Introducing EA Origin Access (subscription game service for PC) - $4.99/month

The Game Room
#1

Last year (I believe) EA introduced EA Access for Xbox One. It is a subscription service that allows you to play games placed in a “vault” for as much as you want (and these aren’t indie darlings, these are big games), allows you to play new EA games early (up to a couple of weeks before they officially come out, I believe), and nets you a discount on games and DLC.

Well, they’ve just released this service for PC as well. HEre are the games included int he vault right now:

Battlefield 4
Dragon Age: Inquisition Digital Deluxe
Battlefield Hardline Digital Deluxe
Battlefield 3
SimCity
FIFA 15
Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare
Need for Speed Rivals: Complete Edition
Dead Space 3
Dragon Age II
Dead Space 2
Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition
Dead Space
The Sims 3 Starter Pack
This War of Mine

They typically add games to the vault 7 months after they come out. The entire Dragon Age trilogy alone is worth a year’s subscription, IMHO. You could probably play through it all in a few months too. Missing in action is Mass Effect, hopefully that gets thrown in later this year.

More info at the link: https://www.origin.com/en-us/store/origin-access

What do you guys think? It personally looks like a pretty good investment, assuming you like more than a few EA games.

#2

The offerings here are pretty ‘meh’ from my perspective. There are some quality games there, but I’ve already bought and played them because they’re quality games. They’re only offering complete editions of very old games, so it’s not even like you could subscribe for the purpose of playing a bunch of DLC for a game you already own.

If they were including all of the Sims 3 expansions in this service, I might actually subscribe for a few months - they’re *still *charging twenty bucks a pop for those things and they’re practically ancient by gaming standards at this point.

I’m trying to figure out who the target audience here is. “Do you like games, but not enough to buy them until several years later? Then have we got a deal for you!”

In a gaming environment where more than half the cost of a game is in its DLC, tossing the base product at somebody for free seven months after the fact isn’t a great deal.

#3

It’s not a terrible deal, but it’s nothing I would be interested in.

Most of those games go on sale for around $5 fairly regularly. The multiplayer ones have waning populations and Sim3 is a poor fit. The game is a DLC farm so why wouldn’t you want to own the base game?

However, just because they’re older games doesn’t make them bad games. If you’re going to play a couple Dead Space games in a month you’d be getting your money’s worth (that month, anyway). DA:I is obviously thrown in to sweeten the pot and you could spend a month on that by itself for cheaper than even the sale retail price.

It’s not “great” but I wouldn’t laugh at someone for subscribing, assuming they don’t own most of the titles.

#4

It’s not a bad deal. If you go through 2 games a month (beat them to your satisfaction or play enough multiplayer to get your fill) it’s pretty cheap. I’m not particularly tempted because I own most of the games I’d be interested in playing there already. It’d be more tempting if the games were the complete editions, and not the base versions.

I could see myself subscribing for a couple of months at some point when games I’m interested in enter availability.

#5

I haven’t played Dragon Age: Inquisition yet, and haven’t seen it on a $5 sale. I could maybe see subscribing for a couple of month to get this one.

#6

Of those, I’ve only played Dead Space, which had a great feel to it with my favourite take on zombies in sci-fi, but was more linear than I would have liked. Need For Speed: Rivals and SimCity are games I have not played in genres I do not play, but that didn’t stop me hearing about how poorly executed the final product was.

#7

Dead Space, when I played it on the PC, had about a quarter-second or so delay between using a control and the action being reflected in the game. So it’d be “Left mouse click…quarter second delay…shoot!” It was just barely enough of a delay to be noticeable and to completely ruin the otherwise excellent game. Apparently it was a known problem, and there was a mod that you could install to get rid of the problem, but modding games is too much of a pain in the ass for me to bother with usually.

#8

I had the same issue. As I recall, it could be fixed by turning off VSynch in the graphics options.

(Or turning it on? Anyway, it was a VSynch issue)