[E3 2012] EA Press Conference Wrap-Up
Like guns? Sports? Other things? You like a lot of stuff! Luckily, EA has stuff. Lots of stuff. Find out more inside.
Published: June 4, 2012
[E3 2012] EA Press Conference Wrap-Up
Like guns? Sports? Other things? Well, two of them were on show at this year's E3 presser.
Electronic Arts is a rather big company, so it's not terribly surprising that they had a lot to cram into the hour or so they held us captive once again at the gorgeous Orpheum Theatre in download Los Angeles. On deck for Redwood Shores' biggest games showcase? Guns, more guns, some sports, a few guns, some social stuff annnnd, oh, right some racing. All in all, it was a solid (if predictable) series of sequels and the usual yearly entries for new sports games.
[Sports]
Those sports games are getting the requisite new coat of paint, but EA singled out Madden 13's new Infinity Engine animation system that uses location-specific data to register hits. The animations are blended in real time so that a defender, say, going for the legs might trip up the ball carrier, while a hard hit to the hands could cause a fumble. It's basic stuff, and if we're being honest, felt a little goofy when slowed down, but in normal speed, seeing a tackle getting broken or a juke through the defense was actually fairly impressive. A new Career Mode melds the previously divorced Superstar and Franchise modes (including online), and throws in the all-important social aspect so your Facebook buddies can finally know how your Madden career is going -- especially since you can play as an actual coach like John Madden himself.
The other kind of football offered some new little wrinkles too. EA's decision last year to surround FIFA with a social platform was apparently a good one, as there were plenty of millions of numbers thrown out about how much the Man U/Manchester City match-up got people all kinds of excited recently. FIFA 13, not surprisingly, is going to continue this trend (the social push is extending to iOS and Android apps, naturally), but interestingly EA is going to let people carry over their leveling progress into the new game. If you spend a bajillion hours getting to level 30, you'll start there the second you fire up the new game. Hooray! Oh, and in case you were waiting with bated breath, know that Lionel Messi is this year's cover athlete, and EA is promising a new dribbling system that allows for more varied options (such as, say, kicking the ball over a player's head) and increased tussles between players when jockeying for position. It was standard stuff, but certainly solid.
The biggest news in sportsland, however, had to be the announcement of where the UFC license is headed now that THQ has had to part with it. If you guessed EA, congrats, you are a smart person that noticed this is a story about the EA press conference. UFC head honcho Dana White took the stage to boast about how big a deal it was (hint: super big). The ink was likely still drying on the deal, so no actual footage was ready, but it's happening, folks.
[Action]
If there's one thing we're learning at E3 so far, it's that this is the year of the sequel. We're hardly complaining, mind you; usually end-of-generation sequels leverage the hardware and build upon the concepts set up earlier in the cycle, so it shouldn't be a huge surprise that in a year of threes, we saw some pretty impressive showcases. Behold, the action!
[Dead Space 3]
Yep, Isaac's back, and he's joined by buddy John Carver for some tag team Necromorph hunting. After crash landing on an icy world that apparently serves as the source of all the Necromorph/Marker chaos, Isaac is separated from Ellie, his companion from Dead Space 2 when the ship breaks up as they're crashing.
Carver serves as the foil for the game's new drop-in/drop-out co-op, though the game is fully playable solo. The tag team dynamic definitely changes things, as seen in the on-stage demo that showed Isaac and John first trying to wrangle what looked like a Necro-infested drill bit as it spun out of control. The ability to use stasis, the time-slowing power of previous games, was a major component as the pair fought off multiple Necromorphs while avoiding the spinning drill and trying to focus fire on the exposed middle.
After whittling down the drill, the demo moved out into the snowy wastes, plunging the pair into a short fight with -- gasp -- other humans! Before long, though, a massive Necromorph creature attacked the entire group, spitting out more creepy crawlies and sucking in anything that wasn't behind cover. Eventually, that included Isaac and where most demos would end, the fade to black was only a precursor to the real reveal: Isaac was literally in the belly of the beast and was sucked into its stomach, the fight continuing in a sea of churning bile. Needless to say, it was an impressive showcase for Visceral Games' baby, and one we can't wait to see more of.
[Battlefield 3 Premium[/game]]
EA and Activision have been in a tug-of-war for a while now over the biggest, baddest first-person shooter (an awkward shout out/congratulation to Vince Zampella and Jason West only made it more obvious). When Activision rolled out Call of Duty Elite, the subscription service that allows automatic delivery of all the expansions for a yearly price, EA was clearly paying attention. Enter Battlefield 3 Premium, a $50 option to do precisely what Elite does. EA's deal with Sony is something of a boon to PlayStation 3 owners, as they'll get access to the new expansions being released later this year a week early. Regardless of platform, Premium subscribers get all four upcoming expansions two weeks earlier.
For that $49.99, early access is granted to the already-released Back to Karkand (a best-of collection of maps from Battlefield 2), plus the upcoming Close Quarters (an infantry-only set of claustrophobic maps), Armored Kill (massive maps populated with plenty of vehicles), Aftermath (a return to post-quake Tehran) and End Game (featuring motorcycles!), adding up to 20 new maps and weapons, exclusive camo, dog tags, four modes and a unique knife. In addition to all that customization and content, Premium members are granted access to double XP weekends and... well, we were getting a serious case of déjà vu. Still, if you're a Battlefield fan, you're probably rushing over to buy the Premium goods, which is timely of you as the package is on sale today for PS3 owners and next week for PC/360 folks.
[Medal of Honor: Warfighter]
Remember all that talk of guns? Yeah, there's a bunch more in Danger Close's modern-day Medal of Honor follow-up. Using the same Frostbite 2 engine that powers Battlefield 3, Warfighter is aimed squarely at an international audience, letting the most elite squads around the globe compete in online matches, all of which are tied directly to real-world hotspots and/or actual missions. That's something that echoes through the single-player game too, as it was written by actual deployed Tier 1 Operators when they were overseas.
The on-stage demo was definitely familiar territory in terms of presentation (read: lots of heavily scripted action scenes), but certainly didn't shy away from showing off some pretty vistas amid all the flying bullets. The Tier 1 crew had to make a Somali beach landing, avoiding sniper fire while making their way into a nearby building. After clearing out enemy forces, the team called in a massive airstrike on the snipers' tower, blanketing the world in dust and creating some cover as the team wormed their way through the rubble.
Interestingly, it looks like Danger Close has implemented a radial menu for things like breaching actions. In the presentation, there were actually multiple options for breaking into a door, though a series of well-placed shotgun blasts took care of things with oomph. Once the door was kicked open, a slow-motion shootout began, and near the bottom of the screen, a tally of the nearby targets was thrown up and updated as each of them was taken out (or wasn't, resulting in a big red X).
Also thrown in for good measure? A robot with some serious firepower. The team turned it loose to scope out the rubble, which it did with aplomb, slipping by a number of flashlight-sporting baddies before emerging near the Tier 1 Operatives' position. Though capable of unloading with plenty of impact, a rocket sadly took the little guy out, and his camera was smashed by a hostile carrying a rock. All in all, an impressive demo with plenty of serious environmental destruction, but that that's what Frostbite 2 does best, so we were glad to see it being put to good use.
[Crysis 3]
Crytek's go-anywhere sandbox supershooter took an interesting shift in tone and location with Crysis 2, heading out of the jungle and into the city, but it looks like the third game will actually fuse the two into something rather remarkable. The idea, says Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli, is to let you explore an urban rainforest -- and that's literal. The domed futurescape New York series lead Prophet is exploring has been completely overtaken by nature. That means skyscrapers are buried in creeping ivy and mosses, forests have cropped up and there are plenty of baddies around.
The demo, while relatively short, was certainly impactful. Prophet was tasked with destroying a heavily guarded dam, and made plenty of use of his various powers, including being able to leap huge heights, toggling armor to lessen the impact of the Cell Corporation grunts firing at him, and of course cloaking to sneak around as needed. The Crysis series has always been good about letting you use Prophet's powers in creative ways, and it looks like this version of New York is quite a bit more open (or at least larger) than the last game, which we're absolutely okay with.
By now, the game's screens have done a pretty good job of reminding us that Prophet isn't just stuck with weapons, and in a slick little sequence as he fights a helicopter, he puts that bow and arrow that was recently revealed to good use, nocking an arrow and sending right into the cockpit of the chopper, causing it to spin out of control and, of course, blow up in a pretty ball of fire. One of the coolest parts of the demo was watching Prophet sail in slow motion out into a massive chasm, detonating the bombs he planted before grabbing a zip line and watching the dam crack and spill a torrent of water out into the city, burying our hero in the process. Needless to say, it was rather pretty, but clearly was running on some pretty beefy PC hardware.
[Racing]
[Need for Speed Most Wanted]
EA might "only" have shown off one racer at this year's showcase, but it was a doozy: Need for Speed Most Wanted might share its name with a certain PS2 entry into the series, but in truth it's basically Burnout Paradise 2 with a Need for Speed, and we couldn't be happier. A massive open-world racer, Criterion showed off a simple little race with plenty of hair-raising turns across a sprawling city (a race that was won at the very last second, mind you), but the real draw was what happened after the race. A group of illegal street racers definitely drew the attention of the cops (some of which were taken out during the race in a very Burnout-esque bit of slo-mo, albeit without the same level of destruction seen in Criterion's baby), and they had to be ditched by tearing around the city.
Not surprisingly, this ended up being just as thrilling as the race itself, as the folks on stage carefully weaved through various back alleys and side streets to try to ditch the fuzz. Eventually, they lead the heat out into a wide open construction area, doubled back and raced up a massive ramp onto a nearby elevated section of freeway as the screen cut to the game's logo. Criterion was careful to point out that the Autolog that powered their last game, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, was alive and well here, tracking even more stats and serving as an ever-present set of challenges between you and all your Friends List buddies. EA's Autolog and Battlelog systems have become remarkably adept at keeping us hooked on trying to top our friends, and when married with an open world -- something Criterion absolutely knows how to do -- it's no exaggeration to say Need for Speed Most Wanted is looking incredibly exciting. Call it whatever you want; as long as we have a new city to explore while outrunning the cops, we're all for it.
And there you have it. Nothing especially surprising, but what was there was certainly nothing to scoff at. Dead Space 3 looks absolutely insane, Most Wanted is going to scratch our itch for another open world racer and should pew-pew and/or sports be your thing, there's plenty of that coming too. Here's hoping we'll get some hands-on time with EA's offerings when the show starts tomorrow.
Like guns? Sports? Other things? Well, two of them were on show at this year's E3 presser.
Electronic Arts is a rather big company, so it's not terribly surprising that they had a lot to cram into the hour or so they held us captive once again at the gorgeous Orpheum Theatre in download Los Angeles. On deck for Redwood Shores' biggest games showcase? Guns, more guns, some sports, a few guns, some social stuff annnnd, oh, right some racing. All in all, it was a solid (if predictable) series of sequels and the usual yearly entries for new sports games.
[Sports]
Those sports games are getting the requisite new coat of paint, but EA singled out Madden 13's new Infinity Engine animation system that uses location-specific data to register hits. The animations are blended in real time so that a defender, say, going for the legs might trip up the ball carrier, while a hard hit to the hands could cause a fumble. It's basic stuff, and if we're being honest, felt a little goofy when slowed down, but in normal speed, seeing a tackle getting broken or a juke through the defense was actually fairly impressive. A new Career Mode melds the previously divorced Superstar and Franchise modes (including online), and throws in the all-important social aspect so your Facebook buddies can finally know how your Madden career is going -- especially since you can play as an actual coach like John Madden himself.
The other kind of football offered some new little wrinkles too. EA's decision last year to surround FIFA with a social platform was apparently a good one, as there were plenty of millions of numbers thrown out about how much the Man U/Manchester City match-up got people all kinds of excited recently. FIFA 13, not surprisingly, is going to continue this trend (the social push is extending to iOS and Android apps, naturally), but interestingly EA is going to let people carry over their leveling progress into the new game. If you spend a bajillion hours getting to level 30, you'll start there the second you fire up the new game. Hooray! Oh, and in case you were waiting with bated breath, know that Lionel Messi is this year's cover athlete, and EA is promising a new dribbling system that allows for more varied options (such as, say, kicking the ball over a player's head) and increased tussles between players when jockeying for position. It was standard stuff, but certainly solid.
The biggest news in sportsland, however, had to be the announcement of where the UFC license is headed now that THQ has had to part with it. If you guessed EA, congrats, you are a smart person that noticed this is a story about the EA press conference. UFC head honcho Dana White took the stage to boast about how big a deal it was (hint: super big). The ink was likely still drying on the deal, so no actual footage was ready, but it's happening, folks.
[Action]
If there's one thing we're learning at E3 so far, it's that this is the year of the sequel. We're hardly complaining, mind you; usually end-of-generation sequels leverage the hardware and build upon the concepts set up earlier in the cycle, so it shouldn't be a huge surprise that in a year of threes, we saw some pretty impressive showcases. Behold, the action!
[Dead Space 3]
Yep, Isaac's back, and he's joined by buddy John Carver for some tag team Necromorph hunting. After crash landing on an icy world that apparently serves as the source of all the Necromorph/Marker chaos, Isaac is separated from Ellie, his companion from Dead Space 2 when the ship breaks up as they're crashing.
Carver serves as the foil for the game's new drop-in/drop-out co-op, though the game is fully playable solo. The tag team dynamic definitely changes things, as seen in the on-stage demo that showed Isaac and John first trying to wrangle what looked like a Necro-infested drill bit as it spun out of control. The ability to use stasis, the time-slowing power of previous games, was a major component as the pair fought off multiple Necromorphs while avoiding the spinning drill and trying to focus fire on the exposed middle.
After whittling down the drill, the demo moved out into the snowy wastes, plunging the pair into a short fight with -- gasp -- other humans! Before long, though, a massive Necromorph creature attacked the entire group, spitting out more creepy crawlies and sucking in anything that wasn't behind cover. Eventually, that included Isaac and where most demos would end, the fade to black was only a precursor to the real reveal: Isaac was literally in the belly of the beast and was sucked into its stomach, the fight continuing in a sea of churning bile. Needless to say, it was an impressive showcase for Visceral Games' baby, and one we can't wait to see more of.
[Battlefield 3 Premium[/game]]
EA and Activision have been in a tug-of-war for a while now over the biggest, baddest first-person shooter (an awkward shout out/congratulation to Vince Zampella and Jason West only made it more obvious). When Activision rolled out Call of Duty Elite, the subscription service that allows automatic delivery of all the expansions for a yearly price, EA was clearly paying attention. Enter Battlefield 3 Premium, a $50 option to do precisely what Elite does. EA's deal with Sony is something of a boon to PlayStation 3 owners, as they'll get access to the new expansions being released later this year a week early. Regardless of platform, Premium subscribers get all four upcoming expansions two weeks earlier.
For that $49.99, early access is granted to the already-released Back to Karkand (a best-of collection of maps from Battlefield 2), plus the upcoming Close Quarters (an infantry-only set of claustrophobic maps), Armored Kill (massive maps populated with plenty of vehicles), Aftermath (a return to post-quake Tehran) and End Game (featuring motorcycles!), adding up to 20 new maps and weapons, exclusive camo, dog tags, four modes and a unique knife. In addition to all that customization and content, Premium members are granted access to double XP weekends and... well, we were getting a serious case of déjà vu. Still, if you're a Battlefield fan, you're probably rushing over to buy the Premium goods, which is timely of you as the package is on sale today for PS3 owners and next week for PC/360 folks.
[Medal of Honor: Warfighter]
Remember all that talk of guns? Yeah, there's a bunch more in Danger Close's modern-day Medal of Honor follow-up. Using the same Frostbite 2 engine that powers Battlefield 3, Warfighter is aimed squarely at an international audience, letting the most elite squads around the globe compete in online matches, all of which are tied directly to real-world hotspots and/or actual missions. That's something that echoes through the single-player game too, as it was written by actual deployed Tier 1 Operators when they were overseas.
The on-stage demo was definitely familiar territory in terms of presentation (read: lots of heavily scripted action scenes), but certainly didn't shy away from showing off some pretty vistas amid all the flying bullets. The Tier 1 crew had to make a Somali beach landing, avoiding sniper fire while making their way into a nearby building. After clearing out enemy forces, the team called in a massive airstrike on the snipers' tower, blanketing the world in dust and creating some cover as the team wormed their way through the rubble.
Interestingly, it looks like Danger Close has implemented a radial menu for things like breaching actions. In the presentation, there were actually multiple options for breaking into a door, though a series of well-placed shotgun blasts took care of things with oomph. Once the door was kicked open, a slow-motion shootout began, and near the bottom of the screen, a tally of the nearby targets was thrown up and updated as each of them was taken out (or wasn't, resulting in a big red X).
Also thrown in for good measure? A robot with some serious firepower. The team turned it loose to scope out the rubble, which it did with aplomb, slipping by a number of flashlight-sporting baddies before emerging near the Tier 1 Operatives' position. Though capable of unloading with plenty of impact, a rocket sadly took the little guy out, and his camera was smashed by a hostile carrying a rock. All in all, an impressive demo with plenty of serious environmental destruction, but that that's what Frostbite 2 does best, so we were glad to see it being put to good use.
[Crysis 3]
Crytek's go-anywhere sandbox supershooter took an interesting shift in tone and location with Crysis 2, heading out of the jungle and into the city, but it looks like the third game will actually fuse the two into something rather remarkable. The idea, says Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli, is to let you explore an urban rainforest -- and that's literal. The domed futurescape New York series lead Prophet is exploring has been completely overtaken by nature. That means skyscrapers are buried in creeping ivy and mosses, forests have cropped up and there are plenty of baddies around.
The demo, while relatively short, was certainly impactful. Prophet was tasked with destroying a heavily guarded dam, and made plenty of use of his various powers, including being able to leap huge heights, toggling armor to lessen the impact of the Cell Corporation grunts firing at him, and of course cloaking to sneak around as needed. The Crysis series has always been good about letting you use Prophet's powers in creative ways, and it looks like this version of New York is quite a bit more open (or at least larger) than the last game, which we're absolutely okay with.
By now, the game's screens have done a pretty good job of reminding us that Prophet isn't just stuck with weapons, and in a slick little sequence as he fights a helicopter, he puts that bow and arrow that was recently revealed to good use, nocking an arrow and sending right into the cockpit of the chopper, causing it to spin out of control and, of course, blow up in a pretty ball of fire. One of the coolest parts of the demo was watching Prophet sail in slow motion out into a massive chasm, detonating the bombs he planted before grabbing a zip line and watching the dam crack and spill a torrent of water out into the city, burying our hero in the process. Needless to say, it was rather pretty, but clearly was running on some pretty beefy PC hardware.
[Racing]
[Need for Speed Most Wanted]
EA might "only" have shown off one racer at this year's showcase, but it was a doozy: Need for Speed Most Wanted might share its name with a certain PS2 entry into the series, but in truth it's basically Burnout Paradise 2 with a Need for Speed, and we couldn't be happier. A massive open-world racer, Criterion showed off a simple little race with plenty of hair-raising turns across a sprawling city (a race that was won at the very last second, mind you), but the real draw was what happened after the race. A group of illegal street racers definitely drew the attention of the cops (some of which were taken out during the race in a very Burnout-esque bit of slo-mo, albeit without the same level of destruction seen in Criterion's baby), and they had to be ditched by tearing around the city.
Not surprisingly, this ended up being just as thrilling as the race itself, as the folks on stage carefully weaved through various back alleys and side streets to try to ditch the fuzz. Eventually, they lead the heat out into a wide open construction area, doubled back and raced up a massive ramp onto a nearby elevated section of freeway as the screen cut to the game's logo. Criterion was careful to point out that the Autolog that powered their last game, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, was alive and well here, tracking even more stats and serving as an ever-present set of challenges between you and all your Friends List buddies. EA's Autolog and Battlelog systems have become remarkably adept at keeping us hooked on trying to top our friends, and when married with an open world -- something Criterion absolutely knows how to do -- it's no exaggeration to say Need for Speed Most Wanted is looking incredibly exciting. Call it whatever you want; as long as we have a new city to explore while outrunning the cops, we're all for it.
And there you have it. Nothing especially surprising, but what was there was certainly nothing to scoff at. Dead Space 3 looks absolutely insane, Most Wanted is going to scratch our itch for another open world racer and should pew-pew and/or sports be your thing, there's plenty of that coming too. Here's hoping we'll get some hands-on time with EA's offerings when the show starts tomorrow.
