EA’s conference was good, but a bit wishy washy with their EA Sports games scattered within, but there were lots of awesome new announcements for all gamers! 

 

 

The stream started with a high hitter of Mass Effect gameplay, some cowboy music, the new game is dubbed simply Mass Effect: Andromeda with a release of Holiday 2016

Andrew Wilson, the CEO of EA joined the stage, and his monologue was about the world being a better place when people play. So here we go, more than a dozen new experiences he said – one of which is unlike any other game we’ve seen.

Marcus Nilsson, the executive producer on the new Need For Speed joined the stage now, the opening first announced the full name for the game, and it’s simply just Need for Speed, it certainly seems like a spiritual successor to Underground, they mentioned it is inspired from Underground and Carbon, your job is to build reputation, and become the ultimate icon. He expands on the map size and says how it’s twice the size of rivals. Following a flurry of different concept art – it shows the depth of customisation in the game.

After they introduced the customisation, my jaw dropped, as I honestly believed it was a live action skit like they’ve done in earlier entries. I’m getting this.

After the customisation, they showed a race, the camera angles featured in the race were awesome and made the car, and environments look amazing.

Star wars The Old Republic was up next,

Jeff Hickman the Studio general manager at EA took to stage, and announced an expansion for the game, dubbed Knights of the Fallen Empire – and took onboard fan feedback as he mentioned we wanted more story, and it will be free ‘to all our subscribers’

I have no idea what this subscription is, could someone clarify?

After featured a cinematic video, with next to no gameplay, announcing a larger trailer online, but here’s the E3 cut that featured in the conference.

Just like Microsoft they were wasting no time, as I was having trouble keeping up with it all.

It seems that EA has figured out all the hate, so they are doing their best to take on all criticism and suggestions. As each presentation mentioned about fan feedback in one way or another.

 

Unravel was one of the original IP’s announced, and featuring a cute little red character, who is made of Yarn, suitable called ‘Yarnie’

It’s a physics/puzzle type of game, to get across a large area, you can simply use your yarn to swing across, or grab a bird to get to the next area.

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Garden Warfare featured next, and like last year it was a crazy intro. There was a super zombie that came running on stage, and started dancing and pointing at the crowd.

They mentioned they’ve sold 6 million+ copies which is pretty impressive – we got a live gameplay demo, where the roles have been switched, and you are playing the zombies defending your base from plants the first player we saw was a small zombie, fast and absolutely crazy, who got a few laughs from the crowd.

You are able to transfer your characters from the previous game, with a release date of Spring 2016 on PS4, Xbox and PC with free content updates to keep ‘Zomburbia’ the zombies home town alive and kicking.

They certainly knew that Star was anticipated, as every 5 minutes they had a pop up that featured ‘Star Wars: Battlefront in 35 minutes’

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NBA 16 had a presentation now, and first of featured a mobile app, which is a scanner for you. Rather than the simple photo and mapping it to a body, which other games use, this uses a phone and will be releasing just before the game so it’s ready for when it releases. There was a fair amount of gameplay too, and the normal rabble about them making it so much better technically, as they do every year. But watching the gameplay, you’ll see how smooth the animations really are. They were really nice.

Some improvements they mentioned gameplay wise, is that you can now control when you throw the ball, holding down the throw button to time the throw, some things were pretty interesting.

 

Mobile games were spoken about next, and as I’m sure everyone was happy to hear, that the speaker labeled it as ‘the single biggest gaming platform’

There was another Star wars game announced, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes – this game spans the entire Star Wars universe, all stories too,

Minions Paradise, announced a while ago was spoken about now, and actually got more applause that the Star Wars game.

There was a CG trailer, which was as amusing as you’d think it would be, after this is showed some gameplay, it seems where you create your own island, create activities for them, weapons, and send them out for tasks. I was expecting them to announce it to be free to play, but they didn’t.

Fifa 16 next, and a legacy video for Pele, who soon after joined the stage. after a somewhat mundane story about how Soccer/Football is a beautiful game. After a 8 minute interview full of football stories, Fifa takes the main screen to describe ‘moments of magic’ and the ability to compete at a higher level. This is a training mode with on-screen prompts to help you play.

Some thing else, as announced earlier in this week was that there will be Women’s teams which is a new addition for the series, and a welcome on at that.

What followed was a nice trailer, here it is:

 

Mirrors Edge was next, welcomed with an applause, nothing compared to what Star Wars had, however, obviously.

They mentioned the antagonist of the game is Gabriel Kruger if I heard it correctly. She outlined the activities you can play, like time trials, races and a few others.

I’ve never played the first, and even watching the gameplay made me feel disoriented at times, the screen just flipping upside down, I noticed my head actually looking up and away from the screen, brilliantly, we got a release date for the game, and it’s coming out on February 23rd 2016.

NFL took the main screen, I think it would’ve been nicer to keep all the EA sports games together though. They spoke about the fantasy football feature in the game, along with new gameplay features like the different types of catching, an aggressive, RAC (run-and-catch) and a safer option, along the ability to play against the receiver and just a run for the ball.

Peter Moore joined the stage once again, to introduce the Star Wars: Battlefront, and after talking about the possibilities of the future, once of which he mentioned was being VR…

After I got distracted, and missed the lady’s monologue coming back they introduced some gameplay captured on the PS4 which was absolutely beautiful. Something I noticed which was rather odd, rather than looking through your scope, instead it covers the screen and blacks everything else out.

There is also a third person mode, it’s not long before you jump into an Imperial walker, then jump into a spaceship. The demo wasn’t necessarily rushed, but it seemed like they were trying to cram a much as possible into their large demo,Take a look at the video below, and you’ll know what I mean.

Something rather nice is that it seems you can switch between first and third person mode on the fly, toward the end you switched into Luke Skywalker to fight Darth Vader, as they clash it’s the end.

Beautifully, again, we got a release date, and it’s November 17th, this year!

For everything EA, head to http://livetoplay.ea.com/