EA Showcase – Round 1

As it turns out EA do other things other than get accused of rigging their own Gay Rights petitions and cause internet forum users to create a new post every 17.4 seconds about how piss-freezingly awful Origin is – they make games as well! I was one of the fortunate enough to have checked out their showcase extravaganza last week. There were so many games in fact that the coverage had to be separated out in to two parts to stop the rivalling games from going at it. I would’ve hated to see Crysis 3 vs. Bejeweled 3 – it would have been a blood bath! Crysis wouldn’t stand a chance. Anyway, EA Showcase Round 1, ACTIVATE!

I happened to see Medal of Honor: Warfighter first on my very long day of trailers and presentations. Sadly, Warfighter was based purely around a single trailer and Q&A session after. Which was mildly disappointing, but did lead to a nice info drop on the game. Warfighter will use the Frostbyte 2 Engine, have slow-motion door breaches into rooms full of enemies, peaking and leaning around corners will be making a much demanded comeback, the option of switching between two sights on your gun mid-combat, selective door breaching methods – meaning when you breach a room you will have a choice of how and using what equipment – and it will all take place in Basilan in the Philippines.

It by no means looks like a bad game. In fact it may very well end up being a very enjoyable first person shooter, but the trailer and Q&A which I witnessed was pretty uninspiring. In a genre of games which is already very flooded you need something extra to keep your head above the water and I just didn’t see any of that with Warfighter. The gameplay, the set pieces, the general atmosphere, and characters all seemed like rather mediocre versions of already available counterparts. I’m not dismissing it; I didn’t even get a chance to play it, but I think Medal of Honor: Warfighter needs to take more risks. MOH survived on being the best World War shooter, but now it needs to find a new edge – fast. I just hope it’s not too late.

You may not have heard of The Secret World, at least I hadn’t before the EA Showcase, but whether you have or you haven’t heard of it before now it is definitely deserving of your attention. This was the first game I actually got to get my hands on and play at the event. I confess I was expecting another dull copy-cat PC adventure game, and it turned out to be one of the most superb MMO games I’ve played ever. For those of you who haven’t heard of it before, it’s an MMORPG which is set in modern times, but where ancient mythologies, real and false history, urban legends, pop culture, and conspiracy theories all turn out to be true and all interwoven with a connecting backstory. It sounds like a brilliant concept, and one which I can’t recall ever having been made before – or if it has it couldn’t have been well known. You and your buddies play as supernatural heroes and travel from London to Atlantis, to New York, to the future. It’s the first MMO that has been mentioned to me where I haven’t rolled my eyes at the basic storyline and motivation of the character I’m supposed to be roleplaying as. It could be just my mentality, but I’m certain that I’m not alone in being rather tired of constant, fantasy MMO’s coming out and dropping to free-to-play within a year of release never to be heard from again.

The chunk of gameplay I was permitted to play involved a variety of magic, gun, and melee based MMO combat and used the standard number key configuration and right mouse clicking (can you tell I’m not well versed in MMORPGs yet?). The difference here, though, is that there is no class based system. You create your character, and then you have a skill wheel where you can add various XP points to whatever skills you want to master in as they are not pre-built. Want to be a wizard who can snipe a Cyclops’ eye out from a 10 mile distance? Do it! You can even customise your ‘loadout’ of skills so if you want to have one set of attacks which focus on melee and magic, and another that utilises purely gun based weaponry then the switch is only two clicks away. I mean, I used nothing but high-powered AUG machine guns pretty much 24/7, but you know what? I can. My character, my loadout. The Secret World definitely gets a thumbs up from me. If I have MMO money lying around when it is released in June then I’ll happily get a band together over on our forums.

Okay! It’s time for the EA Showcase gaming-orgy to reach its mobile game climax. Popcap gets to lead the pack with Bejeweled 3 being at the event and playable. I still feel bad for shoving that little girl out of the way. In true Popcap fashion this was the crack cocaine of gaming for anybody who dared to try it. Someone, who shall remain nameless but may or may not be the Editor of 360 Gamer, claimed to have never really cared about or played Bejeweled before in his life, but while I was in the vicinity he must have clocked well over an hour on that machine alone, and that was only while I was paying attention or not wrenching the controller out of his sweat-drenched palms.

It’s Bejeweled Poker, that’s what got me. You essentially have to match jewels as if they were poker hands. Four of a kind means you matched four blue diamond jewels rows in that round. It’s ridiculously addictive and surprisingly competitive. Myself and the anonymous journalist person, were battling it out against each other’s scores right to the very last second. The Popcap folks were packing up their area around us until they finally had to turn the machine off. On the plus side? It’s cheaper than a heroin habit.

Flight Control! You remember that game that came out for iOS devices where you had to guide different flavours of planes on to different landing strips without them crashing into each other or flying off the screen? Well, I have some terrific news for you, Flight Control Rockets is pretty much exactly that – only in space. With rockets. I’m not going to lie, the only reason I’m mentioning this is because while the game feels very rehashed gameplay-wise, the original was quite moreish. Plus the rocket version does admittedly add more challenge by making various rockets act differently and have special abilities to make you want to throw your device even harder at the wall, so that’s worthy of some level of praise.

It’s same deal as the original where you must attain a highscore, which will be compatible with Game Centre, and you do this by guiding as many rockets into the shuttle bays as you can before you crash two of them together. I found the green ones to be my saviour because they always flew straight to their destination at a speedy pace and never split-off into two mini rockets whenever my finger grazed over them. The red ones are the true bastards of this game, and if you don’t believe me I dare you to go out there and buy this for 69p and not have a stomach ulcer by the time you hit 400,000 points. Dare you.

The Act was again, like The Secret World, actually quite an unexpected joy. It’s an interactive movie kind of game, a modern day point and click, where you control the actions of the protagonist Edgar by swiping your finger towards or away from certain objectives. If you want to flirt with a girl then the more you swipe towards her the keener you come across, and if you’re attempting to blend in with a crowd the swiping determines how serious or relaxed you are – that kind of idea. It’s simple gameplay but the controls are so tight that even the slightest bit too much in either direction can cause catastrophe and cause you to start the beginning of the whole sequence over again.

Here’s the kicker, though: it’s all done during a 80’s style cartoon comedy. The gameplay, cutscenes, and successes/failures are all part of the same cartoon visuals and it works perfectly. It really does. I was actually sitting there, in a large room of people, with an iPad in my hand laughing my ass off without a care in the world. I think the clincher was when I almost dropped the iPad and swiped the screen so fast Edgar, quite literally, leapt onto the girl he was flirting with at the bar for a kiss and got appropriately battered away. Magnificent stuff, and I really hope this one is a success and there are many more still to come afterwards.

That’s all for now, folks! I’ll see you again later in the week where we will have Round 2 with some of the heavier hitters who had to be caged up until a later date.