EA
EA, home of sports and The Sims and sometimes, even sports sims. EA has proven itself to be a very capable developer while earning a bit of a reputation for buying up smaller companies to increase its scope. With a plethora of titles available, we were excited to see what they had to offer for E3 2014.
Chaz: EA seemed to just be all over the place. Right off the bat, why are we talking about UFC? The game looks great, I get it. People like sports games and the love the UFC, I get that too. But this game comes out next week. Why are we giving valuable time to this other than the fact that EA doesn’t have anything to show that’s not coming out next year? All of their sports games look great, don’t get me wrong. I’m going to love playing Madden, but in a press conference that was woefully short of actual gameplay, this seemed a strange place to set the anchor.
Chad: Well, they did show Battlefield and Dragon Age gameplay, but EA took a different direction with their press conferences. They wanted to show more about the team and the people behind the scenes, but that really just took me out of it. I didn’t really care about their press conference that much. The sports games look interesting, and the Dragon Age stuff was ok, but nothing here was really all that interesting. There just wasn’t anything here that I’m going to remember at the end of the day.
Chaz: You’re absolutely right. The documentary stuff was really cool, and I like watching that, but E3 isn’t the time. They showed a mini documentary on Battlefront because I guess they don’t have anything else to show. That’s ok, but it seemed like a bad way to start off without anything concrete. They also showed documentary footage on their new MOBA Dawngate, but I simply do not care about a new MOBA right now. Mirror’s Edge 2 – they tried to show gameplay. God bless them, they tried, but everything they showed was so early in development that it’s almost useless.
Chad: They even announced the game last year, so you think they’d have something more concrete. We know what Faith looks like, and it’s great to see it’s been improved a bit, but that’s not going to get me excited. I wasn’t a huge fan of the first one anyways.
Chaz: And you’re wrong for that
Chad: Still, this wasn’t enough to really make me feel like I needed it in my life.
FINAL GRADE
Chaz: Simply put, I did not like EA’s conference. I like the tech stuff, I like the sports stuff, but I didn’t walk away thinking “wow.” Hell, I didn’t walk away thinking much of anything. It was by and large a forgettable conference. C-.
Chad: It just was. There’s nothing here I’m going to remember really. Other conferences showed a bit of Dragon Age and the only other game I really really cared about was NHL. I don’t care about MOBAs, Mirror’s Edge 2 looked good and Battlefield: Hardline seems interesting, but they simply needed to show more of the games. C-.
Next up: Nintendo…