The actual concept of an EA playground is one of the most wonderfully absurd things we’ve heard of in a while: a kind of compendium of EA games collected together in the style of a theme park.

How excited you get by this prospect depends entirely on your age, because this one is aimed squarely at sticky-fingered youths. But there’s no doubting it has a certain pizzazz. The minigame that we’re most looking forward to is Tetherball - the game that everyone loves until the ball swings right into your front teeth - which seems a logical infantilization of Wii Sports Tennis. Even the RC car races, we’d wager, might be quite a laugh, taking place as they do over the course of the entire playground. On the DS, things get a bit more touchy-feely and - predictably - a lot more blow-until-you-feel-ill-y.

Above: Check out the Wii screenshot for the new EA Playground game

Details are still fairly quiet on the EA Playground front, but for what it is, it seems to do the trick well enough. There’s every chance it’ll be amusing enough to draw in the lurking snouts of curious nearby parents.

June 20, 2007