I had the chance today to take a quick look at three upcoming games from EA. Some of them are hotly anticipated, another we hadn’t even heard about before today.

Need for Speed: Shift

This has to be one of the most anticipated games of the season. Well at least for Chris, our editor. He shut himself in a small room with nothing but red bull and Cheetoes and played Need for Speed: Undercover until his thumbs stopped working. I think he’s going to be out of touch for weeks when he get ahold of Need for Speed: Shift.

This game looks fantastic. While the original specs and screens we saw were less than inspiring. But now that the game is done and real, it’s fantastic. Especially so if you have a 3GS as it has some special graphic taking advantage of the better graphics processor on that device.

Shift has everything you expect in a Need for Speed game. There’s multiple events/tracks, multiple game methods, multiple upgradable cars, etc. The different events and cars are, of course, unlockable as you progress through the career mode.

One big feature that Shift has that the previous Need for Speed didn’t have is multiplayer. While it’s only local and 2 player with Bluetooth and 4 player with Wifi, there are 6 different game methods.

Here are a few more images to hold you over. Need for Speed: Shift will be out soon.

Spore: Creatures

EA announced Spore: Creatures for the iPhone a few months ago. But, they were quiet about it after that. Well, until now. While I don’t really think that Spore: Creatures is much different than Spore: Origins, it does take everything up a few notches. There’s just more of everything as this game is meant to pick up where Origins ended.

More creature customization options. Lots more. I’ve been told there are well over a billion different possibilities from the dozens of creature parts, colors, and abilities that you can add.

Included in the game itself are 4 different and distinct game play zones. Each zone has 5 different levels to travel through while evolving your little Spore.

The one thing that is really different with the game play over the previous Spore game is that ability to either fight or socialize. This can change the way the game progresses and how your creature evolves.

Here are a couple more pictures, Spore: Creatures should be out in January.

The Simpsons Arcade

This one came out of left field. The Simpsons Arcade is an old school arcade fighter set in the Simpsons world of Springfield. Developed under the supervision of one of the writers and featuring the voices of all 6 Simpsons voice actors from the series, this promises to be a fun and very funny fighting game.

You control Homer in this game. There’s an on screen joystick and two buttons that let you perform different attack and defense moves.

You progress through 25 levels set in 6 different environments in Springfield. There are of course a bunch of different weapons to use that you can pick up along the way. There are 6 major bosses and 12 mini-bosses. The final boss battle is said to be epic!

As a Simpsons fan, I’m looking forward to this. I was a little worried when I first heard of this. Lets be honest, there have been some less than stellar Simpsons games over the years. But in my short time with the game I found it to be interesting, well made, and really fun. The Simpsons Arcade will be out soon.