E3 2011: EA

EA knows what we want. We want us some Mass Effect 3. Right away. We want a trailer showing the Earth devastated, attacked by hundreds of Reapers. And then we want a demo, where Shepard takes on a Reaper. From behind a mounted turret. And then they tell us we have to wait until March 6th, 2012. WHYYYY.

Then they VERY briefly talked about their new Steam-like download service called Origin, and kept talking about all the games integrated with it throughout the show, but neglected to really say anything about the service. I haven't checked it out myself yet, but from what I can tell they're essentially trying to compete with Steam, just with EA titles. Good luck guys.

Need for Speed: The Run will take you in a race across the country, something called autolog keeps track of all of your and your friends' stats, and there will be out of car action sequences for the first time. The demo looked fine, though to me it seemed like any other racing game, just with some quicktime events for those out of car moments. But then again, I'm not a racing fan.

Star Wars The Old Republic is taking far too long to get here. They've made a lot of promises for an MMO, especially while looking like many other MMOs in terms of gameplay. So this guy comes out and essentially says "We're working really hard on it, I'm not going to try to convince you to play it, just play it and enjoy it." At which point I figure we'll get some sort of demo of somebody playing it....nope. Literally just a compilation/rehash of all of their brilliant but still just CG trailers.

Then they start pumping in smoke over the screen, which is showing a giant mountain, and excitement is building and everyone wonders what the hell is going on and then they show...SSX. Much like my reaction to Twisted Metal last year, SSX has been around for a long time, and despite how excited everyone sounds for it, I really just don't care. I swear they nearly wet themselves talking about how they used data from NASA so you can snowboard down actual mountains. Ah well.

Oop, here's EA Sports again, time for another map. Takeaway from the next 10 minutes: FIFA 11 was massively popular, FIFA 12 is better and will also be massively popular, football players like money to show up at a conference, and Madden 12 will also be massively popular.

Oh no. Oh no no. The Sims is coming to facebook. Because more people needed to be addicted to facebook. Farmville was bad enough. And now the Sims? Oh dear god.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning sounds like it should be one of the best games ever made. Designed by Morrowind and Oblivion designer Ken Rolston, with artistic direction from Todd McFarlane, and a story by acclaimed author R.A. Salvatore, this game could come from out of nowhere and take the RPG crown...if it weren't for Skyrim of course. But still, I remain a little skeptical from what I've seen of the gameplay. It's not that it looks bad, it just doesn't look like anything new. In fact it kind of reminded me of Fable in many ways. So, we'll see.

Then Insomniac comes out, makers of Ratchet and Clank and Resistance, and announces the multiplatform Overstrike, about a team of 4 misfits with a bunch of cool tech and weapons at their disposal causing as much havoc as possible. No gameplay, but the trailer made it look fun (if a bit of a slant on Borderlands' style).

Battlefield 3 seems to have been capturing everyone's attention since gameplay footage was released and promised one of the best looking games this generation thanks to the Frostbite 2 engine. Is there enough here to take the crown from Call of Duty? It certainly looks that way. Destructable environments, sweeping vistas, tight mechanics, all the elements are there for a great game. And to add icing to the cake, while Activision just announced a new service for hardcore Call of Duty players that does special stat tracking and other things I cared nothing about that will cost some unannounced monthly payment, Battlefield is going to be offering what sounds like the exact same features for absolutely free. And with that they launch into the demo...and it's surprisingly underwhelming. It's a loooong, very drawn out tank battle. And while it shows off the graphical impressiveness quite wonderfully, it leaves something to be desired gameplay-wise. Still, no doubt this will be a big contender, especially coming out before Call of Duty on October 25th.

And that's EA!