On the soft carpet laid out inside the LA Convention Center, Zeus and I just navigated through thousands of smelly humans (myself not excluded) at E3 in order to get to the EA Ignite station. We hopped in line to see what was up with this new, supposedly very impressive engine, and we were quickly ushered through a dark hallway and into the belly of EA's Ignite room.
I'm going to make this a separate paragraph, as I think it's important to single out what I'm writing here: I'm a gamer, if you couldn't tell, but I'm a gamer who likes to call himself ambidextrous. I can switch from PC keyboard/mouse controls to Playstation, to Xbox with no problems. I play all games, from MMOs, to sports games, shooters, RPGs, ultra-realistic shooters like Arma, etc. I literally play everything. Madden is a gaming series that I, for better or worse, buy every single year. And if you follow the series, you know that in 2013, EA switched over to to its Infinity Engine, that was supposed to bring physics to a new level. Well, that didn't go too well, so they are completely reworking everything with Ignite, and it's pretty friggin' unbelievable.
Trust me, this is going to get to EA UFC, but for now, hear me out.
Zeus and I played an NBA Live 14 demo (yes, it's back) that demonstrated the power of Ignite. Basically, you could feel the weight of the player you were controlling. Shifting your momentum was more than just a physics engine tacked on to the game engine, it effected the way you would play situationally, and at what we were told was only a 40% complete build, it played so viscerally these words don't do it justice. This Ignite engine is what's going to be powering all the EA Sports games moving forward, and when shown in EA UFC, it's completely going to change the way we look at fighting games. Physics in gaming used to basically mean basic momentum carried forward, and inertia helped you with bowling through whatever got in the way, but now this engine gives life to every little piece of the body. You feel it when you make a crossover dribble, and when applied to what we saw with EA UFC, it's mind blowing. Seriously, completely mind blowing. It's why the tagline is Feel the Fight. I promise, this is no shill.
As we shuffled into the Ignite room showing off EA UFC, NBA Live 14, Fifa 14 and Madden 25, Zeus and I stepped front and center while Creative Director Bryan Hayes broke down EA UFC and what to expect. We were not allowed to take pictures, we were not allowed to film anything, so we watched his presentation twice in order to retain all of the features and massive amounts of information he rattled off one after another. Basically, EA did the brave thing and showed us stills of why EA MMA was so decidedly last gen, and what Ignite does for EA UFC specifically. It's time for bulletpoints.
Disclaimer: What we saw here was a pre alpha build of EA UFC. It was hands off, but I can assure you, it was gameplay. You're going to have to trust me. On to the aforementioned bulletpoints:
