EA impresses at Gamescom, despite too many buzzwords and too few genuinely new games

Pure Shot. BattlePacks. SpeedList. SmartSim. Match Flow. All Drive. Oh God, Levolution. EA’s Gamescom press conference crackled with the usual buzzwords used to describe the points of interest and innovations of its phalanx of upcoming games. This year in particular, though, the buzzword focus feels wrong. With a new generation about to appear, the buzzword trick of slapping a sheen of the new to familiar concepts seems wrongly placed. Isn’t this year, of all years, meant to bring us boatloads of genuinely new things?At Gamescom, EA is answering this question with no big new announcements, but a lot of promises for what the next generation holds. That’s not to say that its roster of games for the coming twelve months haven’t any ambition or verve, but what it says about EA’s vision for the next generation is definitely telling.It kicked off the whole event, with The Sims 4 executive producer Rachel Franklin spinning a vision of being able to play with “intelligent, emotionally aware beings,” with which you can “explore the gamut of human emotions”. Rage, lust, depression and anger, judging by the Sims-typical sadistic scenario she showed off, which ended with the object of two suitors’ affections showing off her art style. “Check out this hottie on the rocket. That’s a little suggestive!” cooed Franklin, inappropriately.This “next generation of The Sims games” certainly provides some advances to the series – its SketchUp-style house design tool, used to extrude rooms, and Sim sculpting tools and ability to tweak their animations seem to finally provide a resting place for Spore’s wonderful tech. Which is to say, it’s hardly new in and of itself.http://media.edge-online.com/wp-cont...-4-610x343.jpgThe Sims 4, annoucned at Gamescom today.

Command & Conquer’s outing didn’t try to impress with its ambitions at all, other than with the audacity of staging a purportedly live match between QA staff, which was remarkable for its scripted lack of drama, the free beer and pretzels promised to audience members who chose the winner of the bout, and a touch of cross promotion as one of the producer-commentators referenced Need For Speed.Speaking of which, the open world Rivals seems to come with the gritty sheen that Criterion always avoided but seems richer for drawing on Criterion’s design legacy in the form of Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted, while building on that with its loose mix of solo, cooperative and competitive play in its open world.One game that does seem to benefit strongly from the next generation is Dragon Age: Inquisition, which EA Labels president Frank Gibeau introduced as a “next generation RPG experience”. It certainly looks the part, with (another) open world made from varied locales and attention to detail and scale that will stratospherically improve on the bland environments of Dragon Age II.Another game that clearly shows off the benefits of a new generation of technology is UFC. It was a bit unfortunate that EA Sports head Andrew Wilson celebrated fighters who will “look precisely like themselves” under video of a blankly staring sweaty videogame man, but actually its physical rendering of popping veins, squashing flesh and straining faces looks eye-wateringly credible. So too its planting of feet directly on the canvas, without the frictionless skating that marks out movement in most other games. Physicality like this is perfect for UFC.Elsewhere, these benefits were natural extensions of where the games were already going. Battlefield 4’s multiplayer continues to suggest it’ll be precisely what we’d expect and hope it it to be – thunderous, huge, dynamic. And forget about the awful term Levolution, which even DICE general manager Karl Magnus Troedsson seemed to falter in explaining, but it looks like it’ll mean we can do things like set off fire extinguishers – maybe flush toilets, too? Imagine.

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