Making the Grade – Review of E3's EA Game Press Conference
EA Games opened up with the new Plants vs. Zombie’s Garden Warfare. The game play is quite an update from the well known tower-defense style game. The game allows the player to be the plants, and freely move around and attack the zombies. The game is multi-player, and just reminded me of a cutesy version of Call of Duty, is that weird?
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Star Wars: Battlefront 3 –– awesome teaser, and definitely just one of those games that everyone in the crowd seems to be looking forward to. It’s another long awaited game, and EA seems to be doing it great justice for the fans. Many people (including myself) were afraid that after LucasArts went Disney, we would never see this game ever, and it’s coming back with a vengeance. I even think I heard a few people crying in the crowd while watching the conference.
Dragon Age: Inquisition –– hopefully will be better than number 2. However from what it seems EA shows us that Dragon Age has learned from their mistakes from Dragon Age 2, and are really turning it around and making it Inquisition what everyone wanted from Dragon Age 2.
Mirror’s Edge 2 (yes…awesome looking) this is one of the games that I’ve always loved, and to even see a teaser trailer for it brings a tear to my eye. I loved the first one and have been waiting for this second one. There is not much more to it; they really only showed the trailer, but this is very hopefully.
Other games that were announced were: NBA Live 14, Madden NFL 25 (Adrian Peterson making the cover), EA Sport’s UFC, and Need for Speed: Rivals. EA brought a new game to the conference called TitanFall, which is set to come out spring 2014. The game is supposes to be “a multiplayer world with a single player experience”. There wasn’t much about the game except it’s about bringing machine and human interaction together as one. Battlefield 4 was also announced, and the big deal for this one is the revival of “Commander Mode.”
There are not a lot of new games except for Titanfall, however it does not really stand up to any of the other games. EA really surprised me with Star Wars Battlefronts 3 and Mirror’s Edge 2.
Overall I would give the press conference a grade of “B. “
Signing out.
I’m not sure what to expect from Battlefront 3. It seems like it could go any number of ways. I remember in previous Battlefronts that there was a nice selection of characters, I hope that is still the case.
One of the big issues for me from Dragon Age 2 was the fact that none of your “decisions” did anything. You couldn’t save anybody or damn anyone new/different. The ending was the same and the events were the same. Nothing you did had any feeling of “point or direction”. So I’m hoping that’s different. It will be interesting to see what they do.
Mirror’s Edge had an pretty sweet idea, though I found it to be poorly executed. For a video game about “free running” I found it horribly limiting and linear. They really needed to add a sand box environment to the game. Let you go from point A to point B any way you choose. Also, their quick time events were poorly designed and were the only aspect of the game that gave me any kind of contest. I’m glad to see that they are picking it back up. The art was very well done… I just hope the mechanics and the world itself is developed a bit better the second time around.