By John Walker on May 3rd, 2012 at 11:00 pm.
I think releasing a short film to accompany your forthcoming game is a great way to promote it. It doesn’t matter if the film is terrible or great, it’ll get talked about, and who doesn’t like half an hour of dumb action? Wrong people, that’s who. Small suggestion though: if you’re going to go to all that effort to make such an elaborate advert for your game, don’t release it exclusively to one site legendary for its crappy efforts with streaming films, in terrible low res. It’s, well, the dumbest idea available. Ghost Recon Alpha is on the receiving end of that.
Why on Earth Ubi thought signing an exclusive deal with LoveFilm was a good idea I cannot fathom. Why it’s available with no HD option, but rather in terrible blurry quality in a tiny window, that expands dreadfully to fullscreen, is also a mystery time shall not explain. And it’s a shame, because while shouty nonsense from start to finish, it’s a nicely made bit of fluff.
While the apparent “goodies” seemed far more horrid than the baddies, there’s lots of lovely SFX silliness, magical invisibility cloaks, and giant stompy dogbots. The special effects go wonky here and there – it’s certainly not a huge budget effort, but looks fine all the same. And it’ll get you into the spirit of Ghost-style takedowns and angry men shouting swears about missiles.
But, it’s all in a blurry little box on another website, because that’s the best way to perform advertising. Restrict it to one place, and make it as low quality as possible. Here’s a far higher quality trailer:
03/05/2012 at 23:09 faelnor says:
This was shown here on TV tonight around 11 o’ clock. Nothing spectacular but I was entertained and it was well-made.
04/05/2012 at 07:10 Ragarnok says:
W9 after Hulk?
04/05/2012 at 08:59 faelnor says:
Yup.
03/05/2012 at 23:12 Muzman says:
Well as long as you don’t have a loose cranny, I guess it’s all good
04/05/2012 at 04:33 P7uen says:
(if you know what I mean)
04/05/2012 at 06:52 kukouri says:
I’m going to need it explained to me.
03/05/2012 at 23:13 Dominic White says:
Lovefilm are great as a console game rental service, and cheap if you pick the ‘limited exchanges per month’ package. For just about anything else, they’re pants.
04/05/2012 at 00:10 Creeping Death says:
I’m about 3/4 of the way through a 2 month trial with them at the minute and I just about agree with your assessment. For game rentals they are great, they have an amazing turnaround rate. If I returned a game on Wednesday I would be pretty certain I’d get my next one on Friday.
Shame their Lovefilm instant service is completely ass though. From poor resolution and buffer rate to having half the picture off the screen, its just one problem after the other. Though, am I correct in thinking it’s a relatively new thing for them? To rival Netflix in the UK now?
04/05/2012 at 00:58 PitfireX says:
Are Lovefilm game rentals UK Only? Gamefly is HORRIBLE in the states.
04/05/2012 at 01:51 Creeping Death says:
As far as I can tell its only the UK and a few european countries. A bit strange considering it’s an Amazon company
04/05/2012 at 07:55 f1x says:
As much crap as it might be, I would love to have it in Spain,
because we dont have any freakin streaming-Netflix-like service so far, :(
04/05/2012 at 11:07 CaLe says:
Just as I was reading this comment my rental came through the letter box. I only added it to me queue yesterday. Pretty sweet! However I have had issues in the past with slow deliveries so I think it just depends. Then other times I get a newly released game at 10am on day of release.. can’t argue.
04/05/2012 at 09:06 vodka and cookies says:
Loveflim are the freaking worst, barely any presence at all on various media devices and they seem to be tied up with Sony BD/TV’s, the Samsung BD client doesn’t even work anymore and you can forget about support on anything like a Roku or WDTV Live.
Why didn’t Ubisoft release this on Vimeo if they wanted people to actually see it.
04/05/2012 at 00:06 PitfireX says:
That was……interesting….. im still not buying your games UBI.
04/05/2012 at 00:43 FRIENDLYUNIT says:
Hear, hear.
04/05/2012 at 01:39 ShineyBlueShoes says:
I concur. I genuinely expected to turn it off after 5 minutes but found myself really engaged in it and wishing it didn’t have to be saddled with ubicrap.
04/05/2012 at 05:18 SystemiK says:
There was a time when I bought Ubi games quite frequently, now…the plague. I’d sooner shoot my monitors with buckshot than give that sad excuse for a company any of my money. It didn’t have to be that way….but it is.
04/05/2012 at 07:06 Tom De Roeck says:
You dont have to: its free to play.
04/05/2012 at 09:18 P7uen says:
Presumably not all of them, though.
Luckily for me I haven’t fancied a Ubi game since BG&E so I have been spared the quandry.
04/05/2012 at 02:26 Shooop says:
This live action promotional material trend can’t die soon enough.
04/05/2012 at 07:11 Ragarnok says:
you’d be wrong to dismiss it, this one is pretty good; not as good as the live-action ODST trailer though
04/05/2012 at 13:58 Shooop says:
Watched 3 minutes of it and yawned. Or maybe I didn’t yawn, don’t remember. It left such little impression on me I can’t be bothered trying to remember what I did during that time.
If you’re selling a game, show me a game trailer. If you’re selling a movie, show me a movie trailer. Confuse the two and you’re not selling me on anything.
04/05/2012 at 06:52 MadMinstrel says:
Umm. I can’t play it. It just says ‘coming soon’ and they layout is broken. There’s a white square overlapping the page strangely where there should be a video, but no such luck.
04/05/2012 at 07:14 HaVoK308 says:
UBIsoft continues to make delusional decisions. They love to show just how disconnected they are. LoveFilms? Never heard of them…never. I wont be watching. After spending some time with the Beta, I’m not sure I’ll be buying either.
Bring back the Original Redstorm Entertainment! Just like EA ruined Westwood, UBIsoft done the same to Redstorm.
04/05/2012 at 07:31 ScottHarrigan says:
This certainly does make the game look pretty awesome. Scifi shooters are by no means new, but this looks like it will be a cut above the rest. Hopefully this game will make up for the graphical disaster that was the Recon game for the Wii. At the very least the game will not look nearly as goofy.
http://www.videodetective.com/games/tom-clancys-ghost-recon/842809
04/05/2012 at 07:58 max pain says:
When will the game get into Beta?
04/05/2012 at 09:27 grok23 says:
I might have watched it if it wasn’t for the Lovefilm only option. I’ve already cancelled my subs to them as the service was garbage.
04/05/2012 at 14:26 Gonefornow says:
Only option? Thank goodness for Torrents.
04/05/2012 at 11:42 Flakfizer says:
So you need a permanent online connection to watch this …?
04/05/2012 at 12:48 roryok says:
So that first screenshot – is that a man being shot in the ass with light while running from a transformer dog?
04/05/2012 at 12:55 lijenstina says:
It’s the running man’s ass shooting at the transformer dog. Pretty precise too. Albeit it should lower the aim a bit.
04/05/2012 at 16:00 roryok says:
Are you sure? look on the right. he’s farting out chaff
04/05/2012 at 19:03 lijenstina says:
Yeah You’re right. Looks like ass is going full auto.
04/05/2012 at 14:06 Bluerps says:
Somehow, I tend to interpret their name as not saying that they “love films”, but that they offer “lovefilms”, which makes me think of a rather different sort of entertainment than what they sell.
08/05/2012 at 04:35 TJF588 says:
Wait, this isn’t about Animal Crossing?