Stories about: Ubisoft

Edward Fong and Aaron Younger, former managing director and senior product manager at GT Interactive respectively, discuss the "heady days" of one of Australia's largest video game distributors

You begin in a prison cart, hands bound, juddering down a mountain path as a chorus of French horns plays a mournful melody. You'll spend a lot of time navigating Skyrim's mountains -- whether you're climbing through their snowy heights or just staring up their slopes, they're a physical presence unlike any you've experienced in a game. They surround you on all sides, their tops shrouded in rolling banks of clouds and reaching for what seems like miles toward the stratosphere. The clouds sometimes descend from the highest slopes, filling pine-thick valleys or rocky, scrub-covered flatland with curls of fog.

Last year’s Just Dance 2 was the very textbook case of a great party-cum-casual game. It was accessible -- anyone that picked up the Nintendo Wiimote would be playing within five minutes, and most importantly, it was fun.

After years of 'modern' shooters that try and copy Call of Duty wholesale, it's a good time to re-release the original Splinter Cell games as a trilogy on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. They don’t necessarily look good in this newfangled 'HD' but their gameplay style is so different to cookie-cutter modern standards that they almost feel like a brand new set of games.

The original Deus Ex, quite simply, set a lofty benchmark for FPS/RPG hybrids. It is incredible that after 11 years, its immersive storytelling still ranks top of the class. Meeting the grade was a failure its sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War, in 2003, managed in spectacular fashion. The emphasis of returning the series to its Game Of The Year heyday, then, was a pressure the creators of Deus Ex: Human Revolution felt only too well.

A YouTube video posted on the EB Expo Web site has announced the first round of exhibitors on show at the EB Expo 2011, as well as official partners.

Stealthy spy games should be all kinds of awesome on the 3DS. From creeping around in the dark to sniping unaware guards from a mile off, the 3D effect should heighten the immersion greatly. Unfortunately, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell 3D doesn't quite pull it off. It's a very playable game, but it's also easy to tell that it was rushed to hit the Nintendo 3DS launch date.

The Entertainment Software Association has an early list of companies signed up for floorspace at E3 2011. Here's who made the list:

If you're looking to pick up a few video games this holiday season, make sure they're from the following list...

Here's my obligatory list of 2010's top 10 video games, in no particular order. Yours would no doubt look different. That's the point of lists, after all: To throw our favorites out there, then stand around comparing and critiquing.