Ubisoft took their turn on the stage for their turn at hyping up the crowd at E3 2015, and they showed off details and reveals for games in their most loved franchises as well as revealing a few surprises. Mostly it was made of games we expected, although the rumours about Watch_Dogs 2 being there were proven not to be true.

The press conference started off with a trailer for a game no one saw coming – South Park: The Fractured But Whole. The sequel to the Stick of Truth game that the creators said they’d never make (but decided to do anyway), this time we see the characters playing through a superhero themed game. I’m not a fan of South Park, but I did get a laugh when they realised that they were no longer doing an RPG and paused the action to change costumes.

Next we had another new and unexpected game announcement: For Honor, a team game for up to 8 players (2 teams of 4 players) involving a lot of melee combat. It was shown off with a beautifully animated trailer that followed a common thread of combat across several different battlefields with a different fighter for each. There was also a live demo and it seems that hits will be given more emphasis through camera shake on screen, in an attempt to better immerse players in the game. It certainly looks as if it’ll have promise and players can sign up at forhonor.com to get more information about the game.

Onto the titles and franchises we did expect to see the first up was The Crew’s new expansion announcement. Wild Run will come with loads of new content such as vehicles, maps and gatherings and will be released on November 17th.

The Division was also featured, with news on a Beta coming on Xbox One, Playstation 4 and PC early next year and the release date being announced as March 18th. They also talked about an area in the game called the Dark Zone – a quarantined area of the world which you can enter and showed a clip of gameplay that showcased the multiplayer elements, how you can choose to work together or not, finding loot and towards the end became a really good lesson on why you should never trust your best friends in a video game.

Games were announced for the Anno series, with Anno 2205 showcasing a nearish-future version of the city building game and Trackmania with Trackmania Turbo taking the series to consoles with a colourful and interesting set of racetracks with loops, twists and turns; as well as the ability to do your own tracks. Trials Fusion also announced Awesome Levels Max expansion with a perfect trailer that involved rainbows, a gun-toting ginger cat and a fire-breathing unicorn. Brilliant.

Just Dance 2016 was of course there, with the news that a camera is no longer needed to play the game and that you can use your smartphone as a controller for the game. More tracks, more dancing, more colour, more wonderfully danced avatars of course. The big news announced though was that a streaming service for the game called Just Dance Unlimited was going to be launched to allow users to get updates of fresh tracks to play, through a monthly subscription fee. The game will release in October for all platforms, with Xbox One, PS4 and WiiU getting access to the Just Dance Unlimited service.

There was more information on Rainbow Six: Siege including a rather awesome trailer that ramped up the tension and emphasised the importance of mission completion. Terrohunt was also announced to be making a return in this game, with a live demonstration of a mission on-stage which showcased some beautiful teamwork and co-optional play. Beta access will start from September 24th and it will include both the PvP and Terrohunt gamemodes for players to try out.

Another one of the big games we expected to see there was Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate and the idea of twin assassins with a gang of people backing them up set in Victorian London sounds amazing. We got a nice little trailer which included a Victorian horse-drawn carriage chase. Shame that it featured just one twin and it was the male one. Maybe I’m being a bit harsh but this is the same franchise that once talked about how it was too difficult to animate female assassins and got flack for it. I’d have loved to see her in action, but at least they did make a trailer for her even if it was shown during Sony’s press conference instead. If you’re interested, sign up at assassinscreed.com.

Finally they wrapped up with one last surprise game reveal: a new Ghost Recon game that emphasised the open-world possibilities and that there are many different ways of completing a mission. The trailer for Ghost Recon Wildlands showed the way that three different methods could result in a mission complete. Also, there was a lot of talk of not fearing death and quite a bit of blood. We’ve already talked about what position we’d take if we played, and I’m going to be causing havoc.

All in all, Ubisoft’s press conference was a lot how we expected it to be. Most of what was expected made a showing in some form and with big showy trailers too. There were some surprises though and I do look forward to seeing if games like For Honor become a success.

Also, Trials Fusion’s trailer was the highlight. Because it was ridiculous.

At 5pm British Time today (15th June), gaming’s biggest event of the year, E3, officially kicked off for 2015. Half an hour later, it was Microsoft taking the stage for the first Press presentation of this year’s expo.

The Redmond-based company started their 90-minute session this year with some big guns, in a World Première showcasing game-play footage of Halo 5: Guardians. Microsoft are bigging this up as the first Halo title to be exclusive to XBox One, and for the next five minutes we were treated to a sample of the kind of guns blazing action we can expect from the title. Courtesy of Kotaku, we bring you the footage of the entire five-minute playthrough:

Halo 5: Guardians will be in stores from October 27, 2015.

What happens when a service designed to keep your passwords safe gets hacked itself?

Password-management service LastPass announced today that it “discovered and blocked suspicious activity” on its network on Friday that caused user email addresses, authentication hashes, password reminders and server per user salts to be compromised.

While the news suggests that some user’s email addresses may now be known to criminals and that hackers may now have useful hints to passwords for other sites you may be using, LastPass says that there is no evidence that any data from any user’s vault was taken; or that any accounts were logged into illegitimately before the hack was detected. This means that any of the passwords actually stored on the server have not fallen into the wrong hands, so there should be no need to reset passwords for every site you stored data for. LastPass is confident that its encryption is strong enough to make attacking those stolen hashes with any speed difficult.

Nevertheless, when it comes to LastPass itself, it is highly recommended you change your Master Password right now to ensure those vaults can’t potentially be accessed later. Although the company’s official recommendation is that you only need to change your master password if it’s weak or use that password on multiple sites, in any case of hacking, being paranoid is often the best approach. The company also recommends that users who don’t have two-factor authentication enabled on their accounts do so now, which sounds like sound advice.

The phrase “rapturous applause” is often misused when describing audience reactions to E3 Announcements, but today at E3, one announcement by Microsoft got the crowd so hyped that even describing the applause as “rapturous” could be an understatement.

That’s because Microsoft just announced a new feature to the XBox One console that long-term XBox fans have been asking for from pretty much day one of the console’s release. That’s right folks – backwards compatibility is here!

Microsoft has revealed during Day 0 of E3 today that the XBox One is receiving software to allow as many XBox 360 games as possible to be played on the XBox One. Initially only 200 games will be immediately compatible with the new hardware, but the company intends to increase this number over time.

The compatible XBox 360 games will get their own listing in the XBox Live Store, where fans will be able to download the games to their XBox One whenever they like. However, if you own the CD for an XBox 360 title, you can simply insert the disk to the XBox One and you will be offered to download the title immediately to the One once the compatibility is available. What’s more, Microsoft have promised that you will not need to pay again for any of your existing XBox 360 titles to bring them to XBox One – meaning that you’ll potentially be able to bring over your whole library of Xbox 360 games to the One at no cost to you.

The games will play exactly like they did on the 360; and games that include online features will be playable with players still on their 360s using XBox Live. However, you’ll also get to use the XBox One’s native features with the game, such as being able to take in-action screenshots or side-load an app to show alongside the game. Take a look at the video below for the full low-down; meanwhile, we’ll leave the final words to Microsoft:

“If you’ve been holding off from upgrading from your XBox 360, now is definitely the time!”

As of this year, once beloved British developers Rare Ltd celebrate their 30th Anniversary. For the first 16 years of its life, Rare gained a cult following for its creation of several original franchises that each managed to captivate audiences with their quirky characters, fun gameplay and often cheeky sense of humour, whether it would be fun for all ages like Banjo-Kazooie; or for adults only like Conker’s Bad Fur Day. So popular was this company that they became Nintendo’s official second-party developer from 1994 right up until 2002, when they were bought by Microsoft. Since the buyout, the company moved from mainly developing for Nintendo consoles to developing solely for the XBox; and it’s been safe to say the results have been mostly lacklustre.

Today at E3, Microsoft announced a special love-letter project to Rare’s long-term fans to celebrate the developer’s 30th year – and give modern gamers the opportunity to experience the golden era of Rare’s creative nous. Coming this August exclusive to XBox One, Rare and Microsoft will be releasing ‘Rare Replay’, a unique collection of 30 of Rare’s classic titles ported to XBox One. Both of the titles mentioned earlier feature, along with other classic hits such as Battletoads, Jet Force Gemini, Perfect Dark; and even some of the XBox-era hits such as Viva Piñata and Grabbed by the Ghoulies.

As well as being able to play all these classic games in one collection on your XBox, the games will feature Acheivements to demonstrate your progress through each title, with Rare proudly boasting that it is possible to earn “up to 10,000 Gamerscore” from the entire collection. Watch the video below for the Announcement Trailer and to see more of the games on offer:

To emphasis the 30-year Anniversary aspect, Rare announced that the compendium will contain “30 games for $30 – that’s $1 a game!” Sure enough, the game’s retail price has been pitched at $29.99, which for us in the UK translates to £19.99 – which is a pretty sweet deal. Rare Replay is set for release on 4 August 2015/