E3 2011 – EA Press Conference Highlights from COIN-OP TV:

EA starts the show with the hugely anticipated Mass Effect 3 demo – this time around skipping any talk of Kinect (which was announced at the Microsoft Press Conference) and diving right into a larger scale battle featuring our favorite hero Commander Shepard going against a giant Reaper ship.

Need For Speed: The Run showed off some juicy graphics from EA’s  ‘Frostbite’ engine.  New to the NFS franchise (and most car racing games) will involve you running around on foot facing obstacles outside of racing (which look to be mostly quicktime moments with little user interaction).  More important is EA decision to incorporate their ‘autoblog’ into the campaign/story elements of the game — now that sounds unique!

Star Wars The Old Republic was once again ‘shown’ to the public (marking the third year of hype and cgi teasers).  Again the content and characters look great – should Bioware drop the ball on this game it will upset many Jedi fans!

EA then went into ‘sports display’ by showcasing the new SSX which, according to Peter Moore, will feature a ‘massive open world’ — also FIFA 12 and Madden 12 were showcased and claim to have the most advanced and realistic hit detection in the sports genre.

Ted Price from Insomniac Games introduced Overstrike – a new IP which retains fun and comedy of the Ratchet & Clank series with a meaty dark tone — it wasn’t clear if this would be a PS3 exclusive or not.

The EA Press Conference culminated with the presentation of the highly profiled Battlefield 3 coming later this year.  We watched a long tank to tank battle with all the bells and whistles — developers claim that Battlefield is ‘the game we always wanted to make’ — we’ll know soon enough if Battlefield turns out to be the ‘game we always wanted to play’.