsible podium. Credit where it's due, the drawn out aftermath with stagehands sweeping up the wreckage got a smirk from me.

Somehow less embarrassing than most of EA's conference.

The chunky funnyman gets another less ridiculous but still self-admitted fatman to introduce Trials: Rising which looks the same as the last game except apparently they got Youtubers involved in the development. The closing trailer does at least seem aware that a large part of the appeal of these games is crashing rather than completing the courses.

This E3 seems weirdly denim themed as a melodramatic dev caught between dressing down in jogging bottoms and trying to invent a denim corset comes on stage to talk about the Division 2.

A lengthy CG trailer tells us nothing I didn't already know even when I've actively tried to avoid watching anything related to this game out of sheer boredom. Mr Lacking a Wardrobe Division returns to introduce unique weapons like an explosive crossbow and a grenade launcher which surely are practically the same thing.

Those are the names of the three clothing brands he mashed together.

They also have three DLC's planned but they're free so that gets an applause. From the crowd I mean not me. I was distracted by how much of his speech started sounding like political commentary.

Maybe that's the appeal of these games? Abe Lincoln quotes and talk of "History's defining moment." makes the generic third person squad shooter seem deeper than it actually is. They even use music from a band (admittedly one I'm a fan of) that blends Chain-gang black slave songs with satanist heavy metal in the needless second CG trailer so I guess political controversy is just their marketing angle.

"Shut up and plant the C4." - Abe's Squadmate

Crew members attempt to inconspicuously move an orchestra on stage whereupon a live musical performance accompanies the next trailer. Mario Rabbids Kingdom Battle Donkey Kong Adventure is a fucking stumbling homunculus of a name even if it is just DLC but from what I hear about the prior game it will probably be at least half good.

People continue to mutter obscenities and racial slurs into their accidentally audible microphones before a CG trailer plays for the pirate ship sections of Assassin's Creed 4. Now shrewdly made into a full game called Skull and Bones.

A man with time to grab a scarf but not to do up his blazer explains more of the game before edited footage somewhere between a demo and a trailer shows gameplay at last. It is still blatantly the torso of AC4 but there appears to be enough new depth and tactics to justify its existence and it still looks fun after the remodelling.

Continuing the celeb train Elijah Wood and game director Benoit Richer introduce Transference. A cinematic semi-live action psychological thriller intended for VR but thankfully not exclusive to it.

Star Fox has been demoted to some toy tie-in spaceship shooter called Starlink. That said, it appears functionally more interesting than Star Fox Zero did. To ram the point home they bring a slightly befuddled Miyamoto into the audience to give his implied blessing before handing him a model Arwing and taking him "backstage".

"Mate I've already got like a hundred of these."

Unable to afford their Viking Commander anymore For Honor's less intimidating creative director insists the game works a lot better now and offers to give it away free for anyone who can traverse Uplay on PC. On top of this they're adding a new China faction and a castle siege multiplayer mode which I would have assumed was already in the game given its prominence in all the demos and trailers.

The Crew 2 is a racing game and between the lady introducing its' thick accent and being centimetres from eating her microphone I'm not sure anyone understood a word she said about the game. Thankfully I care only slightly less than this conference's sound engineers.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey is Assassin's Creed Obviously going to be shown since it was already leaked. Some irritatingly intermittent footage eventually gives way to a pretty undoctored seeming gameplay demo featuring RPG elements from Origins, all out war more than assassinations and as you'd expect a fantastic, authentic looking Greek environment.

The only game that lets you lie to Socrates' face.

Yves then brings everyone on stage to clap themselves or the audience or video games in general. It was very unclear but there was a lot of clapping and smiling going on. So as expected Ubisoft started horrific but unexpectedly at least nursed the wound into a peaceful death. It still doesn't redeem the nightmare-inducing panto shit they keep doing though.

I get that drama students need money but there has to be a better way.