The 5 E3 2014 Conferences From Worst to Best

4. EA

Changing styles was fairly apparent with EA too, this year. Gone are the sports athletes plopped onstage as cattle. Instead, the spectacle opens up with Star Wars Battlefront, a fan favorite. Not a lot is shown though. That honor is reserved for the highly revised Dragon Age Inquisition, which now sports The Witcher flair. It overshadows a blip from BioWare discussing Mass Effect and a new game. Why?

After intros, the show slumps into EA’s flagships. Dollhouses in The Sims, UFC frat bros use Bruce Lee’s corpse, NHL and NFL; we’ve seen it all before, except a gunship in a golf game. In between, Burnout developer Criterion gets to air footage for an ambitious, all-encompassing driving project. Here’s a big shock: EA execs like cars. Sadly, there’s also yet another unnecessary arena game, called Dawngate.

Mirror’s Edge then displayed less advancement than last year, somehow, but even FIFA does a repeat. All that’s left is Battlefield Hardline. Luckily, it looks stunning, even if it goes way overboard on the chaos.

While Ubisoft is climbing forward, EA is stumbling. Its only real victory is that it’s not afraid to flaunt prototype footage proving their games’ worth early on, but that won’t work every year.

The Good:

• Ambitious Criterion project.

• Battlefield Hardline looks larger than life.

• The only conference to boldly use wireframe prototype builds in action.

The Bad:

• Too much empty glamor.

• Focus on predictable sports or yearly releases and not interesting reveals like BioWare IP or Star Wars Battlefront.

• Dawngate League of Legends clone.

• Very few surprises.