Team Gaming Update Diary -- E3 Day 0+2 Part 2 EA Presser
Regular readers here at Gaming Update will be familiar with the extreme efforts that we go to whenever there is a major gaming event to provide coverage, with our top-notch editors and subeditors dispatching a hand-picked team of skilled news hounds with the support of Interns, and words of encouragement that even under the most stressful of times seem to have the desired effect: "Go out there and get the good stuff, or don't bother showing up at the office next week!"
It has become something of a tradition here at GU to share with you the observations and behind the scenes experiences of the GU Event Team in the form of irregular diary updates published to the site -- so to maintain that tradition, we present to you the Team Gaming Update Unofficial Diary for E3 2011!
E3 Day 0+2 -- 6th June 2011
Los Angeles has a very extensive public transportation system that includes buses, trains, trams, and even a subway system -- the latter coming as something of a surprise! The most efficient and economical way to make use of it is to purchase a day-pass that allows you to use the entire system as often as you want for that day -- for the bargain price of just $6. So that was what we decided to do in order to get to the different pressers... You are probably laughing right about now, right?The thing about public transportation is that getting from Point A to Point B invariably requires you to pass through Points C, D, E, F and G! At least that is how it looked on the transit map, which was colour-coded and numbered, and requires full certification as an ordnance specialist in the National Mapping Authority and... Well... We are reasonably certain that we could have gotten to where we needed to go by simply taking a series of buses, but what we ended up doing was using the central hub stations for the downtown area as our bounce-point, and so we returned to them and then departed on whatever conveyance would get us to where we needed to be next. Not the most efficient way to do it, but it turns out that we were not the only ones doing it.
The upshot of this is that we arrived at the EA Presser on time, but barely made it into the Ubisoft one before it began and, luckily, it began late, so we were on time (chuckle). But we are getting ahead of the story...
3 - 6- 12
The presser began with a seriously cool reveal of Mass Effect 3, with a particular focus on Shepard's new omni-blade, and the reassurance that all of the decisions that we made in the previous games will indeed carry forward with us.
The demo portion of the event jumped right into a gritty reveal of the combat in the game -- including some up-close-and-personal omni-blade action woot! After some shooting and some slicing, Shepard targets the enemy base and calls down a bombing run from the Normandy -- and ends up blasted onto his buttocks in a smoking pile because he was too close to the blast -- and awakening a live Reaper!
What ensues is a clear case of Run Away! Run Away! Only with a mounted heavy gun that he uses to fire at the Reaper as they run away. In addition to the shooting Shepard calls down another orbital strike from the Normandy, which appears to do the trick but no, it was only stunned so back it comes, and the chase is on -- and over because that is where the demo ends!
That EA believes that ME3 will be the best game in the series says a lot -- and from what we can tell from the demo at the presser and later the additional footage we saw at the show, they are right!
It's the Pedal on the Right!
What followed next was Need for Speed: The Run -- a no holds barred road race from San Francisco to New York City -- A wild, illegal, and popular cross-country car race is organized, and the eccentric entrants will do anything to win, including low-down, dirty tricks. You are racer J.J. McClure, and you'll face competition from Captain Chaos, Jamie Blake, and Doctor Nikolas Van Helsing who will. . . Wait. . . D'oh! That's the plot to the movie Canon Ball Run! I knew this sounded familiar!
OK, so they did not exactly have to work very hard to come up with the underlying premise for the game, but hey, they did not have Autolog in Canon Ball Run! And for the first time ever players get to leave their car and do some foot stuff, like you know, run from the cops, buy gas and donuts, that sort of thing.
What it is we think, is that the blokes over at Black Box think they are the only ones who remember 1981... But no, lots of us do. You see, it was the 60's you don't remember if you were actually there, not the 80's -- we're just saying.
Now, the action demo for the game that followed looked very promising -- you are racing through the city streets of Chicago because, you know, Illinois doesn't have an Interstate Highway with a loop that allows you to bypass it on your way to New York City, eh? And as you race through the streets some hitmen T-Bone you car, disabling it, and then chase you on foot, with a chopper too, shooting at you as you jump from building rooftop to building rooftop... And then you steal a cop car! Really! Truly!
But then as you rip down the road back comes the chopper and it is shooting at you. There is a high-energy adrenalin-filled chase before yes! You total the cop car and barely miss getting squished by a train. Man, you suck at this! Seriously, just kidding... Yeah, it looks like it will be a lot of fun!
Star Wars: The Old Republic
You would have to be living in a cave not to have heard of ToR -- the graphics are top-notch, the game world is incredible, the story is intense, and who doesn't want to wade into a huge Jedi vs. Dark Jedi battle royale?!
Now I know you are going to say -- but Jethro, it is Star Wars! Why does it look like Final Fantasy XVXCIII?! Well, first, don't call me Jethro! And second, I just do not know, but yeah, it sort of does...
But we can overlook that, right? Because even if the female Jedi are sort of tarted-up, and the male Jedi look, well, too cute, after all, it is a Star Wars MMO! How cool is that? Very cool! The Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire will go toe-to-toe, you will choose your side, and you will live with the consequences! Yes!
If you are not aware, the story in ToR takes place roughly 300 years after the events in the single player games, and 3,500 years before the events from the movies -- in an era when there were lots of Sith man, and lots of Jedi!
In the end it turns out that the Jedi are largely responsible for the success of the Sith following the end of the Great Galactic War, and it does not help that the Jedi are unsure of the direction that they are supposed to take or the role they are supposed to play in the new detente that exists between most of the sides in the conflict.
From what we saw in the presser, at PAX East, and at E3, this is shaping up to be an amazing game though, so we will just have to take it all in stride.
Snowy, Kicky,
A brief commercial for the new SSX -- you know, the upcoming sequel to only the most popular snowboarding game ever -- that is not really a sequel because instead of boarding the circuit for mad crazy points you are boarding massive and famous mountains but not for massive and crazy points...
The whole point to that -- as the EA Sports spokesman says -- is for gamers to defy reality, romp through the massive open world of the game, and enjoy the re-invention of this classic sports franchise. Yeah! The three game play modes -- Race It, Trick It, and Survive It -- are set to challenge gamers in ways that they say have never been available before.
The game includes some familiar characters from the previous games as well as some new ones, and EA has gone in big for linking the game to its social networking page on Facebook, but it was the hand's on demo at the show that really made all the difference and, no surprise, changed the minds of a lot of the haters who really wanted the series to stick with its established roots. But you will have to wait until January 2012 to get your hands on this one, sigh.
Next up was FIFA 12, a game that is part of a franchise that has in the past few years migrated on to pretty much every platform you can game on, from PC to console, hand-held to mobile phone. There is no question that it is one of the two most popular football games ever and maybe the most popular.
FIFA 12 is supposed to be the most realistic and the most intense game in the series to date, from its improved defensive game to more realistic ball handling, and the Player Impact Engine, which applies real-world physics to the game like never before.
It is fair to say that the level of realism has reached the point at which we might start calling it a Soccer Simulator rather than a Soccer Game, and the commercial for the game reinforces that position, with real world players and coaches likening it to an official training aid in which they can research the players from the opposing team because they are rendered so realistically in the game. Plus rap and rock stars like it, so we should too... Errr... Um, yeah.
The bigger news though was the announcement of the expanded EA Sports Football Club, which is part social experiences, part online gaming league, and part real life, as it pulls in statistics, events, and actual games from the real leagues into the fantasy ones!
Finally out of the tunnel and onto the field is Madden NFL 12 -- only the most amazingly complex and realistic American Football Game ever! See how we did that? We were just talking about European Football, which in the USA they call Soccer, and then we transitioned to Football and to keep you from being confused -- not that you would be or anything -- we said "American Football" to clue you in, because hey, we have your back mates!
We don't know that we would consider Madden to be as technically realistic as the FIFA games, but in its way it has as much realism as it needs, which is one of the reasons why gamers are so passionate about it, and why they love to take their favorite team and play it through and, hopefully, into the Super Bowl!
At the presser they had three real football players participate in the presentation -- and even though you might say it was a bit over-the-top, we swear that the hair on our arms stood on end! Yeah, it was pretty cool, and it certainly focused our attention on the philosophy of the game that was being presented. Victory is it, second place is first loser, and just wow.
Touching upon the new defensive and offensive systems, and the process of building dynasties in the game, which is intended to be the most complete and authentic NFL game experience ever. Did we mention that it is fully Kinect aware? Yes it is!
The Rest of the Bag
Its opening gambit was a slam on Farmville -- for good reason -- as this new Sims game is a social game on Facebook. You did not read that wrong -- not only does it have the traditional Sims flavor and game elements, but it ties them into the social network of Facebook, which means when your Sim screws up or it triumphs, all of your mates get to read about it on your wall!
The motto for the game is "Play with Life" and its plan is to make that possible -- your Sim and someone else's Sim in the same Sim Space, at the Same Sim Time means that you will actually be relating together via the Facebook App!
A lot of gamers believe it is the next logical step for the title, though we will not be surprised if it ends up being making inroads into popular culture on TV -- we are just waiting for Jay Leno to joke about it, that is all we are saying.
Kurt Schiling's 38 Studios brought its upcoming game [bKingdoms of Amalur: ]Reckoning[/b] to the stage at this point, a game that shapes up to be an old-school RPG with a modern face! The demo consisted of a series of brief action sequences and CS's, with an estimated release date of 2012.
We first saw the game at PAX East, and the updated demo at E3 included additional game areas and play, enough to convince us that they are well on track and actually will get this one released on all three platforms -- Xbox 360, PS3, and Windows PC -- as planned.
Overstrike was the next game to be placed on the stage, and represents Insomniac Studios entry into multi-platform gaming, as the traditionally PS3 outfit is breaking ground on the Xbox 360 with this title.
The on-stage reveal included an introduction to the characters and a brief explanation of what the tactical action game that features a team of Overstrike Agents who are set to save the world from a shadowy conspiracy that sees them using the gadgets and weapons that the series is famous for to do the good work!
The demo was a bit tongue-in-cheek for what is not a funny game, but that was cool, it added a little colour to the presentation.
Bringing Out the Big Gun
Finally the game that we were all waiting to see took the stage -- Battlefield 3 -- which is another of the games that we first saw at PAX East, where we had a closed-door hand's-off demo and presentation. What we saw at the presser was similar to what we were shown at PAX, but of course at E3 we actually got some hand's-on time as well, and that made all the difference.
Battlefield 3 is built using the Frostbite 2 engine, which is particularly good at presenting physics effects like the ripple of an explosion, the smoke from a gunshot, and a more of dust in the air.
The focus of most of the presentation was the multi-player side of the game, featuring Operation Metro, and we should point out, not part of the game that was previously covered in the press briefings! The final third of the presentation was a live demo of the single-player combat in the game,
They covered the new Battlelog System -- which is a lot like Autolog from the NFS series in that it is a stat-tracking system with social aspirations.
They confirmed that there would be an open Beta in September, which started with a group of tanks moving across a plain and engaging the enemy, which was also a new and fresh take on the game, and the first time we were seeing vehicle combat play.
The tank demo included the authentic radio traffic that is part of the game, reminding us of the mini-series Generation Kill -- but then Battlefield 3 has a similar feel to that series, so it is all good!
Battlefield 3 is set to release on 25th October of this year.
The Music Played
The end of the presser might have been something of a social experience itself -- if that is the journo's in the audience did not need to get across town to the Ubisoft Presser -- which we did! So with the closing music playing we all scrambled for the doors!
See Part 3 of the Day 0+2 Diary for the details on how that turned out...
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