E3 2010 - Day 1: EA Press Conference

Electronic Arts puts on a pretty great show. Here's a brief list of what I saw and what I thought about it. Read on...

The Cool:

• The EA conference begins with a trailer for Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. The game is being released on November 16 by Criterion, the developer behind the fantastic Burnout Paradise. I'm not a huge racing game fan, but I played hours and hours of the Need for Speed: High Stakes, which this new game reminds me of. This looks really good!
• I've yet to play the first game, but Dead Space 2 looks like a creepy futuristic Resident Evil 4. While it's obviously very difficult to get a feel for the mood of the game while watching someone else play it on television, it does appear to be pretty intense.
• Dang! The new Medal of Honor, which takes place in modern-day Afghanistan, makes its debut with a 24-person death match. The setting comes across as somewhat cliché, but it looks competent.
• Crysis 2 is coming to consoles. Now, the average person (who doesn't own a really expensive gaming computer) can finally experience this franchise. The footage looks pretty remarkable.
• Bulletstorm is a waaay over-the-top shooter that is coming out on February 2, 2011. The game rewards you for killing your enemies in the most bizarre ways.
• The upcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic looks like it could make up for how inconsistent Star Wars Galaxies was. The story sequence that they show for this game looks amazing, but it is obvious that this is not in-game footage. I'd really like to see what this game looks like in action.

The Underwhelming:

• Gun Club? This appears to be a social network. It would appear that the only reason for this is to get beta codes.
• I don't like MMA, and I don't care about EA Sports MMA.
• EA Sports Active 2 is going multi-platform. This will also have a social networking feature built into it so that your friends can watch you lose weight. Yay!
• Madden NFL 2011 is evolving.
• Each of the entities in The Sims 3 exhibits something very similar to free will, which makes it nearly impossible to predict. To me, this sounds like a recipe for frustration. Later this year, the game is coming to consoles.

The Surprising:

• Apparently, a Vietnam-themed expansion is coming for Battlefield Bad Company 2. I don't know of very many good games that take place in this setting. If done right, this could be pretty cool.

Any thoughts? What do you guys think?