After a return to form for Sega’s Virtua Tennis 4, EA really have their work cut out for them if they want to take on the champ. In typical EA fashion, they’ve chucked a horde of player and tournament licenses and right analogue stick controls at the game in an attempt to dazzle us.
The first impression as I fired up the game was the usual disappointment with the menus that are the same clunky, basic ugly boxes we’ve seen FIFA drowning in for years. Yes, all the options you want are there, but why does every EA Sports game have to look the same?
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With the successful rebranding of Need for Speed as something a bit more serious with last year’s NFS: Shift, EA might have wished they hadn’t already tasked Criterion Games with taking on the old brand instead of working on a new Burnout game. But hell, we were all more excited than we’d like to admit at the possibility of a Burnout/NFS hybrid even if EA couldn’t be arsed coming up with a new name. But is it a Brangelina or a three-thumbed hillbilly?
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit straps you into the seat of some of the world’s hottest cars as both a racer and a police officer in the fictional US location, Seacrest County. Sea crest consists of many, many desert roads, beaches and mountain passes. But mainly deserts. While the races take place on tarmac there are loads of shortcuts you can take to gain an advantage. Often they’ll be more hazardous and over rough terrain, so you’ll have to judge which ones work best for you and the car you’re driving. There are even a few that may take longer than the original route, you’ll have fun checking them all though.
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EA have announced a new retro-style shooter for PSN and XBLA. You’ll be controlling a tiny ship about the size of a blood cell, inside the human body. The MicroBot’s purpose is to eradicate diseases at a cellular level by shooting the hell out of them. Drop in/drop out co-op will also be included. We’re even more excited because it reminds us of one of our favourite 80s movies, Inner Space, which in turn went on to inspire episodes of Family Guy and Futurama. You’ll have to wait until winter 2011 to get your hands on it, but check out the latter part of this trailer to catch a glimpse of the gameplay and strangely calming graphics. Read more…
Here’s our first coverage from Gamescom, Germany. We’re kicking off proceedings with a look at the announcements from EA’s press conference.
PS3 owners have the best news of the lot from EA at this year’s Gamecom event as Mass Effect 2 is coming to PS3 in January 2011. It will be packed with a few extra hours’ worth of gameplay nibbles as well. No mention of the first Mass Effect coming over too, but that’s what YouTube’s for right? Read more…
While EA LA are handling the single player game, Battlefield veterans DICE are in-charge of multiplayer. After the success of the BF series, we’d say it’s in good hands.
The matches in the beta have up to twelve players on each side with the maps being just the right size for the numbers meaning you never go too long without snapping up your gun sights. Read more…
You are Sean Devlin, an Irish racing car driver who becomes The Saboteur on his road to revenge against the Nazis. While the visuals are painfully average and the open-world gameplay offers nothing new, you might just get find yourself sucked right in anyway with fun gun battles and the optional stealth approach.
A neatly condensed Paris and its nearby countryside make up the landscape of the game. You help out members of the French resistance and British spies to help liberate Paris and send the Germans scurrying back to sausage country. Read more…
Former racing car driver, Irishman in Paris, Sean Devlin, is out for revenge against the Nazi’s after some of his friends are murdered. He’s not trying to save Paris, but his actions are certainly going to help the city and endear him to her citizens and have the resistance calling on him for a favour or two. Expect a noir inspired adventure rather than your traditional overly-patriotic WWII story. Read more…
Last years quality game firmly put FIFA back on top over their Konami rival, so what next? A tougher challenge and enough off the pitch enhancements to last you till well after the end of the season and beyond is what.
The tougher challenge is made evident by smarter AI that closes you down mercilessly and some questionable refereeing. Last year’s problem of players constantly wondering offside has been fixed. Unfortunately it has been replaced with them constantly giving free kicks. While getting flagged offside was annoying the replays always proved that you were. It was never wrong and EA explained they couldn’t show officials to be making mistakes because of the official FIFA branding, fair enough. Shame they couldn’t extend the courtesy to fouling as the replays will leave you baffled as to why you’ve given away yet another free kick as the slightest nudge is penalised. Read more…
It was a bit of a surprise to all of us finding out that the next game to follow the excellent Dead Space would be on the Wii. It might be an ‘on-rails shooter’ but fans will enjoy this prequel to the original game, especially the first level which has a neat twist that they or anyone that’s seen the anime might appreciate.
The game starts before the Ishimura planet cracker mining ship was overrun by an alien plague causing severe psychosis and mutation in their human hosts. Haven’t played the first game? Don’t worry, the prequel nature of the game welcomes newcomers by letting them play through preceding events. Veterans will enjoy some familiar locations and characters and being a part of earlier events from a different perspective on how the shit hit the fan in the first place, as the first game had you starting well after the infection had already spread. Read more…
EA has decided to reinvent their own wheels as the Need for Speed brand disowns its street racing vibe in a much cleaner break than 2007’s NFS: Pro. Shift is the full transition to track racing to try and compete with the likes of Gran Turismo and Race Driver: Grid. They’ve managed to successfully re-invent FIFA over the last couple of years, so maybe they’ve got a shot.
It’s clear that a lot of time, effort and money have been thrown at the game with a Top Gear style dream collection of ludicrously expensive, top name cars such as the Zonda and Bugatti Veyron all fighting for dominance on dozens of familiar tracks from the USA, Europe and Japan. Read more…
Anticipation has been high for the next instalment in the World War II Battlefield series. Following on from the huge success of Battlefield 1942 on the PC, here at the No Sleep Gamer we couldn’t wait to get our hands on the next title in the series, Battlefield 1943, that thankfully will be released on consoles. So when EA and DICE invited us down to the Tamari club in London’s Covent Garden, we answered the call to arms.
After realising that perhaps video games hadn’t taught me as well as I thought about map-reading (actually, I’ll say Google Maps screwed me over) and reluctantly heading for the Underground instead, I eventually managed to arrive in time for the mission briefing. Well, a complimentary Battlefield-themed cocktail. Sunset Sniper anyone? Read more…
The brand new island just off the Eastern coast of the old map is finally here. An early surprise is that it’s only £9.99 on the PSN ($12.99 or 1000 MS Points), I was expecting at least £15. I mean look at how much they’ve been charging for some of the DLC cars!
Thankfully the new island is fully integrated into the existing Burnout map with no loading screens, which is an impressive feat given the already considerable size. The island itself is about the size of the Downtown area, but has a mix of business district skysrapers, beaches, waterfronts, building sites (with some insane jumps and hoop sections), winding drift roads, and a mountainous dirt track. Read more…
Tom Farrer, Producer of Mirror's Edge
Brendan Griffiths talks to Tom Farrer, Producer of Mirror’s Edge at Dice Studios, Stockholm.
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After a return to form for Sega’s Virtua Tennis 4, EA really have their work cut out for them if they want to take on the champ. In typical EA fashion, they’ve chucked a horde of player and tournament licenses and right analogue stick controls at the game in an attempt to dazzle us.
