EA Excelled @ E3 2015

Everyone knew what EA were going to show before the lights even went down, Star Wars Battlefront was going to be there, Need for Speed, the regular shovel of ‘updates’ to the EA Sports titles and of course some Mobile games, but for all we knew about there were a few things we did not know about.

Firstly we were treated to a look at Mass Effect Andromeda, it was shiny it had guns and space and that was it, it was over so fast, but it left me wanting more. Then CEO Andrew Wilson, took to the stage and gave a little speech about how they listen to what their fans have to say, which was a little forced, but then they dropped right in to the all-new Need for Speed and it looks damn nice. The game really seems to be taking quite a lot of inspiration from other games in the long running series, but it looks to be trying new things as well. In any case, the game looks really nice and fun.

Over the rest of the hour and a bit, we got looks at the EA Sports range, which again feature more improvements than ever before, the biggest one being Women teams are now coming to Fifa 16. Pele, the world famous soccer player was brought out on stage, which at that point I thought they were changing the name from Fifa 16 to Pele Football 16, but turns out it was for just a chat. While cool to see him talk about his experiences, kicking his 1000^th goal and such, not really the right spot for it, or at least I thought.

We got a live demo and deep dive on Plants Vs Zombies Garden Warfare 2, which had the Zombies defending their base from the attacking plants, it looks fun and as an added bonus, existing PvZGW players will be able to transfer almost all of their current character collections across. We also got a look at the only mobile title of the show, Minions Paradise an all new mobile game where players will play as Phil, a minion created just for the game, who is a little accident prone and causes the Minions cruise ship to crash, leaving them all stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere.

As for the rest of the games, we got our first proper look at Mirrors Edge Catalyst, which poses the question can a girl with no powers cause a change? The game itself has dropped the singular level design of the first one and now has an open world, where players can explore the city as they want, discovering missions, time trials and challenges as they do. The game looks pretty awesome and I for one can’t wait to get hands on.

But there was still more, Star Wars in fact, a triple dose too, firstly mobile did announce a new star wars game, who knows what it will be, but we have been told we can play as all our favourite characters from the movies, clone wars and more. Next up is Star Wars: The Old Republic, Knights of the Fallen Empire, an all-new expansion that allows players to take part in a more focused story, akin to the old Knights games, where player choice will help shape and define the story for each player.

Finally though we got a look at the granddaddy of the games, Star Wars Battlefront and boy did it look amazing. I won’t write anymore, just watch the video below.

EA had a good showing, mostly due in part to the big games, the sports series does nothing for me and judging by the reactions of the people I was around during the conference, it does nothing for them either. Pele was cool to see in person, but his appearance on stage added nothing to it.