EA’s presentation at E3 2009 was a corker, and left a lot to live up to two months later in Europe. If E3 was anything to go by, then we can expect an extremely mixed bag, from girly glam Wii games to cash-em-up Star Wars games and hopefully ‘Mass Effect 2’ and ‘The Saboteur’. The presentation started at 3:30pm (BST), and was shown as a live feed from EA’s website. For more info on the other presentations being held at Cologne this week, check out TSA’s list of times. It’s like a train schedule, only a lot more fun to watch. And there’s no trains. So without further ado, here’s a run-down of everything that happened in the EA presentation today:
We start with a montage of all upcoming EA games, including something from Dead Space. Dr. Jens Uwe Intat, the General Manager for European Publishing introduces the presentation.
FIFA 10: Peter Moore, President of EA Sports talks about how all their sports products are the best in the world. FIFA 10 is the “greatest football game in the world”. A trailer plays, showing off all the new features including facial matching, 360 degrees dribbling, improved reactions and better graphics. Line Producer David Rutter takes over and thanks everyone for all the help on the game like it’s the Oscars. Another trailer. Improved matchmaking. This is a typical series of slight updates on an annual game series. They’ve introduced filters on how you can play a game, and removed exploits. The ‘Pro System’ will take your face and shove it over the top of your favourite digital footballer’s. This is all done on the EA site, then downloaded to your console. A bit of a weird setup, but this is what they mentioned back at E3. ‘Pro Club Championship’ is the menu option to take your team onto the EA site and fight them off against others across the world. Leaderboards will be available through the EA site, from which you’ll be able to organise your clubs. From the sounds of things, they have a bomb-load of DLC already created, not included on the disc of course. Even though it probably could fit. Real Madrid home-ground is one DLC mentioned. ‘Practice Match’, a bit like Gladiator Mode on Fat Princess, but with others playing with you locally if you want to. So it’s playing against AI then. Tiny additions in AI to make it slightly better over last year’s. ‘Urgency System’, means AI works faster to defend by lobbing themselves in front of the ball. You can now create set pieces, from one of 8 regions, which controls the AI path. 360 degrees dribbling means no more 8 directions of movement on the pitch. Once all of this is speedily written down over the course of seven minutes, Moore apologises “Sorry for being so quick”.
EA Sports Active More Workouts: As EA mentioned at E3, ‘EA Sports Active’ is their most well received product. It’s not surprise therefore that they’ve been working on over 35 new exercises to sell on a new disc. Moore gets his workout kit on. Journalists flock infront of him to take photos of him like he’s some glamour model. No-one is watching while he continues to speak. Everyone is looking through a lens. Katarina Witt, a German figure skater walks onstage to act as the promo woman. “I like [insert new features]”. Moore makes a joke suggesting the photographers like Katalina, even thought they’re all huddled around his own feet in the seating area below. He demonstrates a beach assault course including running, jumping, spinning cranks. Rather embarrassing actually watching a partially balding man work a sweat on stage. “Yeah I got it. Big finish!” Expect this November 2009.
Sims 3 World Adventures: The Sims franchise is big. Who would have known that bringing dollhouses into the virtual world could attract men as well as women? Julie Turner, Senior Director takes the stage and begins talking in German. Ah, and American English. ‘Sims 3 World Adventures’ will be one of the first expansion packs for the Sims 3 series. EA have sold over 100 million copies of Sims products. For the Sims 3, 3.7 million copies have already been sold in the first three months of its release. There are 2 million registered users on Sims.com, and 1 million have downloaded free DLC from the site. People create and share items on the site, and Youtube. More stats? Go on then. 17 million video views on Youtube. Half a million fans on facebook. Sims 3 is apparently the number 1 site on twitter. “I’m really exited about” Egypt, France and China as being new gameplay environments. Don’t just hug your virtual friends, you can now find hidden secrets. This expansion will feature global artists, including: Rising Star, Swis Sensation, Matt and Kim, Young Punks, Nelly Furtardo and Pixie Lott. Trailer of recording sessions plays with everyone trying to sing in Sim gibberish. It looks like quite a challenge, but for promotional reasons they enjoy it anyway. EA will be announcing more artists in coming months. A world premiere trailer for Sims 3 World Adventures shows Egyptian Sims. They get in a bother in a scripted version of discovering a tomb. Looks intriguing. Expect this November 16th 2009.
Battlefield Bad Company 2: “Most insane online battles.” New play modes are coming in this sequel; vehicle warfare and squad play. There’s a “large selection of authentically modelled vehicles”. That includes the squad bike and transport helicopter. You’ll be rewarded for working as a team in Squad Play. “Destruction 2.0.” A sniper can blow out a small hole in a wall and shoot through it, or some other dude could blow a whole wall down and tear his machine gun through the empty space. Any building can be leveled. Sounds like Red Faction, which would be amazing added into the graphics of Bad Company. The audience are asked to play multiplayer at the Bad Company 2 boothe. New trailer shown in German, no subtitles. Supposedly in-game as names float over their heads as in an online multiplayer mode towards the end ,but the action shown at the beginning was probably CG. Nevertheless, the potential here is exciting. Expect this March 2nd in US and March 5th in Europe 2010.
Brutal Legend: Tim Shaefer takes the stage. There’s so much flashing from the audience of cameras. The darklit room is practically white. … What? … Nooo! Live stream unavailable?! *mix of un-typable words* … Ok, 2 minuttes later and I’m back with the live feed. Shaefer is talking about attacking people with your guitar. The third weapon (so the guitar was the second option) is your car. You find pieces across the open world and make a vehicle from them. You can buy weapons and upgrade it. So you can blast enemy wih speakers, put armour on it or give it a nice paintjob. “Blood pops on chrome”. A feature called ‘Double Team attack’ is announced. This is simply an ally that helps you, and becomes interactive when attacking others. A new trailer is shown. We see more bright colours, original ideas of killing people with rock puns and a digital Ozzy. A free demo will be released on XBox Live and the PlayStation Store around September 17th. Expect the full game in ‘Rocktober’.
Crysis 2: Crytek are mentioned, then run away.
Dante’s Inferno: I’m getting all excited as God of War III music pours into a dark hall. Oh, no, hang on. That’s not the GoWIII logo. This is Dante’s Inferno. Senior Producer Justin Lambros takes the stage with a smile. He begins by mentioning a “new” gameplay mechanic ‘righteousness’. You can follow a holy or unholy path, in an inFamous style. Launch the gameplay demo. I’m a bit confuzzled. I knew this game would be similar to God of War, but this is too similar. Even the blade is used in the same way as Kratos’. Rubbing my eyes and continuing to jot notes, you find damned souls, a bit like little sisters in BioShock then, and either condemn them or allow them to rest in peace. So if you kill a demon, you’ll also have to chose its fate, and different attacks will become more powerful depending on how evil or forgiving you are. When I say evil, that includes Kratos-style ripping your enemies to pieces. Expect this February 9th in the US and February 12 in Europe 2010.
Dragon Age Origins: BioWare time. Ray Muzyka, co founder of BioWare takes the stage. Dragon Age Origins will give you the option from the very beginning of choosing from one of 6 character classes. Each will change the way you play the story in a very big way. Last week they announced a collector’s edition for the upcoming game. Exclusive content including a new character will be available for those buying this special version. Gray Warden trailer. Gray Wardens are the main good guys. You’ll become one of them early on in the game and fight against the dragons for your people. Looks like a lot of fighting bundled with traditional RPG elements.
Mass Effect 2: This is the “dark second chapter”. It’s a “deep RPG [that] takes a quantum leap in action”. The game will be readily playable on the show floor for those at Gamescom. A new feature titled ‘Squad Recruitment’ will see you recruit members from the Mass Effect world, and work to gain loyalty. This will be important in how you approach situations, and will affect the outcome of each battle. BioWare are still on track for making the series into a trilogy. You will feel the decisions you made in first game in Mass Effect 2, as it finds your save from the first game, and continues with the consequences of your previous decisions. That’s pretty impressive, seeing that you’ll most likely continue your current storyline onto the third game too, making your final experience much different to other players. Time for a gameplay trailer. The “ultimate bodyguard” character shown for the first time is named Grunt. He tears apart enemies, but is presented in a humourous manner. He’ll be a strong ally to you.
Star Wars The Old Republic: Massive star wars theme hits the audience in the face as the creators of another Star Wars game walks on. They tell us the dialogue facts as they discussed at length at E3 two months ago. They intend this Star Wars MMO to be a worldwide phenominon. So while we knew that every character (even ‘extras’) had their own voice actor, the team have also recorded their own German and French voices for every character. A certain family member of mine walks in and annoyingly talks about what to make for dinner. Argh. I don’t know. Why ask me? They’re showing the same cinematic trailer form E3 now, but in German. That was supposed to impress us. No new images.
Need for Speed Shift: Jese Abney, and Steven Viljoen come on stage for Need for Speed. They boast about the cockpit view, GForce physics and live gameplay. They deserve to though, the graphics are immense. There’s blurring and destauration of the cockpit when you get really fast, which looks great. He crashes accidentally, but the sudden switch to black and white, without loss of frame rate in first person all works really well. Your driver profile tells you if you’re a crazy or great driver, and rewards you for whichever one you are. There’s 150 unique challenges. The audience members can win a BMW3 at the EA booth. That certain family member is now shouting at me for not removing spider from their room. Argh missed the epic trailer! Graphics look awesome. Expect this 17th September.
The press got up before the presentation seemed to end. Tsk. Press eh? The same showreel from the beginng plays while everyone in the foreground stands up and runs off to get ready for the Sony conference. There’s definitely Spore, Dead Space and others in that showreel that weren’t shown. Maybe we’ll see them in the other presentations. Dead Space 2 footage coming? There was a woman in a Dead Space suit. I’m sure we’ll get some confirmation on that soon.
So all in all, there wasn’t particularly much new shown today. Everything that we did see was up to a very high standard, and looks to be reaching shelves later this year and early 2010. I’m sure we all would have liked a few surprises for us other console gamers, but it seems that these are being saved for the Sony and Microsoft conferences. So, with that all out the way, it’s time to deal with that spider, make the dinner, and deal with the really annoying association between my laptop and the phrase “doing nothing”. By the time this post is live, the Sony conference will be over, and we’ll have a few more bits of news for you. If you’ve already read them all, like some info-nugget-demon, then check out our list of conference times for all things Gamescom this week.
