I blow goats at those “village” games, but hey, c’mon… in WI, my dudes would just whine “mommy, the bad orc’s hitting me!” until I went and said “so hit him back you moron” - in later games they actually gasp went and responded on their own.
Just that one change is worth the money.
About EA I hate that it’s
the kind of employer I’d never want to work for,
about the only gaming company that doesn’t let its unsupported, no longer sold, old games go “abandonware” (freeware)
the information on the box isn’t always accurate (by what the box says, I should be able to play SIMS2 on my laptop - but inside, once you’ve ripped it open and can’t return it, it turns out that laptop cards aren’t supported)
the “squeeze another expansion” game (this is also the reason I won’t play Elfquest, for example)
EA, in addition to the aforementioned sins, was founded by a particularly odious shitsack named Trip Hawkins. Trip’s great contribution to the gaming world, now this is like decades ago, was to acquire companies and annihilate their star franchises in an inept attempt to milk some money out of them. Kills on EA’s list include Ultima, Wing Commander, and Might and Magic…basically, all the worst parts of the Bible.
When he was done eating and shitting out every geek’s childhood, Trip went on to invent 3DO and we all know how that turned out. I think he’s developing games for cellphones now.
Let me put it this way: someone s the Microsoft of the gaming industry. Except more evil. And in an induistry where even Microsoft isn’t the Microsoft. They make Oracle look like virgin puppies and kittens.
I had no idea they were so reviled, I suppose its my trend towards Nintendo games over the past few years, my last EA encounter was with Desert/Jungle Strikes and I enjoyed those terribly.
they killed the COMPLETED “thrill kill” game after buying the company that was about to release it, then licensed the game engine out to make the god awful “Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style” rap group fighting game
Back in the day, my son would buy an EA sports game and it would never run right. We never had enough hardware to run the damn thing. No matte how new our computer was, it was never enough.
It got to be a joke with us, in a store one of us would pick up an EA package flip it over to the system requirements and say “Requires more computer than you will ever own”.
You know, in another thread, someone is asking about things that no one seems to like.
No one seems to like the EA “catch-up mode.” I mean, no one. I have never heard anyone say, “you know, it was awesome when I was playing really well and leading the Bengals 17-3, and then Peyton Manning threw interceptions on three straight passes, my kickoff returner dropped the kickoff, and Rudi Johnson somehow broke seventeen individual tackles on his way to the winning touchdown.”
Why do they still include this concept in their programming?
I love Madden, but EA is slowly killing it. Despite tweaking the game play every year, it is essentially the same game. It is impossible to stop the pass and even the worst qb’s play like Joe Montana. There isn’t a single game between two good players that doesn’t end in a ridiculous shoot out. Having played alot in college, that is from someone who was good at defense in Madden.
They also let other errors persist forever. For instance, in franchise mode, there will always be one or two positions that players just don’t get good at. CB is a great example. It will be year 15 and there will be one or two 90+ rated players. This is stuff that could have been fixed 5 years ago.
Instead they add more stupid features like madden cards or whatever ridiculous garbage this year’s version will include. Of course, now that they have all those exclusive licenses there is no reason to improve the product.
My problem has been with the Battle Field series of games. Often times, glaring bugs are found affecting gameplay as well as outright cheating, yet nothing is done by EA in release after release of supposed “bug fixes”
The user community for this game is huge and the voices are easy to hear regarding problems. Rather than fix map glitches or gameplay issues, EA creates a release and throws in a bone like a new map or a new weapon to pacify the mouth breathers. They do this a few times and then release a new entry into the series. Being the sucker that I am, I gladly pay for the next game hoping beyond hope that EA has finally learned a lesson or two.
I worked at 3DO for 7+ years (until it went out of business), and I think you’re being unfair to Trip. I honestly think that when he founded 3DO, he figured “well, I’ve made some money, now I’m going to try to do something that won’t make me rich, but will make this industry I love a better place”. Of course, he failed to do so. But I never got the impression that he was just a money-grubber.
They honestly have nothing better. Now, I don’t specifically blame them for not having this one perfect right off the start of the series, and AI work is notoriously hard. However, being a sports game there’re literally a very limited set of requirements (flat field, only a few “actions,” only about 20 or so actors, virtually no obstacles). Many smaller companies with much less capital have put lots more time and energy into AI development, with rpetty darn good results. Modern computing power makes it much easier than back in the day. EA is just lazy.
So he bought the M&M franchise, the culmination of which was one of the worst CRPGs ever made while flooding the market with HoMM expansions that nobody bought? He milked that cow until bone came out. I misspoke when I credited EA with killing Might & Magic; it was 3DO. Hawkins specialized in acquiring other people’s work and turning it into poorly produced trash. 3DO didn’t change that record, though I have no comment as to the console end of the business. Ultima 8 and 9, MM X…some of the worst abortions produced in the history of the business came from formerly critically-acclaimed studios and brands freshly acquired by him. That’s not unfair; it’s a fact.
I’ll freely credit him with having the vision to realize a niche market and building into it early, and maybe not everything he did turned to shit. The early HoMMs were brilliant. But speaking creatively and production-wise, he was a disaster at EA and he didn’t get better at 3DO.
Maybe I don’t understand the process, then. It would seem to me that they do have anything better - ie, the way the game plays 85% of the time when the “catch-up cheat” isn’t enabled. Just program the game such that the catch-up thing never happens. Where’s the drawback?
I don’t hate EA, but there are a couple things that bother me:
They release too damn many sports games!
Widescreen. Hello EA, why don’t you support widescreen resolutions? I shouldn’t have to edit my shortcut to add stuff like +szx=1650 +szy=1080 to get widescreen.
So many good answers, but let me add that I too am bitter about their mid-90’s reign of acquisition terror. Intellectually I know that the companies holding those great series probably weren’t in the best of shape and the end would have come soon enough but I have a list as long as my arm of series that they gutted with one last game that played like a betrayal of everything the fans of that series loved.
Yes, their AI isn’t all that hot, so they program in “magic powers,” mroe or less. That’s the catch-up mode. The problem is that they all-too-often program t so that you can’t virtually win. If you do well early in the game, abruptly the entire oposing team becomes like Greek Gods descended from the heavens, and you’ll never get another goal while they smash through your defense like tinfoil. Its especially awful in racing games, where an early lead made result in rival cars getting MASSIVE acceleration booths and flying through the track at 400 MPH without the slightest hint of difficulty in turns. :mad:
That’s the definition of innovation, yes. And it’s not impossible. Heck, I thought it was impossible to make a game out of fishing, and within a few weeks of the first Bass Fishing being released it was a top seller.
Certainly there will be a plateau at some point where you just can’t create any new genres, but we definitely haven’t reached that point yet. If anything, the number of genres being released has almost definitely declined in the last decade.
