Blog Archives
Battlefront II Reducing Hero Prices, Keeping Loot Box Based Progression
A little over 24 hours after its community team scored the worst received comment in Reddit history, EA and DICE have responded to the criticism of the cash-grabbing practices in Star Wars: Battlefront II by announcing changes to the pricing of the unlockable hero characters in the game.
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EA Tries to Defend Battlefront II, Gets Most Downvoted Comment in Reddit History
Gamers have been vocally opposed to the industry’s move to introduce more microtransactions and loot boxes into games, especially when they can upset the balance of a competitive multiplayer experience.
This battle between the gamers opposed to constant and unbalanced microtransactions and publishers who are putting millions in their pockets through said microtransactions has come to a head in the run up to Star Wars: Battlefront II. EA’s defense of their progression through loot box acquisitions and the advantage of paying to progress was so bad that it is the most disliked comment in the history of Reddit.
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Battlefield 1 Open Beta Impressions: Back to the Future
The fifth entry in the main Battlefield franchise and the thirteenth full game with the Battlefield name is the World War I themed Battlefield 1. While the name is confusing, DICE is moving forward with the franchise by going back in time and using lessons from Battlefront and Battlefield 4 & Hardline to improve their latest effort.
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Titanfall 2 Not Part of EA Access Trial and Discount Program
Very quietly, EA has amended the terms of its EA / Origin Access programs on Xbox One and PC to make a major exclusion. EA has explicitly omitted Titanfall 2 from the EA / Origin Access program which means that the game won’t be available to Access subscribers prior to the game’s release in October.
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Mass Effect 3: Omega DLC Review: Tell the World I’m Coming Home
The Mass Effect 3 Omega DLC was an interesting topic of discussion before its release. While most Mass Effect fans loved Aria T’Loak, the overlord of the Omega space station, would doing a mission with her as a squadmate be worth the $15 that BioWare was charging? When it was released Lair of the Shadow Broker was the most expensive piece of Mass Effect 2 DLC but Omega set a new record price for BioWare DLC. That forced the comparison with Shadow Broker in terms of quality and value whether that was BioWare’s intention or not. Could ME3: Omega live up to the legacy of LotSB? Read the rest of this entry
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Mass Effect 3: Leviathan DLC Review: The Case Book of Detective Shepard
Two months after they released the Extended Cut DLC, BioWare released their second single-player DLC mission for Mass Effect 3. The Leviathan DLC promised to look at the history of the Reapers. The new mission takes the game for a dark and eerie turn over its three-hour play time for the price of $10. Those numbers put it right in line with Mass Effect 2’s Lair of the Shadow Broker but can ME3’s first post-launch single-player DLC stand up to the epic Shadow Broker DLC? Read the rest of this entry
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Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut: An End, Once And For All?
The immediate aftermath of the release of Mass Effect 3 was an absolute PR disaster for BioWare and EA. The original ending to Mass Effect 3 caused a massive sh*tstorm of unprecedented proportions among gamers. Many gamers put hundreds of hours into one Commander Shepard and some had thousands of hours and well over $200 invested in the series overall and were given an inconclusive ending that left gamers confused rather than feeling anything else. In order to save face, BioWare spent the next three months scrambling together an alternate ending, called Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut, to fix the problems people had with the final twenty minutes of ME3.
Today, I examine the new scenes that BioWare has added to Mass Effect 3 in the Extended Cut to determine if they have solved the problems most had with the original ending. Read the rest of this entry
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Mass Effect 3 Review: All’s Well that Ends Well
The summer vacation (though I’m not actually on summer vacation) series of game reviews ends with Mass Effect 3. Going into this game four years ago, my expectations were sky-high. I absolutely loved the first two-thirds of the trilogy and there could be no way that BioWare would screw it up, right? Oh, how naive I was. I’m sure we all know about the controversies about Mass Effect 3 by now. The ending did take away from the game but not as much as some would have you believe.
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Mass Effect 2 Review: ME2: Modern Warfare
Three years after the launch of Mass Effect on Xbox 360, the team at BioWare certainly underwent some changes. As Mass Effect was released, Electronic Arts finalized its purchase of BioWare. Coinciding with BioWare’s move from being an independent studio to a branch of EA was a decided change in the design philosophy of Mass Effect 2. While there certainly was far more money put into the game’s production values with vastly improved visuals, the introduction of more orchestral music and a number of big name actors added to the voice cast, the gameplay philosophy was overhauled to make the game less of a classic BioWare RPG and more of a standard third-person shooter.
While Mass Effect 2 was a near complete overhaul of what we played in the original Mass Effect, that doesn’t change the game entirely. It was still Mass Effect but it had a really nice new coat of paint.
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Mass Effect Review: Close Encounters of the Trilogy Kind
If there’s one topic that that comes up on this blog at every available opportunity, it’s Mass Effect. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If I didn’t discover this game after university, I probably wouldn’t still be a gamer today. For some, that would be a good thing since I wouldn’t be pontificating on modern gaming, the business of video games and the quality of games journalism.
Out of university, I played Mass Effect 1 on my laptop and immediately carried straight into Mass Effect 2. I loved this game so much that I played through each game three times for well over 200 hours in total before I started Mass Effect 3. That might even be on the low-end for people who love this franchise. What made me love this game so much that I devoted literally hundred of hours of my life to playing and writing about the franchise. Well, let’s start with the first one. Read the rest of this entry
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