E3 2012: Electronic Arts
The EA press conference came and went pretty quickly. 10 games previewed by 10 developers. A lot of established titles and nothing really new or exciting to show for. There isn’t a real gamble and with that there is no real pay off. I think it’s a missed opportunity when you have that many eyes on your company to not show anything unique or interesting. For the most part, you already know if you will like or not like one of the games shown because you’ve had experience with it’s predecessor. That being said, it looks like they may have dropped the ball with Dead Space by introducing co-op. Sure, it’s a neat feature on the checklist, but it kills the atmosphere of the game and turns it into another cover-based shooter clone.
The only other mentionable before I get to the trailers, is that Star Wars: The Old Republic is free to play up to level 15 in July. I’m not sure if I will ever give it a go, but if you were on the fence it’s the best opportunity to try it out.
I guess the sequel I’m looking forward to the most is Sim City. It looks very polished and pretty. They mentioned that it will be a connected multi-player game with the world constantly changing and offering new challenges to your game. A smart way to keep the game fresh since, from my experience, after the initial build it can get a little boring and tedious.
The one FPS that looks like I would really like to play (but probably won’t play). Which is not knock to the game, just that I haven’t been intrigued by the warfare FPS in a long time. That being said this gameplay trailer looks really good. The Frostbite engine really adds a nice level of realism. Not sure how it compares to the other ones out there in this genre but normally I feel underwhelmed and this did look entertaining at least.
I feel like showing this simply because I really love the CryEngine. I love the environment of the “urban jungle”. However, after Crysis 2, I’m not enthusiastic about this. Looks about more of the same, all I can hope is they even out the kinks in the PC port because it was horribly done last time around.
