Ubisoft announces Zombie U and Watch Dogs

This E3 has been light on big surprises so far, and while Ubisoft’s press conference still mostly consisted of titles that we’ve all already seen already, they did manage to deliver 2 brand new IP’s from out of nowhere.

Ubisoft already revealed their biggest “new” title, Splinter Cell: Black List, earlier today at Microsoft’s press conference, but they still had a handful of interesting titles to talk about at their own press conference.

Ubisoft was one of the few third parties to turn a profit on the Wii, and they’re hoping to continue that trend on Wii U. The publisher announced several titles for Nintendo’s upcoming tablet-based system, including the previously revealed Rayman Legends and a port of the upcoming Assassin’s Creed 3.

They also revealed Zombie U, a new survival horror FPS hybrid from Ubisoft Montpelier, the studio behind Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and Beyond Good and Evil. The game’s unique hook comes from it’s permanent death mechanic: once a player dies, his character becomes a zombie. Players will be forced to play as a new character, though they can track down their deceased character’s zombie and reclaim any gear or weapons they may have collected by killing their un-dead self. The game is in development for the Wii U and currently doesn’t have a set release date.

Ubisoft’s other new title, Watch Dogs, looks pretty interesting. It’s a sci-fi themed open world action game, a-la Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and it gives players the ability to hack apparently almost anything: the character in the trailer is shown hacking street lights and traffic signals in order to create a car pile-up. The most immediately impressive thing about Watch Dogs was its graphics: though the person playing the demo was using a 360 controller, Watch Dogs looked way too good to be running on any of the current consoles; perhaps Watch Dogs is a PC game, or maybe it’s even our first look at what the next-gen consoles will be capable of. Regardless of what platform it ends up on, it’s undeniable that Watch Dogs was pretty impressive.