Ubisoft Press Conference

The E3 2012 Ubisoft Press Conference started things off by announcing Just Dance 4 in the only way that seems to matter – with a big dance number and the perfunctory musical star, Flo Rida.

After the big opening number, Aisha Tyler (from TV's Archer) took the stage while her co-host, Tobuscus, stayed in the back and showed up on the big screen, well for a good bit of the presentation anyway.

Their first game to show off was Far Cry 3 where you go back to the tropical island settings of the first game and control Jason Brody. In the demo we watched, Jason wakes up in a strange hut with a woman wearing little more than paint that seems to be treating him in a very familiar manner.

His goal seems to be to find and take out a local man named Vaas, but the exact nature of who Vaas is and why Jason is needs to find him isn't all that clear. What we did see was a lot of gunplay and close-ranged attacks as Jason made his way through the lush tropical jungle. Producer Dan Hay said that the game was all about exploration; in fact, you aren't even confined to a single island. Hay claimed that you have an entire archipelago to explore.

Ubisoft then showed off the newest game in a long-running series, Rayman: Legends. It takes the new style developed for Rayman: Origins and shows off some of the interesting gameplay that can be done on the Nintendo Wii U.

Rayman: Legends introduces a new character called Murphy who flies around the screen much like a cursor, but he is controlled by the Wii U GamePad. It looked like another player was controlling Rayman himself, but there were some times when it looked like Rayman was more A.I.-controlled and simply following Murphy as he made paths through the world.

Regardless of exactly how everyone is controlled, the focus of the demo was Murphy and the Wii U GamePad. Looking at the screen, the player swipes across lines that need to be cut, taps on objects that Murphy needs to hold on to, or even tilt the controller in order to turn a wheel of spikes so that the other players can get past. There was even a segment where the player with the GamePad would tap certain locations on the screen in a rhythm game format in order to keep the party going and earn points.

Rayman: Legends isn't Ubisoft's only venture onto the Wii U. They also showed off Zombie U, a zombie apocalypse game taking place in Britain, Rabbids Land, Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2013, Sports Connection and Just Dance 4.

Of course, one of the biggest draws for Ubisoft is Assassin's Creed III. The presentation showed us a world where the new assassin character, Connor, fits perectly into the world where figures like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Lafayette made history. Connor sneaks through snow, climbs in trees and uses his tomahawk with deadly accuracy. When asked who the enemies were, the presentor made sure to note that you aren't against the British. The enemies are and always have been the Templars and they are on both sides of the battle. But you'll also have to tangle with creatures on four legs as you travel through the forests.

Ubisoft then focused on the rising E-Sports phenomenom by introducing a new game designed specifically for this market. ShootMania (from the developers of TrackMania) was demoed with a collection of world CounterStrike Champions and we watched them play a game that was 1v3 where the offensive side had three players with rocket launchers and the defensive side had just one player with a rail gun. The rocket launcher takes two hits to kill, while the rail gun takes only one. The winner of each round is the one that eliminates the other team, and the next round has the teams switching roles.

Ubisoft showed off one last game before ending their presentation, Watch Dogs. In this world, there is a major database and A.I. that keeps any eye over each city and it is called ctOS. The demo followed a character named Aiden Pearce who seems bent on going after an artist named Joseph Demarco. Pearce uses his phone to disrupt cell phones, listen in to other people's calls and even do on-the-fly background checks to realize that someone who is prone to violence is about to start a fight with you. Before the shootout that leads to your target's death occurs, Pearce turns off some traffic lights and creates a major accident that provides a lot of cover for your firefight.

At the very end of the demo, the game pulls back and switches to another character that seems to have a username, Bizzel_44, instead of a character name. This character and three others seemed to be tasked with protecting Pearce after his task is complete. This hints at some kind of four-player co-op, but it isn't really clear what was going on there.