EA Conference 2010 Round-Up

Microsoft have had their conference. Next up is Electronic Arts. We all know EA have a lot of franchises to upkeep, and it came as no surprise to see many of these mentioned tonight, not just for PS3 and Xbox 360 either. This year’s conference, like last year’s, introduced a few new initiatives that encourage players to share stats online. While some games were hindered by dodgy live connections and wonky wifi, anything missed here is bound to quickly find its way on the site soon.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit

Let’s begin with a trailer. Everything looks pretty good.Looks pretty cool. Craig Sullivan, the Creative Director takes to the stage to tell us more. He wanted to take Need for Speed “Back to its roots”. He goes on to describe the game as a cocktail of “exotic cars, epic drives and hot pursuits”.

‘Autolog’ allows players to “connect, compare and compete” with friends. It recommends what you might want to do next depending on what your friends are beating you at. Can’t let them have all the glory can we? Craig begins a live two player online gameplay demo, picking between the very shiny cop car and the sexy red racer car. “It’s worth waiting for, don’t worry” he says as the loading bar is dropped for a worrying blank screen. He wasn’t lying. The game looks incredible, like burnout in the countryside with futuristic, slick shiny cars. The Cop was racing to catch up with racer, with the aim of scratching, bashing and knocking it off course. The game ended once the racer had been bashed to bits, followed by an epic slow motion crash. Coming 16th November 2010.

John is next to the stage to ‘begin’ the conference. Introducing “ten great games from ten great producers”. That’s it, he walks off and is replaced by Steve Paoutsis, Executive Producer of Dead Space.

Dead Space 2

Promises more of the same. The game takes place in a city set in space where we’ll see a “wide variety of environments”. The gameplay demo begins in the ‘Church of Unitology’, and instantly reminds me of Resident Evil 4. While the metallic hallways of the first game are still intact, carpets and stained glass windows really change the mood of this setting. Little evil baby things come after you which is damn creepy. It’s almost like the twisted goblin things from the Silent Hill film. The sound is noticeably amazing – lots of squelches. We finally get a view of the city much like viewing the ship in the first game. However, something flies in front of view and shoots the windows, sucking Isaac (I’m assuming it’s him in the suit. I haven’t finished the first game) out before he opens a hatch and falls through a manhole, only to be screamed at by some other big, slimy monster. The cliffhanger continues at the Sony show, apparently, and this idea of a continuation got an extremely positive response from the crowd.

Sean Decker runs on to tell us about a franchise that’s been out of commision for 3 years, and that EA are working with Dice (Battlefield franchise) on the new Medal of Honor. Yes. Wrong spelling, I know. But it’s right for those Americans.

Medal of Honor

The game is set in Afghanistan. That’s all the info I could pick up before the crowd went wild over the premise of a live 24 player software demo on stage. 24 people line the stage with 24 PS3 controllers. They’re playing ‘Team Assault’, a death-match mode. All maps are inspired by real world locations, Decker tells us. “The key to survive is to keep moving”. What follows is an awesome 24 player slpitscreen which begins to change from player to player to see their first person view of the frantic gameplay. It looks like Call of Duty, one of the writing team suggests across Skype. Points appear in the middle of the screen followed by the text “Headshot”, “Killing an Enemy” or “Detroying Vehicle” to tell you what the points are for. A beta for the game is coming to the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC on 21st June 2010. World premiere for the Medal of Honor trailer plays. Coming October 12th 2010.

Katrina Stratford takes the stage to announce a new way of combining the internet and gaming. Something EA are calling Gun Club. A short trailer of all the top EA shooters plays in anticipation.

Gun Club

This is EA’s new rewards system. The idea is to say thanks to players for playing any EA game or buying pre-orders. You’ll need to register an account at gunclub.ea.com, and enter in codes that you get with your games. Rewards include early access to games, betas and demos, and access to EA events – not forgetting exclusive downloads such as additional guns for games such as the mentioned Medal of Honor.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam Expansion Pack

Began with a trailer, that stopped half way. Time to find another live feed. What I saw included a helicopter flying through jungle to blow up some poor village. I’ve probably got the wrong end of the stick, but that’s what it looked like. You’ll have to see for yourselves when the trailer hits the web. Coming Winter 2010.

Peter Moore, President EA Sports walks onto the stage with a little cheer from the crowd. Bless.

EA Sports MMA

Began by showing the two biggest and best guys of MMA (whom I don’t know or remember the names of), as being the ones exclusive to EA and as being stuck to the front cover of the box art. The game has been in development for two years and has one of the most intuitive fighting engines.

EA Sports Live Broadcast

Technically a part of MMA, here we get a trailer. The idea is to create your fighter, record your own smacktalk and upload it to the web to be viewed by anyone. You can get your own followers and fans, and the best will be chosen to play live games of MMA over Live Broadcast. Anyone can watch a game being played live over the service, with the idea that your game becomes the next thing instead of TV. Coming 19th October 2010.

EA Sports Active 2

If you think you’d seen enough fitness in your home, think again. EA aren’t happy with being the ‘number one fitness game product on the market’, oh no. They’re bringing Sports Active 2 to PS3 and Xbox 360 as well as the Wii. Run trailer of what all the (already skinny) mum gamers can do with their run/sweat-to-have-fun game. EA are doing away with the belt buckle of the first game and instead strapping you up with some sort of wireless pedometer around your leg, and an actual wireless heart rate monitor around your wrist to get even more accurate input into the game and the see how harsh it needs to treat you. I assume the first test is to see if the pedometer buckle will actually fit around your thigh. And when that’s all over with, drop the controller and get on the computer. All your stats have been automatically uploaded to the web. You can share achievements with friends, keep track of your progress with a nice range of charts and see interesting stats about records you’ve broken in terms of heart rate and speed. Active 2 will use the PlayStation Eye for motion tracking, Kinect for 360 and the same system as Active 1 for Wii.

NFL

This is where almost every live feed went down for me. I spent a few minutes gaining back something visual, to hear something about ‘Game Flow’. Some man comes on to question why everyone is here. Deep stuff. Black studio…. oh. This is The Sims.

The Sims 3

He’s talking about Greek Gods. Something about free will and scientific investigations. Suggesting Sims have more free will than we do. I feel insignificant. This game is obviously what I need to make myself feel whole again. The Sims 3 is coming to Nintendo DS, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii this fall.

Crysis 2.

For some, this is what they’ve been waiting for at E3. Crysis 2 introduces the “freedom of sandox with the intensity of linear play”. The game is set in New York, but unfortunately didn’t really look all that amazing until the cutscene which looked more like Crysis 1. It’s confusing if this game is as visually stunning as it’s supposed to be. It definitely looks very good, but from what I see, it’s nothing in comparison to its predecessor. Let the 3D boasting begin. A whole trailer begins that’s supposedly in 3D but required different glasses to what I have, so I couldn’t see anything special here. All the 3D was in a cutscene and looked more like Crysis 1. If the game can look as good as it did here, I think this could look pretty amazing when it’s finished.

Bulletstorm

Here’s a new game. One that already looks deep into development and looks great graphically. “The player is the conductor” in the ‘Skillshot’ system. ‘What is that?’ you may ask. “You do cool shit so you can do more cool shit.” Nice. This game is Pulp Scifi and boasts over the top everything, from huge punches, to robots needing to recharge, to epic ‘necessary’ explosions, to one mother of a wheel rolling your way. It looks intense and awesome. “Move your shit.” shouts your player as he tears the enemies to pieces in front of him. It all looks amazingly fun to play. Coming 22nd February 2011.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

A Star Wars fanfare comes on. Oh God not again. Please, just stop. “Every player will get his or her own starship”. The audience start mumbling, possibly in slight disbelief. You choose between being a Jedi or Sith and fight it out in some huge battles. After this, we’re to sit back and watch one very long trailer. It’s quite difficult to work out if this is in game graphics put into a cutscene, or totally CG. If it’s in game, which looks feasible, then this is amazing.

Thats EA’s lineup. Quite a selection, and one that’ll be expanded upon come the other presentations. One to watch out for is the continuation of the Dead Space 2 presentation in Sony’s conference. The game looks pretty stunning, especially when ‘Isaac’ was being sucked out through the glass, much like the opposite of a crack in the glass in any of the BioShock games. All in all, this year’s conference was pretty decent. I for one like the look of Need for Speed and Bulletstorm the most. You need to see that giant wheel. It was awesome.

Find all the upcoming conferences, including those from Nintendo and Sony, here.