EA Play Live 2021 - Rundown

Well, I’d have had this rundown on Friday, but it was not a fun show with great pacing. That was at best, EA doing what EA does best, give you something interesting then follow it up with live service crap. So, shall we get into it with the pre-show?

I honestly don’t know what a Japanese Breakfast is, and that’s saying something given the number of these shows that roll out “Japanese Breakfast” and I still look puzzled. Anyway, whatever it is, there was a woman there promoting it and The Sims 4: Cottage Living: Featuring Japanese Breakfast. I say promoting, she was making a noise and did the almost swearing before a cut from the footage joke that got old in 1973. I’d have liked to have seen footage of the actual game though, it is a shame they didn’t agree.

Next up we got the world’s two most boring presenters, sitting down. It ties into it somehow, so I’ll say it: Former F1 commentator and lovely man Murray Walker, would tell current commentator Martin Brundl, when he joined the team, to always stand. That way, you have energy. These two useless plods sat there and bored the tears off of me. I don’t know why we needed a 15-minute pre-show for a 40-minute main show, but here we were.

The pre-show (for the most part) was a reminder of all those things you’ve already seen, if you care about them. Such as a FIFA trailer, Lost in Random, lore trailer for Seer who’s coming to Apex Legends, oh and F1 2021. This included two Americans feigning excitement for the FIFA announcement they are talking about, and drumming up faux enthusiasm for F1’s current season without any details. This entire pre-show was a waste of time, unless you really wanted to see the “Here are developers talking about how happy they are at EA, please don’t abuse them!” segment.

Onto the show proper. You get a wrestler with a YouTube Gaming channel who is standing up and can fake just about anything. I just wish he had Francesca with him. Anyway, that’s enough about wrestling, Codemasters needed another recap (apparently) to remind you that they make driving games and nothing but that. All of which was a ruse to make you think it was just EA welcoming them into the EA banner. Turns out GRID is getting another game in the series.

GRID: Legends is a story-heavy driving tournament game set against the GRID backdrop. In it, you’ll be driving everything from hypercars, open-wheel racers, and even big-rigs to prove your dominance as the best driver in the world. It looks like every underdog tale, with conflict arising from verbal spats blowing up into an attempt to do one of the worst-looking wrestling moves, but that’s always the case. It is set to release in 2022 and will be coming to PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, and PS5. You may even notice Ncuti Gatwa from Netflix’s Sex Education.

Moving on we got a trailer for Apex Legends: Emergence, which was so poorly explained I thought it was some kind of new game mode. Nope, instead of Season 1-? EA decided to start naming them, like they were expansion passes. Apex Legends: Emergence will bring a whole new mode in Ranked Arenas, which I am told is breaking from the battle royale mode, and the new legend named Seer. Seer is a young fella that was cursed at birth and can now track down enemies throughout the game with his abilities. I think you can tell my lack of enthusiasm is real for Apex Legends. Nice trailers, nice new legends, gameplay trailer coming today, with Emergence and Seer coming to the game August 3rd.

Oh, I do love Zoink Games, they just understand oddly how to make something both gothic, grim but inviting and charming at the same time. Lost in Random is their latest game, which was shown during the showcase. It turns out it is just around the corner. The gameplay trailer shown was displaying the dice and card combat, touching on the idea of board-game themes in the game. Then at the end, Austin/Xavier put out the feelers for a possible release date? September 10th you’ll be playing as Even trying to save her Odd sister on PC, PS4, Xbox One, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, or Nintendo Switch. I can’t wait!

As I said, they’ll give you something nice, then give you a prolonged live service game that very few people are seemingly talking about. Yes, Mike enjoyed Knockout City, but I can honestly say I’ve not heard anyone really exude excitement for it following that first week. To a lesser extent, it is much like Fall Guys, as the first wave hit and since then the side has only been tempered. Nonetheless, Season 2 of Knockout City is around the corner, as the movie-themed season drops tomorrow, Tuesday the 27th of July.

Getting back to something with excitement, the big one was finally spoken about, the penultimate announcement, Just Cause 5. No, I mean “Battlefield 2042 – honest, we didn’t look at Just Cause 4 and steal everything from that” which is a long title so I can see why they’d only go with Battlefield 2042. We got a bit of what you’d expect, a clip reel that looks like it was edited in a room with a punching bag on a lazy Susan with half a billion razor blades embedded in it. I don’t understand using clips from reaction videos/the recent propensity for the fake YouTuber face-cam “gameplay” thing.

Nonetheless, other than showing that stupid things will happen in this Battlefield, as they do in all Battlefield games, it was to set up another announcement. Battlefield Portal is an ARMA-like settings tweak game mode that allows players to, not level edit exactly, but create strange combinations to the point where it breaches onto the edge of level editing. You can pit modern US forces (for example) against 1942 Nazi soldiers. One example used in the showcase of Battlefield Portal was that very thing, with modern forces being fewer in numbers but with better quality of gear, while the soldiers of 1942 were in greater numbers.

See, this is a great idea, but until I am told that I can play that with AI, I am not all too interested. Yes, you can put hundreds of those bomb disposal robots against one massive tank, but if I have to put up with other people, I don’t care. Battlefield 2042 has given up all pretense that it is serious and I love that, but the multiplayer thing has never been my thing. For others, Battlefield Portal will be a great tool to create madness crossover maps from across a majority of the Battlefield series (including Bad Company) on release.

Finally, and I don’t think it was surprising anyone after a few leaks over the last few months and the code that was teased throughout the showcase for the giveaway. “Itsback” was quite on the nose. Dead Space, the game that is to toilets what a politician is to Twitter, fuel for the fire. Personally, I’ve never been excited by the Dead Space series. I played it once, got a jump scare, and put it down. If I want horror I’ll go for something that is paced well. I don’t understand this endless desire to have something jump out and shout “Boo!” at every opportunity. I say all this to fill out the paragraph, as there isn’t much to say other than it is a remake coming to PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. We just don’t know when.

So, that was their big show of the year. It featured nothing major of substance and yet revealed release dates, new games, and upcoming game modes in new games. If you want to watch the whole show, we’ve linked it down below.