It was a rainy, miserable day in NYC, but I was in good spirits as I walked around the flooded streets without an umbrella. In a little bit I’d be heading to a special EA Press event, one that showcased their upcoming titles. What I didn’t know was that the place going to be set at a bar. I, in my stupidity, thought “Branch” on the invite meant the EA branch. Which is why I was so surprised to see a swanky lounge/bar named Branch when I stepped up to the door. It’s the kind of place that I’d never step foot in otherwise, but hey, they got games here today.

I got in, checked my saturated jacket at the coat check while apologizing to the poor girl handling all the wet materials, and surveyed the place. There was a huge spread of food there, immediately making me regret eating lunch right before. I grabbed a beer (open bar? huzzah!) and made my way to the games.

Nearest to me was Battlefield: Bad Company, which I observed for a bit till a guy came over and offered to show me a demo. The game’s the first in the Battlefield series to be developed for consoles, a first person shooter with a much difference emphasis- mainly because of the single player game. They were showing off the second level of the game, where the objective for you and your three teammates was to get into enemy territory and blow up some fuel tanks. The first thing you’ll notice is that practically everything in the world is destructible. Some enemies were bothering the guy playing the game from the window of a house, so he launched a grenade at it and blew a massive hole in the wall. Awesome. The graphics look fantastic, and whatever you destroy stays that way, even if you die.

I grabbed a controller to check it out for myself and soon died. Damn normal controls! I need me some inverted. I switched it up and did a little better, although in retrospect it wasn’t a good idea to grab a truck full of explosives and charge the enemy base. The controls are familiar to anyone who’s played a FPS before, and you’re able to jump into any vehicle you see and switch positions (from driver to gunner) with the press of a button.

The game’s set during a fictional modern day war, and you’ll have some guys to back you up in your B-Company (Bad Company, get it?)… guys with personalities that will see you through the whole war. You don’t control your teammates, they just do their own thing. Hopefully they’ll help you out more than they did in the bit I played. You can man turrets in your vehicles but your crew won’t help you drive… that’s more for multiplayer.

The multiplayer will be fully featured and support 24 players, who can control vehicles, boats, and helicopters. It looks like a damn fun game, and since I always generally prefer playing by myself, it’s good to see this series try a new direction. There’s no release date just yet, but check their official site out for more.

Like I said, I prefer single player, which is why I was amused that next thing I was grabbed by a guy who wanted to show me Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Let’s go!. I’m not a big fan of MMOs and generally try to stay away from them, but it did look like it was doing some interesting things. There are 3 different races in the game with 2 sides to each. They’re the usual ones you’d expect- Goblins Vs. Dwarfs, High Elves vs. Dark Elves, and the good humans vs. the bad humans. I watched a fella play with the Empire humans, the “good” ones, while he played a Public Quest with some other people in the demo. While you can play the game in the normal MMO way (quests and a main storyline and such), there’s also these Public Quests, which are made for gamers who don’t have 18 hours a day to spend on the game. You can just jump in and play all different sorts of player matches. The guys were having a big battle against each other for loot while I watched. During the game there’s all sorts of random events that can occur, one of which I saw as a group of humans battling each other got attacked by a Giant who stomped into the clearing, pushing aside the trees as he emerged from the forest.

Another nifty feature is the inclusion of an Achievement system of sorts, where you’ll have a journal that tells you everything you’ve achieved in the game. All of these earn you various weapons, armor, and other goodies. It’s a nice way to get people trying different ways to play the game.

They offered me a chance to try out the game for myself and seemed sad when I declined. Just not for me! The game’s hitting Q2, and it looks like a good option for you MMO loving fools. Check their website out for more details.

I wandered around a little more trying to see where to plant my ass next. I saw someone leaving Ninja Reflex, so I jumped on board.

Their plan with the game is to make this one a Brain Age for reflexes. There are 6 different Ninja challenges you can compete in, and I sampled 4 of them in multiplayer combat. I got trounced, sadly, but that’s what happens when you play someone who helped friggin’ make the game. The first game was all about Shruiken, where you had to lock onto characters and throw ninja stars at them by hitting a button and flicking your wrist. You’re not actually hitting real people, it’s these strange portraits that pop up. Besides the enemy ninjas there’s also geishas that appear to thwart your ninja abilities.

Next up was the most entertaining section, where you used chopsticks to catch flies. You grab onto them by pinching the Wii remote (hitting the A and B buttons at the same time) and then drop them into whatever dish is flashing at the time. Some of the flies are colored red and blue, which is also the colors of you and your opponent, so you have to be careful lest you lose points by catching the wrong ones. It’s a really tricky game, and on the ultra high level we also tried you really have to have fast reflexes.

Next up is a somewhat boring Koi-catching game. You control a hand which hovers over a pond and wait for a fish to emerge. The smaller the fish, the more the points. The smaller the fish, the quicker the fish. If you move your hand too fast you’ll scare the fish away, so you have to move carefully and then strike.

Last one we tried was a sword game. Ninjas pop up out of the grass or forests or wherever and try to chop you down. You have to parry their blow and attack yourself. The game didn’t seem to control as well as I would’ve liked, but then again I wasn’t going all out, because some guy with a video camera started filming us playing, and it’s bad enough that I might be seen somewhere swinging the Wii Remote like a katana, nevermind if I was into it.

There were also two other games, one in which you captured fireflies and another where you did something with nunchucks, but I had seen enough.

The fact that they’re openly comparing it to Brain Age shows where
they’re going with it… everyone knows that Brain Age is fun… for
about a week, until it gets boring and you turn to another game. Ninja Reflex is a fun game, but like any other gimmicky Wii game I can see it getting old fast, even if you can play 4 players at once. I wasn’t even that entertained while I was playing it. It’s also coming out on the DS. Here’s the official site.

Turn the page for the really exciting stuff (can you say Spore and Boom Blox?)