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- Day 1: Sony 2013
- Day 2: Nintendo 2008
- Day 3: Ubisoft 2010
- Day 4: EA 2011
- Day 5: Sony 2006
- Day 6: Nintendo 2004
- Day 7: Microsoft 2010
- Day 8: Ubisoft 2012
What an asshole I am, missing a day in a daily series. There seems to be some sort of theme of EA days resulting in a fuck-up, but hey hoh, we press on. Today is gonna be a double bill, consisting of yesterday's missed conference and today's planned conference. We'll first look at EA 2014, likely the year most vivid in your minds. Following that, we'll be returning to 2006 for a conference that people were actually happy with, Microsoft 2006. With that out the way, let's crack on with the worst conference to come out of last year.
EA 2014 was the year of the totally unfinished game, verging on the year of the not even started game. Kicking things off with a minute long tease of Star Wars: Battlefront which essentially boiled down to "fuck you, wait until next year", we launched into a demo and trailer for Dragon Age: Inquisition, proof that the demo-trailer presentation of a game is the greatest. I mean, sure, Dragon Age: Inquisition was pretty divisive coming up to release thanks to Dragon Age 2, but the presentation was cool.
After that, we got literally nothing from BioWare. They had a two minute trailer basically consisting of concept art and BioWare employees talking. What's worse this was technically their announcement of a new Mass Effect game. I mean, we all knew it was coming, but it was officially announced without any gameplay, trailer or even screenshots. I suppose BioWare do deserve to be locked in a dark room forever though, that's why they get for Mass Effect 3's ending.
You know how there's sort-of stereotype that girl gamers only like The Sims and all that bollocks. EA didn't help that with the ridiculous screaming when The Sims 4 was mentioned. This shit was scripted too. Anyway, The Sims 4, remember that? Probably not, because everyone just went back to Sims 2 and Sims 3 about a week after it came out. Even the most loyal of Sims fans I know in real life just gave up on it for reason's such as it being shit. They also had a guy get beaten up and house invaded by an old lady, then literally die from laughing. Butt monkey indeed.
The next demo we had was Bruce Lee in UFC. I loved that period of Bruce Lee's career when he fought in UFC. He was also released four times for each separate weight division. I don't know if they mentioned it at the conference, but it was completely ridiculous. UFC was only the beginning of the sports nightmare though, because we were about to enter the stage of the conference where EA spent more time on sports than I ever remember.
For the tease that the sports time would only be limited to a few short trailers, I will forever resent NHL 15 for getting my hopes up. Yes it's probably the smallest of EA's sports line-up, but people still like ice hockey. Following BioWare's example, Criterion announced their new game. Kind of. It was basically a load of real life nonsense and some very unfinished gameplay. Sure, Criterion are good and this thing looked good, but don't show shit if you have shit all to show.
After that it was more sports time, although it did include EA's best actual reveal in PGA Tour, which is really weird. I don't play Madden, but I'm slightly confused that this series has been going on for years and they've only just got around for making half of the game interesting. I didn't play it, so maybe it was good, maybe it was shit. Hopefully MaddenGAF will have some input, otherwise I'll just be working under the assumption that it isn't very good because that's all I hear about Madden.
We then got some footage of what most people remember as "EA's MOBA", which of course got cancelled. If you asked me, I probably couldn't tell you what separated Dawngate from League of Legends or DOTA 2, but I'm wagering very little. After that, we got even more vastly unfinished game, although it was a vastly unfinished game that I was very excited to see. Mirror's Edge: The New One (or Catalyst, as we now know), is one of my most anticipated titles, although this presentation didn't really rise or lower my hype. It didn't really do anything.
We then reached the final two games of the show. Because EA completely hates us, we had a good five minutes of football trying to push the new one as somehow more innovative than the last game. As it turns out, I have actually played FIFA before, and FIFA 15 was a big load of arse, judging by the two or so games I had. Somehow they still haven't between the World Cup 2010 game in terms of making a fun game. Also you can't play as North Korea in the mainline games. Weak.
Their final announcement was Battlefield: Hardline, which could've been exiting maybe. However, as you may remember, basically the entire game was leaked before the conference. Yeah, maybe they couldn't reshape the conference because none of the other "announcements" had any actual footage, but it still was a weak ending. When Adam Boyes showing up randomly is the biggest part of the announcement, something hasn't gone particularly well.
Due to not being bloody idiots like Sony, Microsoft's 2006 conference was pretty fantastic. They started up the conference immediately with a demo of Gears of War, which was hotly anticipated after the hugely memorable Mad World trailer. Although it featured Bleszinski looking a total pillock, it was a wise start to the show. We then got into the meat of the conference with Peter Moore. The start of the conference basically just consisted of throwing out a load of games coming to XBLA and retail. Still, none of them were really big bombs, they were coming up next.
The bomb sequence began with Fable 2, the follow-up to the pretty huge first game. Of course, being a game from the infamous Molyneux, we didn't actually know how the game end up, especially with it being a CG trailer. Still, good announcement. After that we got Forza Motorsport 2, what some people still consider to be the highest point of the series. We then saw Microsoft trying to get some cred in Japan with the announcement of Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. Of course, it didn't really work, but they gave it a good go.
We then saw a dreaded CG trailer to reveal Splinter Cell: Double Agent for Xbox 360 in September. Wasn't particularly big, but I do love me some Splinter Cell. The CG trailer for Double Agent was redeemed though, with a fun live demo of Viva Pinata. You can make paper animals dance to make babies. After that, we had some talk of an Xbox 360 HD-DVD player, which I suppose was pretty exciting. I don't really remember HD-DVD taking off like blu-ray, but there you go.
I still maintain that Peter Moore has one of the best stage presences of regular E3 presenter. Just prior to perhaps the biggest announcements of the show, Moore took off his jacket, and I think we all knew what was coming. Making a quick jab at Phil Harrison's ducks, which is pretty ironic considering Moore left Microsoft for EA and Harrison left Sony for Microsoft, he revealed his latest tattoo, the logo for Grand Theft Auto 4, officially announcing the game for Xbox 360. It was just a bit of a shame that this one was clearly some sort of temporary transfer.
Following that, we got game after game after game, with several games being showed off in a fairly short space of time. We started off with Crysis, which is still the best Crysis game. Of course it never looked as good as the PC version, but considering nobody could run the PC version, it was pretty understandable. Next up was Shadowrun, which I don't really remember but was a good enough reveal. Finally, we had Alan Wake, a hotly anticipated title that still took a good few years to come out after this.
While it did slow the conference down quite substantially, Bill Gates making an appearance was pretty fun. It was here they spoke about cross-platform features, using Shadowrun as a primary example. While stuff like comparing achievements and interacting with consoles on other devices seems trivial now, it was a pretty big deal back in 2006, and it was nice seeing it in action. Topping off the conference was the official announcement trailer for Halo 3, the next entry in what is pretty much Microsoft's biggest series.
So there you have it, a double bill of 13 Days of E3. I understand this is a pretty big wall of text, so apologies if it puts you off reading it, but Ii couldn't just forget about EA 2014. Well, I could've. I pretty much did until I decided to start this series, but whatever. Hopefully you didn't all forget about the series in it's absence. In the next two days we will be looking at the amazing and disgusting moments that were not covered by the rest of the threads, and then we'll top it all off with the greatest conference of all time, and you probably know what it is. I'm very excited.
