Tweet
TL
R Go buy classic EA games that are cheap and of excellent quality. Post examples I haven't discussed below. 
I've had a catharsis. With all the backsliding stock prices and negative publicity for the AAA publishers lately, the games news cycle has been pretty doom and gloom. Now I love as much dirty laundry and derision as the next guy/gal. But this is the holiday season. We should be spreading joy and good will. Jeremy has said, in a few videos I believe, that there are plenty of old games to go play and enjoy from the "good ole days" when exploitation of gamers was almost non-existent. Well I figured out the perfect present for our "favorite" publisher.
Yesterday, for some unknown reason, I opened origin on my PC. After opening the library I stopped and stared for a few moments. Lately I've been disgusted any time someone mentions EA. But staring back at me were some of my favorite games of all time. Dragon Age: Origins instantly evoked a sense of nostalgia. Since I've been freshly exposed to, and enamored with, The Witcher 2; I wondered if Dragon Age would stand the test of time as well. Once installed and fired up I began to remember just how well regarded both EA and Bioware were. For good reason. Despite some of the dated character interactions the combat and role-playing were far better than I remember. Admittedly I'm on a newer monitor on ultra settings and in 2009 I was playing on a Dell XPS laptop, using an xbox controller with xpadder. After just a few quests on hard mode my appetite had returned. I've quit playing for the time being but once I finish TW2 I'll surely return and it will never be deleted.
Today when I woke up I had to force myself to ignore the DA:O icon and open TW2. That says a lot. Though after I made some forward progress, I closed the game and opened origin again. As I gazed at the Bad Company 2 cover art again that nostalgia bug bit again. Surely though BC2 must be a "dead game". The single player was an after thought unlike today's Battlefield. There's no way I could have the same luck twice. Boy was I wrong. There are more than a handful of servers still supported with various communities/discords/TS and skype. The server variation is perfect. The unbelievably mixed mess of hardcore and normal, Vietnam and classic, rush and conquest. These days I think a lot of us are not willing to get attached to a multiplayer game because of the risk of it "dying". To think this game is not only surviving but thriving is incredible. Not only did I get the same rush in conquest on Panama Canal. My 13 year old was impressed enough to want to play it. He couldn't believe that a game from 2010 had such "good graphics". I'm not paraphrasing here. Those are the exact words out of his mouth. After a few matches and real life tugging at my trousers again I lamentably close the game.
This publisher has been just utter trash for the past few years. Do not buy any of their new products that aim to take financial advantage of player's weaknesses. However, In the interest of the holiday season I urge you, dear masochistic reader who has humored me thus far, to visit an online vendor for a digital or boxed copy (if you can wait) for some of the best games ever made. Hell, there are far more than just these two examples of ways that you could give money to a company that has employees with families this holiday; not for the exploitative "garbage" that they've produced recently, but for the gleaming gems that many younger players have never experienced. Have a merry Christmas, Chaunukah, Kwanza, Winter Solstice or whatever pagan excuse you use to dance naked around a wide monitor.
P.S. Maybe even go buy some old EA sports games that don't contain microtransactions! LOL
R Go buy classic EA games that are cheap and of excellent quality. Post examples I haven't discussed below. I've had a catharsis. With all the backsliding stock prices and negative publicity for the AAA publishers lately, the games news cycle has been pretty doom and gloom. Now I love as much dirty laundry and derision as the next guy/gal. But this is the holiday season. We should be spreading joy and good will. Jeremy has said, in a few videos I believe, that there are plenty of old games to go play and enjoy from the "good ole days" when exploitation of gamers was almost non-existent. Well I figured out the perfect present for our "favorite" publisher.
Yesterday, for some unknown reason, I opened origin on my PC. After opening the library I stopped and stared for a few moments. Lately I've been disgusted any time someone mentions EA. But staring back at me were some of my favorite games of all time. Dragon Age: Origins instantly evoked a sense of nostalgia. Since I've been freshly exposed to, and enamored with, The Witcher 2; I wondered if Dragon Age would stand the test of time as well. Once installed and fired up I began to remember just how well regarded both EA and Bioware were. For good reason. Despite some of the dated character interactions the combat and role-playing were far better than I remember. Admittedly I'm on a newer monitor on ultra settings and in 2009 I was playing on a Dell XPS laptop, using an xbox controller with xpadder. After just a few quests on hard mode my appetite had returned. I've quit playing for the time being but once I finish TW2 I'll surely return and it will never be deleted.
Today when I woke up I had to force myself to ignore the DA:O icon and open TW2. That says a lot. Though after I made some forward progress, I closed the game and opened origin again. As I gazed at the Bad Company 2 cover art again that nostalgia bug bit again. Surely though BC2 must be a "dead game". The single player was an after thought unlike today's Battlefield. There's no way I could have the same luck twice. Boy was I wrong. There are more than a handful of servers still supported with various communities/discords/TS and skype. The server variation is perfect. The unbelievably mixed mess of hardcore and normal, Vietnam and classic, rush and conquest. These days I think a lot of us are not willing to get attached to a multiplayer game because of the risk of it "dying". To think this game is not only surviving but thriving is incredible. Not only did I get the same rush in conquest on Panama Canal. My 13 year old was impressed enough to want to play it. He couldn't believe that a game from 2010 had such "good graphics". I'm not paraphrasing here. Those are the exact words out of his mouth. After a few matches and real life tugging at my trousers again I lamentably close the game.
This publisher has been just utter trash for the past few years. Do not buy any of their new products that aim to take financial advantage of player's weaknesses. However, In the interest of the holiday season I urge you, dear masochistic reader who has humored me thus far, to visit an online vendor for a digital or boxed copy (if you can wait) for some of the best games ever made. Hell, there are far more than just these two examples of ways that you could give money to a company that has employees with families this holiday; not for the exploitative "garbage" that they've produced recently, but for the gleaming gems that many younger players have never experienced. Have a merry Christmas, Chaunukah, Kwanza, Winter Solstice or whatever pagan excuse you use to dance naked around a wide monitor.
P.S. Maybe even go buy some old EA sports games that don't contain microtransactions! LOL
Comment