For whatever reason, I can’t stop playing the iPhone version of EA’s Need for Speed Undercover, which is why it’s taken me this long to review it. I can’t say that I’ve ever been a big fan of the console series, but EA nailed it on the head with the handheld port. Everything about this game from the graphics to the cut scenes to the handling of cars is outstanding – but the game isn’t perfect. It’s fun, sure, but it has its hang ups.
The storyline seemed straight out of The Fast and The Furious. At least, I guess it was; I typically jumped ahead during the dialogue and video cut scenes, because that’s just what I do. However, I sat through enough of them to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. In short, you’re an undercover agent looking to infiltrate and bust a car-stealing ring in LA. Like I said, The Fast and The Furious.
Each of the 20 cars handles about the same. Of course, there’s only so much you can do with an accelerometer-based platform, so don’t expect Gran Turismo-like controls. Controls are simple and that’s a testament to how well EA built this game. To steer left or right, you need only tilt your iPhone/iPod Touch accordingly. For an extra bit of speed during a race simply swipe up with one finger for a boost of nitrous oxide.
Trip Hawkins founded Electronic Arts in 1982. Then he left. In 2003 he started a new game development company called Digital Chocolate. In 2009 Hawkins finally realized that the iPhone is useful to game developers, so much so that Nintendo (DS) and Sony (PSP) are “freaking out.” Well!
Considering that, on average, some 40 million people walk through Times Square per year, you’ve got to assume that EA has high hopes for The Sims 3. You don’t spend that kind of money on billboards promoting the game—billboard in Times Square, depending on location, costs in the tens of thousands of dollars per day—without thinking, “Yup, this game will carry us right through Christmas.”
What I’d like to think is that after the DRM debacle with Spore (which Wright recently teased them for, saying “That goes in the category of corporate learning”), golden egg-laying legendary developer Will Wright decided it would be better if he and EA were just friends from now on. EA, you can keep the cassette tapes and that shirt he gave you. Oh, and the rights to all Wright’s old games and partial rights to any new ones. It may be that he just wanted more money, or was disillusioned by the neutering of his baby, Spore, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.
Unless you’re like me and buy all your EA games via Steam, you’ve got some serious DRM. And once you uninstalled the game, you’ve still got DRM. While EA has released a few game specific tools for removing said DRM, they haven’t exactly made it easy have they? Well good news – EA released a tool today that will help you manage the DRM from any game you’ve uninstalled from your system that was released after May 2008.
This news is a few days old if you were following D.I.C.E. last week, but in the off chance you hadn’t heard I thought I’d share the news that EA has announced a sequel to their popular Alice title from 2000. American McGee is back onboard with his Shanghai-based studio Spicy Horse to develop the new game. I dabbled with the first game a tiny bit back in the day and I’m thinking of revisiting it now that a new one will be coming out.
Never waste a crisis, friends. EA CEO John Riccitiello is saying that the recession is essentially pushing the junk off of the gaming store shelves, leaving only the best and brightest games. Debatable, but let’s hear him out.
“We did get fat in too many places. It seemed like anyone who could draw a guy with a gun with a crayon could get funded. At least for EA, we got a little too fat, and a little too reliant on where things were.”
Just a quick heads up that EA’s Wii Fit killer has been dated for May 19th. Nintendo better watch out because Active is only $60 compared to $90 for the Wii Fit. Is anyone going to get this? Pre-order now!
EA Sports Active
If you’re like me, you’ve been a longtime fan of the Tiger Woods games on the Wii but you were disappointed with Tiger Woods 09’s mere incremental upgrades and overly frustrating putting system. If you’re not like me, you probably yelled at me for being down on the game, accusing me of never playing golf in real life and wondering why-oh-why anyone would pay me to write about gadgets for a living. Let’s put all that behind us and wait patiently for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, as it’ll be called, which will feature MotionPlus.
Who saw this coming? We (well, Portugal’s A Bola) brought news last week that EA had signed a deal with Luiz Felipe Scolari, who is Chelsea FC’s manager. Wait, hold on, was Chelsea FC’s manager! Yup, he was just sacked. Sky Sports is freaking out.
Ha! The worst coach in the English Premier League, Chelsea’s Luis Felipe Scolari, has signed a deal with Electronic Arts to be in a Nintendo DS game. No idea when it’s coming out, but EA shouldn’t have a hard time getting Big Phil to its studios. It’s obvious that he’s not busy coming up a Plan B for any of his team’s games.
Remember when we were all excited for like three years when Spore was being developed? I remember watching that first GDC video of Will Wright demoing Spore, and nearly falling out of my chair when he went interstellar. How things have changed.
Not only are EA games going to be released on Steam henceforth—in and of itself a big deal—but the games will be totally free of DRM. It seems the largest video games publisher has learned its lesson, and the hard way: legitimate gamers (that is, non-pirates) want nothing to do with digital rights management.
The video card business pendulum has had its swing into AMD territory, but bit by bit NVIDIA is making its comeback after an embarrassing early last generation. This time it’s not more frames per second, but favorable alliances which are gaining ground for the graphics giant: EA and 2K Games (creators of Bioshock) have both agreed to use NVIDIA’s PhysX technology to drive their physics engines in upcoming games.
Okay, so some big companies licensed some technology. What does that mean for you and me, who are thinking how to get the most gaming performance out of our $150 or whatever? Well, combined with recent performance increases and AMD insolvency, it means buy GeForce. Physics simulation is becoming so standard a feature in games that developers will be relying on hybrid technology like PhysX to make sure their games are running as smoothly as possible. AMD may leapfrog them later, as they did with the 4870, but that’s speculation at this point and what we can say with near certainty is that Bioshock 2 and the next Crysis are going to run best on a GeForce-based system.
Looks like EA Sports is getting into the Wii-based fitness arena with EA Sports Active. It’ll be launching next spring, right about the time you grab hold of your ever-lingering holiday gut with both hands, look skyward, and scream "Whaaaeeeyyyyy?"
While somewhat similar to Wii Fit, EA Sports Active will eschew a balance board-type apparatus in favor of "two specially-designed leg straps that hold the Wii’s Nunchuk controller to track lower body movements, as well as a resistance band to support a number of upper body strength training exercises." Sounds kinky.
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Poor, wretched EA. First they have to make 600 staff walk the plank, and now they’re being sued all over the place. There are a lot of hackles raised by SecuROM’s secondary effects, like disabling certain drives or legitimate software. A commenter pointed out this page, which lists the current lawsuits (there are four) against EA on this subject.
The most compelling one has to be the newest, regarding Spore’s Creature Creator, a free piece of software if you’ll recall in trial form, and an embarassing money grab in retail form. However, even if you got the free version, you got yourself some nice SecuROM DRM included, and I understand that it isn’t even mentioned in the EULA. Copy protection for a free demo? What the hell were they thinking? The other new lawsuit is a little more woolly and probably will come to nothing.
Are these really necessary? Flaming skins for your Line Gun? There are a few worthwhile upgrades, but still.
The first round of DLC for EA’s Dead Space arrives for the Xbox on November 13 and the 20th for the PlayStation 3.
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Really now. I would have expected the Death Star to lay off people before EA would. I guess the Empire had a pretty solid economy, though. It seems that although EA is doing well in the long term, it’s cautious of incurring too much in costs during the downturn. Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll be having Maddens for years to come, but a 6 percent reduction in headcount at something like EA is a serious move. I hope they don’t have make any more like that.
It feels a little weird rooting for the big guy, but let’s be honest: when they make cuts, they’re going to make it to the less profitable sections, i.e. original games with new ideas that don’t sell in the millions. As much as EA gets flak for being a sequel machine, at least they still put out genuinely good stuff every once in a while.
Now, let me make one thing clear. If they made an awesome Nerf game (indeed, if they have already made one), with “dart time,” Nerf shotguns, Nerf arrow sniping, and water ballons, complete with “Nerfalities” and stuff like that… if they made that game, no one would care that it was Nerf because it would just be awesome. I expect, however, that the new Nerf N-Strike is not that game. The Nerf/Wii blaster is a good idea (though I question its durability) and they have the right idea with the real Nerf guns in-game, “over-the-top” action and so on. But with only four players it’s not going to be a Nerf War, and for the money you could get a couple real Nerf guns and start blasting for real.
Wow, the word “Nerf” is in that paragraph ten times. I guess it’s unavoidable. Nerf
The difference between a casual gamer and hardcore gamer seems to be one big grey area these days. The terminology doesn’t exactly convey the same message it used to, but that’s an argument/post for a later time.
We all know the Wii epitomizes casual gaming and it looks like EA wants to change that with a slight variation to the Wii Fit. It won’t make it hardcore, but you won’t be standing on the Wii Fit board looking like a doofus. They actually want folks to be active if they’re going to play the Wii for hours, which I’m all for. Who knows if and when this will make it into consumer’s living rooms, but it’s good to know that EA has acknowledged this huge gap in the market place.
EA Sports executive producer Dave McCarthy told Gamespot this tidbit of news the other day. Read More
