Strategy Informer  

Dead space was the start of the press conference, showing us quite a few things, though none of which haven't been seen before. We did get to see actual gameplay footage against a very fast moving boss, so the photo's taken are exceptionally blurry. The point of the showing was to express Dead Space's limb removal system of combat.

The only thing we did see new was the item menu, which is in game (meaning if you open the menu the game continues playing. So don't expect to get very far with changing weapons slowly or taking your time to decide what to do. This horror shooter is meant to horrify, not be strategic.

Next was Mirror's Edge, a first person platformer that has players interact with the world completely in first person. As a "Runner", players have to traverse the concrete jungle to fulfill whatever mission is on-hand. Mirror's Edge is also one of the prettiest games we've seen to date.

There is still a cloud of mystery about Mirror's Edge, but it looks fascinating. However, like the last first person platformer Breakdown, it may be too much for players to grasp.

Then, of course, was Spore. As if we hadn't seen enough of Spore over the last 2 years, Will Wright got up on stage and pointed out some interesting statistics.

After going over some iPhone material, Bioware showed off Dragon Age: Origins. No gameplay, just a trailer, though I would say that it is still very early.

After going over some iPhone stuff, Bioware came out and showed a trailer for Dragon Age: Origins. It was the first trailer of the game, and no in-game footage was shown. Thus far it looks decent, but more needs to be shown off for us to make a reasonable judgement on the game.

Left 4 Dead had a huge showing as Gabe Newell hit the stage and briefly went over what Valve wants to make out of the game. The biggest thing was the differences in gameplay through the "Director", the in-game management system to ensure the most fun out of the game. It means that when players are injured and short on ammo, they'll be less likely to hit hordes of zombies so they can recover. And vice versa.

While showing this off, there wasn't even time to take a picture of the injured party. Two zombies came out going slowly. The fully armed and able team was a very different story.

Finally, Rage by id was shown off. Yes, id is leaving their long-time home at Activision for a partnership with EA. The first screens of Rage were better than when we saw last year, but the improvement isn't great. We really want to see more of it in the future.

There was also lots of talk about EA sports by (gasp!) Peter Moore, but nothing we saw was exceptionally new. Save for NBA 09's daily-updating player DNA, which changes how all players react based on actual game data provided by real games. That is pretty sweet.

That's all for the EA press conference. Stay tuned to hear more about all these games and more, from EA and other companies.