When people think up games for lists such as out 7 best games of the 7th generation (or 7 For 7 for short), they think of game of the year winners or critically acclaimed blockbusters. But how many of these lists include games that were just wildly popular and genre redefining?
Rock Band was probably never really in contention for a major game of the year award but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a big game for the current console generation. The mark of a game being among the best isn’t just what the critics think but what the gamers think. I’m hard pressed to think of anyone who didn’t love playing Rock Band.
Are you looking forward to playing EA’s latest Need for Speed game, Rivals, in 1080p at 30 FPS? Settle down, PS4 users. I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to the folks who are picking up the game on PC. Reports suggest that not only will the console version of NFS:Rivals run at 30 FPS but the PC version will be locked to 30 FPS too.
The legal and public relations teams at EA and BioWare aren’t going to be happy but pre-alpha footage of Dragon Age: Inquisition recorded from a screen at DigiExpo 2013 has found its way to the internet.
The video gives us a reasonably good look at the visuals of the game, some questing and some combat. Watch it soon because I don’t expect EA or BioWare to leave this up for long.
I know more than one person does the reviews at IGN but I still like to have a laugh at box quotes proven wrong. Battlefield 4 promoted itself with an IGN quote saying that it blew CoD: Ghosts out of the water. Then the actual reviews come out and…
By the way, BF4’s current-gen console score was only 8.0/10. That’s an even bigger win for CoD.
Those of you hoping for a big budget free-to-play real-time strategy game that could rival the big RTS games out on the market will have to wait a little longer. EA announced this week that they were cancelling the in-development F2P RTS Command & Conquer and closing its developers Victory Games.
Just when you thought that the next-gen console launches would be the gaming event of the year to bankrupt you, yesterday happened. We had the releases of WWE 2K14 and Sonic Lost World (coverage soon) and the current-gen launches of Battlefield 4 and Assassin’s Creed 4. We’ll be covering the next-gen versions of those games when they come out (I haven’t decided if I’ll break-up critics roundups between PS4 and XB1 later) but for now, we have the current generation editions of these games to cover.
One of this year’s most interesting battles will be the sales duel between spunkgargleweewees as Battlefield 4 and CoD: Ghosts are out within a week of each other this year. The first one up is BF4. While nobody expects the current-gen version of the game to be as good as the next-gen or PC builds of the game, the consensus is that the multiplayer portion of the game is great and the single-player is as underwhelming as usual. However, I don’t think you’re buying a modern military shooter for the story. Unless you’re buying Spec Ops: The Line. That game was fantastic.
SimCity 4 has long had a healthy modding community. The game might be ten years old but modders were still making new content for the game into this year, even with the release of this year’s SimCity. This is thanks in part to a fairly open attitude toward modding by Maxis.
However, EA isn’t planning to be as open to full-scale modding when it comes to SimCity 2013. The first draft of their user-generated content (modding) guidelines are going to put some tight limits on what modders can do.
People looking forward to the next installment of EA Sports’ annual college football franchise will just have to do the annual roster update themselves. EA has cancelled next year’s edition of EA Sports College Football (formerly NCAA Football) and may be cancelling the franchise altogether as a result of player likeness lawsuits and licensing withdrawals by the NCAA and some of it member conferences.
There aren’t that many surprises in the games industry any more but EA certainly caught people off guard with their choice of a new CEO. Andrew Wilson, the current Executive Vice President of EA Sports and EA’s Origin digital distribution client and store, has been named Electronic Arts’ new Chief Executive Officer.
I think I gave away the kicker to the article in the headline but it’s too good to pass up. In a recent interview with industry publication MCV, EA Games Executive Vice President Patrick Soderlund addressed the criticism that EA is just recycling the same old intellectual property every year. Soderlund contends that EA is currently working on at least six new IPs and isn’t planning to stop developing new franchises.
However, Soderlund’s idea of what constitutes a new intellectual property is different that what the rest of the world considers to be a new idea.
et geekera 