Continue Play's Jay Adams takes a look at Dungeon Keeper Mobile, EA's atrocious re-imagining of a classic franchise, designed to exploit players and make them spend as much money as possible.
EA is known for publishing some of the biggest games in the industry. From Star Wars to FIFA the company has a lot of highly-acclaimed IPs to work with. However, EA's brand has taken a sharp turn over the years and delivered some extremely dishearting games. Here are the top 5 worst EA published games.
Ah lot of those IPs could have been turned into great games but were otherwise ruined by EA.
Battlefield 4 is one of THE best shooters out there and number 1 Battlefield among with bad company. Putting that game just for the shitty launch problems is a clear invalid article for me riddle by stupidity.
The Simpsons license has so much potential and you could create some interesting and fun games out of it (see Simpsons hit & run + The Simpsons Game) but they are making fuck you money off of Tapped Out so no chance there.
Surprised me how well Hit & Run has aged as well. Despite it's numerous bugs it's still a fun and relaxing experience
Kinda funny that EA has a lot of trash games but the article managed to put 2 of the best games they have in it...talk about "beauty is in the eye of the beholder".
Tapped out is the best style of game for the Simpsons because it gives you more of what we like: the comedy. Licensed games don't work when you shoehorn unrelated styles of play into a license, like all the other Simpsons games.
Seriously this writer doesnt know how to play Tapped Out and all they are doing is pulling on the "duh I'm on the side of the consumer" crap.
If you knew anything you would know what to do to continuously play Tapped Out. You have to plan your actions according to time frame. Do the seconds/minutes long tasks and go up from there. Then start the long tasks when You put your phone away.
It's really simple. Yes the game has microtransactions but it never once tries to fool you and they don't spam you with the option and the game has NO ADS.
oh but of course leave out all the great things about the game because that just wouldn't fit your " duh I'm pro consumer" narrative.
Goddamn amateur.
Timothy of Attack of the Fanboy digs a little deeper into the idea that micro-transactions that hasten character progression are for the gamer – that the promise that games like Assassin's Creed Syndicate aren't harmed by micro-transactions isn't necessarily true.
Look at it this way, games have cost $60 US since the 1990s and in some cases cost even more. That doesn't even figure in inflation. Moreover, games cost infinitely less to develop. Crysis and Assassin's Creed 2 cost $20 million to produce, Crysis 3 cost $66 million and AC 4 cost $100 million after all the porting and remastering was finished. That happened in less than a decade. Crytek is in financial disarray and a few years ago Ubisoft swung to a loss. These are businesses, so what will it be people? Everyone will whine 100× more if they raise the prices. If anything all this article does is play on the ignorance of people who have only gamed since the 360 and PS3. Research financial realities for once. Development is inherently risky and AAA even more so.
Corporate apologism.
There is NO reason why games have to cost $100 million.
Why should gamers need to foot the bill (or pay the backend) for expenses they didn't ask for?
In the case of Star Citizen, gamers specifically asked for an AAA PC exclusive that cost $100 million so they literally are footing the bill for it from top to bottom.
In every other case was it necessary for games to cost $100 million with more than half of it going toward marketing? Why should gamers have to pay exorbitant microtransaction fees to cover said marketing costs?
Also, the inflation figure is just wrong. Cost of tools have gone down and not every game costs $100 million to make. There are also asset stores and modular design toolkits available to drastically cut costs.
The only reason it would cost $100 million to make a game these days is because the studio wants to compete with Hollywood.
How about instead of gouging consumers with microtransactions the publishers take a book out of the indie sector by cutting costs? How about they get creative with art (like Hello Games cutting down on art assets by having procedural math algorithms generate most of it)? How about they NOT hire Hollywood actors that bloat the budget? How about they not go for licensed material that can cost them anywhere between $20 to $100 million?
Indie devs are knocking it out of the ballpark without charging $60 and without tacking on needless microtransactions. If indies can do it multi-billion dollar corporations can do it.
Because all the games AAA games people buy demand the R&D. People complain about graphics but fact is to make games look that good and be that big you need big budgets. It's like movies, modern blockbusters literally cannot happen without the massive budgets.
I'm fine with the state of mt's for now as I'm only an sp gamer, so I simply don't partake. If the few people willing to part with their dollars for cosmetics make up the difference in dev cost then that's cool because it doesn't affect me. The only thing is that it's a slippery slope & I feel like if we give an inch, some devs may take a mile and start gimping everything across the board and locking meaty portions behind a paywall. When that starts happening I feel like gamers have the right to stand up against it.
I also agree with some of WilliamUsher's points because at the end of the day, we shouldn't have to foot the bill when devs have poor resource management. Look at movie ticket prices, they rarely go up and in small towns you have been able to buy a ticket for under $10 bucks for decades now. Meaning that somehow that industry has found a way to combat inflation, so games should really be no different. No one said game development or any creative endeavor was easy, and managing resources is a big part of that. This is an issue worth keeping an eye on, even if mt's don't effect you today, they may very well sooner rather than later, so I personally applaud devs that are crafty enough to create worthwhile experiences inside that $60 package instead of pulling bits & pieces out to maximize profits. If we honestly want to offset some of the dev costs, maybe executives should be making shorter salaries, hard to justify cutting salaries for the actual developers & nickel and diming consumers while executives are pulling down 10s of millions of dollars in yearly salaries before benefits & bonuses.
Good point, but I highly doubt micro-transactions are covering the $40 million cost increase.
Firstly, base price has gone from $60 to $70 in many places, and development costs also gone down in conjunction with better technology.
As far as I can tell the games that already make the most money (Destiny, CoD, etc) are the ones with the most micro-transactions, which spells greed to me.
I'm fuckin glad I was able to play video games during a time where I paid for a video game and that's it end of story now I have wait for the fuckin ultimate editions to get a complete game and not have to be ripped off by paying $60 for a game then another $15 for an expansion and then another $15 for an expansion o then another $5 if I want that cool looking skin for my gun or car. I'd rather wait a few months to get the ultimate edition for a flat fee of $60 then to end up paying over $100 for a game in 7 months then get suckered into doing it again because an incomplete sequel gets announced sucks for the new generation of gamers
Except during the PS One/PS2 era were games were cheaper on consoles and PC. Plus don't forget that games during that era came with free unlockables, mini-games, alternate endings, map editors, etc. Games like the 2k sports were $20.00 brand new, everquest around $40.00 for PS2 brand new. On PC games are cheaper, why due to no competition among retailers. So no its console gamers that willingly accept these anti-consumer practices.
@GreetingsfromCanada I agree if this is what keeps the base price of games at $60 I'm all for it.
I think Resident Evil 4 was the last good game to show this compared to what Capcom would do now
We had
Resident Evil Main Mode
Costumes
Mercenaries
Extra Cutscenes if we did something different.
Extra Modes
Unlockable weapons
Assignment: Ada
Separate Ways
Ada's Reports
Can you imagine buying some hyped games of this gen for 80 bucks. I mean 60 dollar Asscrud unity was a burn. But if I had paid anymore than that I would be full of nerd rage.
Until publishers and developers are doing all they can to push out the best possible games consistently, with less need for day one patches, I can't get behind a rate hike.
Early Access the GAMER INVESTS ON A VIDEOGAME PROYECT not buy a game. Meaning gamers publish the game not buy the game.
Chris Penwell from BagoGames writes: I get it. The install base is huge on smart phones. In fact, the Entertainment Software Association claims that 53% of American households who own a gaming system play on a smart phone with a 15% increase of smartphone and wireless device use in 2012 alone. It's worrying, and cell phone gaming alongside free-to-play has been behind the likes of micro-transactions and in-game currency within modern games.
I don't. The two greatest banes to smartphone games is that they are far too reliant on a freemium/f2p micro transaction model. Its rampant in the market and goes to show the overall intent of the smartphone gaming scene. Its become normal to have that crap in there games and that nonsense is leaking into the console market. I do not like the idea of having a cashier living in my pocket. Once I put money down for that game I NEVER want to see them again until a sequel comes out. Being constantly teased with things in the game locked behind a paywall is immersion breaking and I cant stand that shit.
The second issue is that there are no tactile buttons on the hardware. The device is a phone first and everything else second. I dont want to play games on hardware that sees it as an after thought. If I have to buy an entirely separate peripheral just to play a game properly then that just tells me that they never thought about it seriously from the start.
There are a "handful" of games on smartphones that show good quality. They have pretty cutscenes and high definition 3d models. But their ultimate potential is truncated by being on hardware that isn't specifically made for gaming. Controls just aren't as responsive period. You can never play Ninja Gaiden/DMC/Bayonetta on a Smartphone the way you can on a Vita let alone a ps2/3.
And because of these reasons I don't bother thinking about smartphone games.
I love it. I really truly do. I play android games on my Nvidia Shield all the time. The emulators are top notch and there are some quality games out there. Now I say some good games. There are a Lot of garbage apps to soft through, but lots are worth the effort. Some gems that come to mind; half life 2, KOTOR, Gta:SA, bards tale, Reaper, and of course Conduit.
Edit: I should really reiterate how great the psp emulator is. I love monster hunter and ufc on the go.
Funny how you say the best games come from consoles or PCs.
I think it only proves the level of quality that consoles have versus Android\IOs games.
I have a phone which basically just can be used to talk or text.It's quite old and not fancy.
So that's my background on that when I say "I don't like this rise of mobile gaming at all, infact I hate that it has become so popular and makes people stupid with too simple games"
So in a nutshell I hate what I don't really know. =)
