Last week, our friends at Ubisoft took us to Paris to show off their latest games. With weeks of the Halo 3 Beta having eaten up our time, UbiDays provided a wealth of new games for us to play and we weren’t disappointed.  We got to look at some of the hottest upcoming games on Xbox 360 including Splinter Cell: Conviction, Assassin’s Creed and Haze.

In the latest Splinter Cell, Sam Fisher has lost his trademark goggles having been cast out from Third Echelon, the secret government agency he used to work for.  In the demo they showed us, Sam was on the run from the police in Washington having to make it through a crowd near the Korean War Veterans statues. Using a combination of distraction and combat, our hero was without his usual collection of gadgets which he’ll now need to find on the black market with no support from the US government. Splinter Cell: Conviction is quite a departure from previous games – without his kit, Sam has to employ cunning and brute strength to survive this time.

Splinter Cell wasn’t the only Tom Clancy game on show – Ubisoft also premiered the cinematic trailer for End War which you can download now from Xbox Live Marketplace.  A strategy game created by the man behind Rome: Total War, End War is designed from the ground up for console gamers.  If you’ve ever yearned for a mouse and keyboard control mechanism, End War will move strategy to the next level – the whole game can be voice-controlled leading to the fastest and most responsive game play ever used in a strategy game. Creative Director Michael de Plater based this control system around actual generals and how they command the battlefield.  Go and check out that trailer for an idea of how the game will play.

While there wasn’t much on-show for it, Assassin’s Creed did have a new trailer where you could see lead character Altair performing a string of impressive moves.  We should be hearing much more about Assassin’s Creed in July when the E3 show rolls into LA with the latest game announcements.

Also on show at UbiDays was Haze, from Free Radical Design (the masterminds behind the Timesplitters series). This futuristic sci-fi shooter has a lot of potential as you play a soldier for Mantel, an Orwellian mega corporation in control of the world.  Mantel produce a performance-enhancing drug called Nectar for their soldiers which improves your ability to detect enemies and engage in combat, similar to the feral abilities in Far Cry.  They showed off an impressive four player co-op mode with a jungle skirmish. We’ll be bringing you more on Haze for Xbox 360 soon.

Having returned from Paris, we’ve been back on the Halo 3 Beta with a passion – it continues to run until 10 June, so get it in while you can!

By Mark Eveleigh, Xbox.com Editor, Gamertag: Making Sparks