The EA Experience

Hot pursuits, honourable medals and storms of bullets.

I recall Lucy saying of last year's E3 that she heard the term “dynamic lighting” more times than she could count. This year, it's going to be all about “experiences” and “re-imaginings”. After just two press events, these terms are fast becoming meaningless.

The “experience” at EA was based around game trailers, spliced through with some nice eyes-on gameplay. NFS: Hot Pursuit looked so good at times that with quick glances you could convince yourself you were looking at live action. A new Medal of Honor game set in Afghanistan looked immense fun to play, and we were treated to a 24-person multiplayer fragfest live on stage – complete with cruise missile strikes. EA have led the single player campaign on this one, and Dice have put together the multi. A worldwide multiplayer beta will be available on 21 June.

Dead Space 2 approaches for the PS3, all javelins and drooling nightmares. They even showed us a teeny tiny teaser for Battlefield Bad Company 2: Vietnam. “We have to go back!” cried one sarcastic American behind us. Crysis 2 will be in 3D, and pairs of glasses handed out at the entrance to the event allowed us to see how that will all look and feel – they still have some way to go, but unlike my colleagues, I quite like that the new game will be set in New York City.

Joe Montana took the stage during a promo for Madden 2011, which was a great touch, and sort of epitomised the way E3 works: you get a bunch of press in the room, then hammer them with as much new information and star power as you can. The work they're doing with multiplayer here and deepening the playbooks should get American football fans fairly excited.

Active 2, a cross platform game aimed at that dark market that the core so like to look down their noses at looks abominable on the Wii (think trees without trunks, truly) passable on the PS3 and uses the Kinect technology on the 360. Does that mean extra points?

Today's announcements go like this (we have left the dates out because what we saw will all be American, and thusly disappoint you):

• NFS: Hot Pursuit. Thoughts: graphically stunning; incredibly loud.

• Dead Space 2. Thoughts: scarier than ever; too bloody to be legal in Australia, surely.

• Medal of Honor (no subtitle announced). Thoughts: fighting back against Call of Duty tooth and nail.

• Bulletstorm. Thoughts: wild and seriously sick; you get points for how creative you are in killing enemies, sort of like Mad World.

• The Sims 3. Thoughts: there's big talk of self awareness, but to me it's still really all about the God complex.

• Star Wars: The Old Republic. Thoughts: excellent trailers! One for franchise followers to watch out for.

• Battlefield Bad Company 2: Vietnam. Thoughts: well, they're going to Afghanistan with Medal of Honor, so why not re-open some old wounds at the same time as they're bathing in the festering ones?

• Madden NFL 2011. Thoughts: it's Madden; it's a winner.

• Active 2. Thoughts: avoid unless you're a mum, sister, daughter or Aucklander.

• Crysis 2. Thoughts: great looking landscape and some seriously tough enemies. Incredibly loud.

EA Sports Live Broadcast and an online feature called “Gunclub” were also announced today, with varying degrees of importance for Kiwi gamers. The latter is basically a rewards and records system where you can keep track of the weaponry you have achieved across a range of EA titles. At this point, we still need the good oil on how the former will look down our way.

We hope to be able to bring you hands-on for many of these titles from the showfloor as soon as, so watch this space.