EA Press Conference

Nothing absolutely shocking from EA this year, although they've got a powerful lineup of games in the tube.

- Mass Effect 2. We're back as Shepard (or are we? The first teaser ominously showed his death, and they didn't do much to make us question this) and you need to go shoot stuff. I'm sure it's deeper than that, but right now that's all we've got to go on. That said, if it's anything like ME1, you'll be shooting stuff in style.



- Sims 3. Never been a huge Sims fan, but it has something going for it, even after the ridiculous amount of expansions for Sims 2.

- Need for Speed: Shift. It looks quite a bit better than the last couple NfS games which drew a bit too heavily from the "2 Fast 2 Furious" idea of car racing. Now though, it's got an awesome looking in-car view and plenty of ways to keep track of how you race. I've never been a big racing fan (other than maybe Burnout, but that's about as much a racer as Portal is a FPS) but this might convince me otherwise.

- Fight Night Round 4. It was shown a bit, and it's releasing a week early! June 25th for those who are interested in picking it up. FNR3 was praised heavily for its interesting stamina system where the look and feel of your character is the only gauge as to how winded or hurt you are. I'm renting this one at least.

- Lots of other EA Sports info. NCAA 2010, Madden, Grand Slam Tennis, etc.

- Crysis 2 announced. Now we just need to create a supercomputer!

- All Points Bulletin was shown off. Imagine GTA turned MMORPG and you get about there. There's the cops, the robbers, and a ton of carchases and gunfights.



- Star Wars: The Old Republic. For the love of Christ, let this be good. They showed the new trailer above, which sadly is all pre-rendered cinematics, but then they went on to announce that the entire game will have voice acting. If they can pull if off, that would be unheard of for an MMORPG and would take god-knows-how-many actors.