Games
EA Set To Hit San Diego Comic-Con Hardcore
By Eli Green July 17, 2009 - 19:30
Electronic
Arts announced what it would be showing off at the San Diego
Comic-Con this year, and it's put together quite the list. If you're
going to the Comic-Con, running from next Thursday, July 23rd,
until the following Sunday, July 26th,
Electronic Arts' booth, #5213, will be showcasing a number of its
holiday blockbuster titles in over a dozen playable kiosks. The games
featured at the booth kiosks will be Brütal Legend,
Dante’s Inferno, Dead Space Extraction, G.I. JOE The Rise of the
Cobra, The Saboteur and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.
Visitors
to EA's booth will also see a signing station where they can
meet the comic artists behind Army of Two: The 40th
Day, Dead Space Extraction and Dante’s Inferno, as well as a
retail corner with unique EA merchandise for sale.
Aside
from the booth on the show floor, EA will be running an Xbox 360
sponsored gaming lounge at the Hilton
San Diego Gaslamp Quarter Hotel, across from the San Diego
Convention Center, during the whole show. The “EA Gaming Lounge
presented by Xbox 360” will be open from 2pm until 9pm on Thursday,
Friday and Saturday, and from noon until 5pm on Sunday. Visitors to
this all-access venue will get to see, and play, Dragon
Age: Origins, Battlefield 1943, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and
Valve's Left
4 Dead 2.
“Games
are a powerful force in pop culture and EA’s presence at Comic-Con
proves it. The line-up of titles we’re bringing to the show
demonstrate best in breed action, adventure and RPG interactive
entertainment,” said Mike Quigley, Group Vice President of
Marketing for EA. “Our footprint at Comic-con is designed to give
show-goers hands-on time with the holiday’s hottest titles, and
even give non-registered attendees a chance to get a sneak peek at
the ‘EA Gaming Lounge presented by Xbox 360’.”
Can't
get enough info on EA's upcoming titles? If so, there's more good
news for you, as some members of EA's development teams will be
participating in the following panels as part of the Comic-Con's
conference program:
Thursday
July 23; 12:30-1:30 Dante's
Inferno— Jonathan Knight (executive producer,
EA), Ash Huang (art director), Brandon Auman (writer), Christos Gage
(writer), and Victor Cook (director) talk about the adaptation of
this literary classic into pop culture. They will discuss how they
translated the various aspects of The Divine Comedy into a video
game, an animated feature, and a comic series, where they were
faithful and where they invented, and how each of the mediums
differs. Also get a peak at EA's game in development, and also watch
the world premiere trailer for the animated feature Dante's Inferno
co-produced by EA and Starz Media. Room 8
Friday
July 24; 6:00-7:00 Dead Space
Extraction— Chuck Beaver (Producer), Ben
Templesmith (Illustrator) and Antony Johnston (Writer) will discuss
utilizing the interactive gaming medium to portray emotion in a more
visceral way than books & film traditionally display. Visceral
Games executive producer Steve Papoutsis discusses the implementation
of story and talent into games and the art of crafting a believable,
epic story into this fall's Wii exclusive Dead Space Extraction. Room
2
Saturday
July 25; 2:00-3:00 The
Saboteur — Rethinking the WWII Gaming Genre—
Pandemic Studios lead designer Tom French and art director Chris Hunt
discuss how historical events served as the foundation for their
upcoming action sandbox game The Saboteur, who the Saboteur
is, and how the innovative combination of game design and artistic
style were employed to develop a unique experience. Room 2
Sunday
July 26; 3:15-4:15 Army
of Two: The 40th Day—
BridgingVideo
Gameswith Comics. In this panel Reid
Schneider
(Executive Producer - Army of Two) and Alex
Hutchinson
(Creative Director - Army of Two) will discuss how they have been
working with comic artists to show players the consequences of their
moral choices throughout the game, and how the in-depth involvement
of these artists in the production of Army of Two changes the feel of
the game. Room 6A
Details
on Electronic Arts' games that will be shown at the San Diego
Comic-Con:
The
ultimate two-man private military team of Salem and Rios return in
ARMY OF TWO: THE 40th DAY, where they
must fight to survive a carefully orchestrated series of catastrophes
that are dragging the city of Shanghai to the brink of disaster. The
game has been built from the ground up with a focus on an incredible
cooperative experience. A bigger playbook of features and a new
arsenal of co-op moves are available to both players to perform at
any time, opening up fresh strategies and choices. The result is a
bigger, deeper, more organic and immersive co-op experience that lets
players put their best two-man tactics to use whenever and wherever
they want.
Specializing
in online vehicle warfare since 1942 -- In Battlefield: Bad
Company 2, DICE brings its best-in-class online vehicle warfare
to a spectacular new level. By pushing destruction to new heights and
delivering a host of land, sea and air vehicles, players will
experience all-out-warfare like never before. Whether
its intense battles online or in the single player campaign, players
must use every weapon and vehicle at their
disposal to survive and conquer. This unprecedented action unfolds on
the battlefield to bring a new level of excitement to vehicular
warfare never before experienced in a modern warfare action game.
Battlefield
1943 is a critically acclaimed download-only
game that delivers endless hours of 24-player First-Person Shooter
action on popular maps inspired by Battlefield
1942. The game will have players
battling over four tropic locations: Wake Island, Guadalcanal, Iwo
Jima and Coral Sea. These maps have now been updated with the DICE
Frostbite engine, providing destructibility to the Battlefield and
leaving players with almost nowhere to hide. Gamers will have the
freedom to compete by land, air and sea as either the US Marines or
the Imperial Japanese Navy. Whether they choose to play the role of a
rifleman crawling through the trenches, a steel-fisted tank
commander, or a dog fighting ace pilot, gamers will have the power to
rule the Battlefield.
·
Platforms – Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC
·
Ship Date – Download Now on Xbox LIVE
Marketplace and PlayStationNetwork
From
the mind of Tim Schafer and Double Fine Productions comes Brütal
Legend, a 3rd person action game starring Jack Black
as the ultimate roadie Eddie Riggs. Rich in combat, imagery and
storytelling, Brütal Legend delivers lighter-flicking fun
sure to melt your face off.
·
Platforms – Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
·Ship date – Rocktober 13th in North America,
Rocktober 16th in the UK and Europe
From
Visceral Games, award-winning creators of last year’s
critically-acclaimed Dead Space, comes one of 2010’s most
highly anticipated 3rd person action adventure games,
Dante’s Inferno. Based on part one of Dante Alighierei’s
classic poem “The Divine Comedy,” EA’s Dante’s Inferno
takes gamers on an epic adventure through Dante’s nine circles of
hell – limbo, lust, gluttony, greed, anger, heresy, violence, fraud
and treachery. The game features a highly responsive, addictive
combat system, which players will need to take Dante through a
gauntlet of unimaginable evils as he fights to recapture the soul of
his beloved Beatrice.
From
Visceral Games comes Dead Space Extraction, the thrilling
prequel to last fall’s award-winning Dead Space, built from
the ground up exclusively for the Wii. In Dead Space Extraction,
gamers will experience the panic before the terror through the eyes
of a handful of space colonists desperately struggling to escape from
a horrific infection on the Aegis VII mining colony. The game
introduces Lexine, a new heroine in the Dead Space universe,
and it quickly becomes clear that protecting her may be the crew’s
only hope for survival in one of the most cinematic action-horror
game experiences ever made for the Wii.
Award-winning
RPG developer, BioWare invites players to experience their deepest
RPG to date. For thousands of years, the Grey Wardens have been the
guardians of the land. Now with an ancient evil on the rise again, it
is up to players to unite the shattered lands and slay the corrupted
dragon known as the Archdemon. In Dragon Age: Origins, players
must make ruthless decisions and be willing to sacrifice their
friends and loved ones for the greater good of mankind.
·
Platforms – PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3
·
Ship Date – October 20, 2009 (North America), October 23, 2009
(Europe)
G.I.
JOE The Rise of Cobra for all major video game consoles features
an exclusive storyline that picks up where the live-action movie,
from Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment, in association
with Hasbro, leaves off, allowing players to re-create and re-live
the greatest moments from the film, cartoon series and action figure
toy line. The game offers 16 playable characters – four of which
are unlockable COBRA characters – each with unique abilities and
weapons. Adding to the adrenaline rush is an intense single-screen
co-op mode allowing two players to easily unite as a team in a
classic struggle between good and evil to defeat the powers of COBRA.
·
Platforms – Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii, PlayStation 2, PSP,
Nintendo DS and mobile devices
·
Ship Date – August 2009
·
ESRB Rating – E10+ for Nintendo DS; T for console and PSP
Valve’s
Left 4 Dead 2 is the sequel to the best-selling, critically
acclaimed co-operative multiplayer smash hit, Left 4 Dead. Set at
roughly the same time as the original Left 4 Dead, players
assume the role of 4 new “Survivors” as they are lead through the
southeastern region of the US – from Savannah, Georgia thru the
bayou country, and climaxing in New Orleans’ French Quarter.
Introducing melee weapons, new zombies and advanced technology --
such as the AI Director 2.0, which procedurally changes weather
effects, world objects and pathways, in addition to tailoring the
experience to match the players’ performance - Left 4 Dead 2
promises to be one of the top game releases of 2009.
Fight,
climb, and race your way through a uniquely stylized version of
Nazi-occupied France in Pandemic Studios upcoming action sandbox game
The Saboteur. Meet Sean Devlin, the daredevil hero of The
Saboteur – a street-tough Irish racecar driver turned
resistance fighter in 1940s Paris, where the women are sexy and the
action is epic.
Warhammer
Online: Age of Reckoningfeatures
revolutionary Realm vs. Realm conflict that will provide players with
an engaging battleground for years to come. Available now for PC, WAR
is
rated “T” for Teen by the ESRB. For more information about the
game and to download the 10-day free trial, visit
www.warhammeronline.com.