Where do I start with EA’s E3 conference? The abysmal failure that is Gears of Dead Space 3? Battlefield 3 Premium and the power of greed? Or better yet, I could talk about Star Wars: The Old Republic’s lackluster trailer! I’m tired of being the angry cynic though, so I’ll discuss what actually impressed me!
For starters, I was really looking forward to SimCity and while the presentation was lacking and even though SimCity Social looks stupid, the gameplay that they did show impressed me. From what was shown, they’re really improving the overall look this time around both visually and with gameplay. The new engine looked like it would allow the city to actually like a city with a constantly moving population. The game will also feature a substantial multiplayer component where people will be able to team and run cities as a group. Despite these new components, any SimCity fan knows that the most exciting thing about these games is the disasters that you can summon on your city. In that point, SimCity will not disappoint as it features everything from town riots to tornadoes to large dinosaurs rampaging through your innocent city.
Crytek came on board to showcase their upcoming sequel, Crysis 3 and I was thoroughly impressed by it. For one, it has a real health system and not regenerating health. Besides that though, the game looks absolutely gorgeous and both the sound design and visuals really blew me away. I just wished they showed off the different gameplay styles like stealth rather than just pure action.
While I joked about SWTOR’s lack of stage time, they did show off some new features that look cool. While the next few patches will be adding some new ops, including one which looks very Tron inspired. The addition that I’m most excited for is quite simple-HK-47 as companion. If that doesn’t get you excited, please hand me your “KOTOR fan badge” and leave the premise immediately!
Now for my biggest surprise of the conference, Medal of Honor: Warfighter or what I like to call “The military shooter that looks good unlike Black Ops 2” I’m one of the few who enjoyed the original and Warfighter looks phenomenal. Much like Crysis, the game blew me away with both its visuals and sound design. These come from the Frostbyte 2 engine, which was used to power last year’s Battlefield 3. Unlike the Black Ops 2 demo, Warfighter actually showed off some legitimate gameplay and-gasp- I could understand what people were saying!
In closing, while it featured its own share of massive failures-Dead Space 3, EA had a good conference because they actually actually showed substantial gameplay instead of quick demos and pointless social addons like Microsoft did for theirs.
I cannot wait for Dead Space 3. Favorite franchise, and even though I had my doubts about the cover system, everything about it looks spectactular.
The gameplay looks fine but the main complaint is that it doesn’t look like Dead Space. The strategic dismemberment looks like it was thrown out the window.