E3 2015: EA Press Conference Impressions

Aside from recent releases like Dragon Age: Inquisition and Battlefield: Hardline, EA hasn't had the best few years.  Buggy launches, poor customer support and selling certain titles without being feature complete are a few examples of EA's sins over the past few years.  Last year's EA press conference didn't make things any better as they put on possibly the worst press conference I ever had the dishonour of watching.  There is no way that EA could put on two bad performances in a row, right?

Let us start with the good news, EA's press conference was better than last year's showing.  The bad news is that isn't saying much.  In all honesty, EA has a great lineup of games under their umbrella; they just can't seem to translate that quality to the stage.  When a conference with Mass Effect, Mirror's Edge and Star Wars almost puts you to sleep, there is something wrong.

The reason that EA had problems in translating quality to their stage performance was that they spent too much time telling instead of showing.  The actual game demos showed at the conference combined for a run time of maybe 20 minutes.  For a 90 minute press conference, that's unacceptable.  Also whoever thought splitting EA Sports into four excruciatingly boring and unnecessarily long segments to fill time should be fired along with the person who thought having an interview with soccer legend Pele was a good use of time.

Out of all the bad, there were a couple of diamonds in the rough.  Star Wars Battlefront had a phenomenal demo that expertly replicated the scale and grandeur of the Battle for Hoth from Empire Strikes Back.  In five minutes, DICE showed first and third-person perspectives, vehicle combat (which includes controlling AT-ATs) and playable hero characters all to a great amount of fanfare.  Other than Battlefront, the only other game to truly impress was Unravel, a puzzle platformer with unique mechanics revolving around yarn.  While I have a feeling Unravel will be a smaller title in EA's lineup, it has the potential of stacking up their with other great mascot platformers like LittleBigPlanet and Mario.

If it wasn't for Star Wars Battlefront and Unravel, EA's 2015 press conference would have served as a good time for a nap or a bathroom break.  EA seems to bark to the heavens that they understand their fans, but they are so out of touch that it's hilarious.  Gamers don't watch your E3 press conference to hear about your onslaught of yearly sports games, we want the Battlefronts, Mass Effects, Mirror's Edges and Unravels to be the focus of your show.  Until EA understands that fact, they will suffer the same negative reaction year-in and year-out.

Grade:  D+

E3 2013: Ubisoft Press Conference Impressions

Aside from their consistent problems finding a suitable host for their conferences, Ubisoft has had some of the best showings at E3 the last two years.  With games like Rayman Legends, Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed IV in their corner, many were looking forward to what Ubisoft would show off this year at E3.

Well to sum things up, Ubisoft knows how to end a press conference.  Sadly, they do not know how to do much else because this conference was a definite step back from years past.  It was not good or bad, it just was right in the middle.  Only a few things Ubisoft showed really stuck.  The rest went in one ear and out the other.  Maybe these reactions were due to the lack of actual gameplay demos or the continued presence of Aisha Tyler, which was a black hole that sucked plenty of good out of this conference.  Also Ubisoft's conference was significantly hurt by the exclusion of Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed IV demos in favour of showing them at the Sony Press Conference.  There is no point in having your own conference if you are not going to showcase your own games especially the two biggest titles in your 2013 line-up.  As much as Ubisoft under delivered, it was not as bad as the EA conference.  There were a couple of good points.  The demo for Reflections newest driving game, The Crew was really good.  The inter connectivity of the world and the instantaneous multiplayer were impressive.  There are a few questions this writer has for The Crew, but personally I am intrigued.  The game that saved this conference was the newest Tom Clancy game known as The Division.  The Division had a similar set-up to Watch Dogs' set-up a year before.  Ubisoft had the audience at the conference and at home on the edge of their seat trying to decipher what it was.  The Division is an open-world third-person shooter with RPG elements.  It is set in a world that has spiraled into to complete and utter chaos after the collapse of the stock market and society as we know it.  Set with the task of surviving, the player teams up with others in this persistent massively multiplayer world scavenging items, collecting upgrades and gadgets and fighting off threats to your survival.  While I personally would have loved to see more about Rainbow Six: Patriots, The Division looks like a great new extension of the Tom Clancy universe and another great game in Ubisoft's huge library of games.

As much as The Crew and The Division captured our imaginations, those two games were not able to save Ubisoft's conference from mediocrity.  The absence of the Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed IV demos and the lack of demos for a slew of trailers beat Ubisoft into one of their most lackluster showings.  At least, this year's press conference was not even close to their infamous 2010 conference. 

Grade:  C-

E3 2013: EA Press Conference Impressions

One of the few constants at E3 has been Electronic Arts.  There conferences have been consistently watchable as they have provided a lot of good information on the great amounts of projects they publish.  As we head face first into the next generation of consoles, will EA soar to brand new heights or continue to falter?

To answer that question right off the bat, EA will continue their abysmal year after such a weak conference.  There was a good number of quality games on display just EA only spent fifteen to twenty minutes of their conference covering them.  Right at the beginning, EA blew off the door with an incredible trailer for Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare that parodied EA's own Battlefield trailers.  Following the trailer, EA gave us an incredible demo for Garden Warfare that easily convinced me of PopCap's newest venture with the Plants vs. Zombies series.  There was the announcement of Peggle 2, but nobody seemed to care because what follow was easily the surprise of EA's conference.  That surprise was... wait for it... Star Wars Battlefront!  Eight years following the release of Battlefront 2, we are finally getting a sequel to one of the best Star Wars games out there.  Also the multiplayer shooter specialists at DICE are handling the next Battlefront so it should be good.  Disappointing enough after the Battlefront reveal, EA's conference took a turn for the worse.  There were still some good stuff in this conference such as Dragon Age Inquisition, Battlefield 4 multiplayer and another reveal that we will get to in a bit, but not enough to keep the absolutely horrible from sucking the life from this conference.  The horrible started when EA moved onto Need For Speed.  The new Need For Speed Rivals looked interesting, but felt too derivative of the past Criterion Need For Speed games.  Then EA decided to make a venture into the realm of movies by showing us a trailer for the Need For Speed movie (we all know how this movie will turn out).  EA's time in Hollywood was not the lowest point of the conference that honour goes to EA Sports, which drove this conference straight into the ground and kept on digging deeper.  From random rapping to nonsensical celebrity appearances to Dana White repeating the same sentence over and over again, EA made a complete and utter joke of their entire sports division.  None of the gameplay shown for these sports games looked anything close to the target video that EA put on a pedestal at the Xbox One reveal.  Even with all the crap EA put us through, there was a light shining at the end of the dark tunnel.  That light was the long awaited reveal of Mirror's Edge 2.  The short trailer was enough to send gamers home happy.  Just not enough to save a conference that was already six feet under.

EA's press conference started out great, but it was all downhill after the Battlefront reveal.  EA tried to bring the conference back to life multiple times but no avail.  There were a few good moments, nothing that could make me personally recommend watching past the first 15 minutes of the conference.

Grade:  D+