GAMESCOM '12: ARMY OF TWO, SIM CITY, BF3 and More Highlight EA's Press Conference

The first press conference from EA at Gamescom has come and gone today, and we've had so much information and footage to digest. To make it all easier for you, we have complied a complete and detailed list of everything shown and talked about in one spot. Let's get into it.

Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel

  

Army of Two returns with two-player mayhem in The Devils Cartel. This time Visceral Games are utilizing the powerhouse Frostbite 2 engine for detailed destruction and jaw dropping visuals. A new feature that was talked about is called overkill. Working together and eliminating enough enemies will earn you 'Overkill', a new feature that lets you and your partner bring massive destruction to your enemies for a limited period of time.

The stage demo showed some incredible visuals and co-operative play that we've come to know and love from the franchise. Slo-mo door breaches, banter, and a heavy amount of destruction. At one point the two split off with one on the ground and the other providing firepower from a in a mounted chain gun position in a helicopter above. Further along the helicopter is shot down, so the other has to rescue their team-mate just before it falls off the side of the building. Que another slo-mo moment of shooting down an enemy chopper with a pistol in one hand and your buddy hanging off the side of a building with the other. Split screen is back in, and it looks superb so far. Keep an eye out for this one. 

NHL 13

NHL 13 GM Dean Richards skated on stage on a full body Cologne Sharks uniform to tell us all about NHL 13. GM Connected lets you play NHL 13 with up to 750 people and up to 30 user-managed teams. True performance skating captures the explosiveness, top end speed, momentum, and creativity of the world’s best hockey players. Real world speed and physics govern movement on the ice. NHL 13 will also feature over a thousand new skating animations, including backward skating.

You can try it and judge for yourselves when the NHL 13 demo will be available to play on Xbox 360 on August 21, 2012. PlayStation 3 players will get it one day later, on August 22.

NFS Most Wanted

  

The Need for Speed Most Wanted presentation opened up with a multiplayer trailer showing some great looking cars and environments, highlighting the new challenge modes. Challenge modes pit players against each other to takedown opponants, drift or jump. Interestingly, players can choose almost any car in the game right from the beginning meaning no grinding to unlock the more powerful motors. "If you can find it, you can drive it." Cars are dotted around the city and be 'jacked' with the press of a button. No more menu screens to load and select a vehicle. 

As usual with recent entries in Need for Speed franchise, Autolog makes a return and is heavily integrated into the game. This time with Autolog 2 comes the new CloudCompete function, making it the most socially-connected Need for Speed to date. What this means is that friends records or progress are visible upon pulling up to points of interest like billboards or speed cameras. At the end of the demo, the developer crashes through a billboard with Peter Moore's picture on it, making it all the more personal with your friends. The picture will be whoever has jumped the furthest. Pretty much every action like drifting or shunts will earn you Speed Points, which drives the competition to be the most wanted amongst your friends. CloudCompete will allow you to continue adding to those points when you play on iOS, Android or Playstation Vita. 

The game had a strong showing and looks like a lot of fun, so keep your eye on this one when it hits across multiple platforms on October 30th in North America, and November 1st in Europe. 

Medal of Honor: Warfigther

  

Not much in the way of new information for Warfigther today, but nonetheless we did see a new Fireteam multiplayer trailer and giving a brief glimpse of a new web based meta game featuring 193 united nations are represented.  A sort of social Battlelog for Medal of Honor. Not much in the way of details at all there, but I imagine its detailed leaderboards and statistics.

The Simpsons Tapped Out

Earlier this year The Simpsons Tapped Out was released on iOS, but was so popular that it crashed the EA servers and brought up a bunch of game freezing and data loss issues. EA pulled it from the store until they could come up with a solution, and here we are! Tapped Out will be free to play on iOS and is even live right now on the German app store. North America will be able to download it once again sometime this week. Released worldwide over the next month.

Origin

Steam has always had a step up on the half-arsed Origin service, so it's fortunate that some much needed improvements are on the way. These include achievements, challenges, and other new social features. The service is growing rapidly with over 500 games and 50+ developers. Big news today - Origin is coming to Mac! There is no doubt Origin are making leaps forward for the better. 

Sim City

 

SimCity is back, and coming to Mac too! Your city is your own and reflects the decisions you make. Today we see multiplayer, and are told you can play alone, with friends, or with the world in the SimCity World feature. The trailer shows a connected network with your city contributing to the larger picture - the economy. You can track your city's progress through global charts, leaderboards, and collaberate to earn awards. Everything you do contributes to the bigger picture. There seems to be a lot of depth here and the social features look to add a lot of incentive to keep playing.  

Battlefield 3

 

Battlefield 3 is still going strong and had some new things to tell us today. As you may well know, the expansion Armored Kill will be available in September and the trailer shows us some new footage of that. Armored Kill has some of the biggest maps in Battlefield history, with a few new vehicles and assignments to boot. We'll see quad bikes, and the awesome looking AC-130 that can be controlled or spawned on once players grab a position on the map. Oh, and tank superiority mode. More than just maps to look forward to. PlayStation 3 Premium owners will be the first to get it on September 4. After that, we will then the release of Aftermath in December. Aftermath will have you making use of modified military and civilian vehicles. We got some brief footage of those maps at the end of the Premium trailer.

And last but not least, End Game brings motorcycles to Battlefield 3 and takes place in some destroyed landscapes. Battlefield 3 Premium Edition will be available this September, including all the content premium members have access to.

Crysis 3

 

The multiplayer debut kicks off with some information and a demo of the new Hunter Mode. Hunter Mode supports up to 16 players at a time. There are two teams: a large group of CELL troopers, and a very small group of cloaked Hunters. The Hunters must fight to take down all CELL troopers before the timer runs out. Each CELL unit killed will respawn as a cloaked Hunter. It's little like Infected from Halo and Call of Duty, but the camo and short timer adds greatly to the intensity. 

As we seen from the CryEngine 3 tech demo recently, the visuals are certainly impressive. The map shows off the urban jungle setting of New York City with overgrown plants wrapping themselves around buildings and a swappy ground. Crysis 3 is certainly looking impressive so far.

Star Wars The Old Republic

Star Wars: The Old Republic released in December under a subscription model but not too long ago it was annouced as going free-to-play this fall. The game only will expand to include a free-to-play option this fall. Large content and social updates were detailed, these include "Cartel Points", a new virtual currency. Terror from Beyond operation coming. Several level 50+ space missions also coming our way, as well as player vs player fans getting a new warzone to battle on.

Today, “The Grand Acquisition” in-game event starts (shown in the trailer above). We were also shown a sneak peak at a new live action trailer as Star Wars begins to ramp up the promotional campaigns once again for it's free to play model.

Dead Space 3

 

Dead Space is making a return with the third the series, this time with drop-in drop-out co-op. The developers have made sure to express that co-op adds to the experience with different cutscenes and new dialogue, but playing solo will still remain the tradional Dead Space experience. A new mechanic talked about on stage was a weapon crafting system. Players will gather raw materials and tool parts to create the perfect weapon. There is even a contest you can enter named 'The Tools of Terror' at www.deadspace.com, where you can submit your dream weapon with the possibility of having it and your likeness in game.

The gameplay demo shown Issac and his ship as it begins to crash. Issac struggles to get to us suit and is blasted out to space in the process of putting on the final piece - his helmet. Players then guide Isaac through open space and toward Tau Volantis, when the demo was cut. It was all very cinematic for a solo experience, so it will be interesting to see how this scene, and other scenes like it plays out with another player in the mix. We then seen a story trailer (above). Another great showing. 

“It’s happening again. Everyone is dying around me.”

Fifa 13

Another year, another FIFA. EA SPORTS annouced that they will be partnering with Nexon to bring FIFA Online 3 to Korea. That will arrive later this year. The developers went over FIFA 13 Ultimate Team, explaining the mode to players that may not be all so familar with it. News today is that you can now access your Ultimate Team information at any time through the EA SPORTS mobile app or the FIFA website.

There also went over some statistics, such as fans playing almost 1 billion matches this year in FIFA Seasons mode. Seasons will be expanding with a new 2v2 online co-op mode and persistent squad saves. Division titles will be available for all divisions. Now you can add trophies to your collection in a virtual cabinet as you progress through the game.

There is a lot of exciting developments this year, one of those being the introduction of Match Day. You can hear real-world dynamic developments through FIFA’s in-game commentary of matches currently happening. Match Day will also affect gameplay. In-game stats will reflect on-pitch performance. Fixtures will change based on what’s happening in the real world. Now that is cool.

Oh, and a demo is going up on Sep 11th