Last week’s revelation that EA had acquired the exclusive rights from Disney to develop new Star Wars games was only the first drop in what is likely to be a slow trickle as new information slowly comes to light. Today, our Bothan spies have returned with more news regarding EA’s intentions towards the fabled franchise.

As reported last week, Bioware, DICE and Visceral are the 3 EA studios being granted first crack at the galaxy far, far away. Of those 3 though, it appears DICE is the flyboy who gets to go into the garbage chute first. EA just opened DICE LA (no, my caps lock is not stuck) in, you guessed it, Los Angeles. The studio will be “a key cog” in its Star Wars plans and is located very close to Activision, with a clear purpose:

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After Disney shut down LucasArts, we were all left wondering why would pick up the Star Wars torch and bring new games to the market. Turns out we didn’t have to wait long because earlier this week, Disney announced that Electronic Arts has acquired the exclusive license to make core Star Wars games. Disney will retain the rights to make social and casual games for Star Wars.

EA wasted no time in announcing that DICE, BioWare and Visceral will start making Star Wars titles, presumably due to coincide with the new movies starting 2015. Here’s what EA Labels President Frank Gibeau had to say about this deal:

“Every developer dreams of creating games for the Star Wars universe. Three of our top studios will fulfill that dream, crafting epic adventures for Star Wars fans. The new experiences we create may borrow from films, but the games will be entirely original with all new stories and gameplay.”

So there you go guys, it looks like we’ll be getting Star Wars titles that aren’t just movie tie-ins, but three unique products that have their own story-line and characters. What do you guys think about this? Anyone want to take my bet that Visceral will end up with Star Wars 1313? Go!

Source – StarWars.com

Battlefield might have yielded to Call of Duty when it comes to being the overall king of mutlipayer first-person-shooters, but in my mind, you just can’t beat the crazy action that comes with a typical Battlefield match. Jumping over a tank in a dirt bike and throwing C4 on it, or nailing a helicopter with a well-placed RPG shot: these are things that only happen when a game allows for the type of randomized chaos that Battlefield revels in.

With the recent reveal of Battlefield 4, I thought I’d break down my hopes and fears for the game. While it has been two years since the game proper has come out (or will be by the time 4 drops), the most recent DLC, End Game, just came out. Is it too soon for another Battlefield? What can DICE realistically change in that time? What should they change?

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GDC is going on this week, and apparently Konami and EA were bursting at the seams to announce their games and couldn’t wait for E3 to roll around. Both Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain (a combination of the previously announced Ground Zeroes and, of course, The Phantom Pain) and Battlefield 4 were revealed with accompanying trailers. Metal Gear Solid 5 is just below, with Battlefield 4 after the jump.

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While the writing might have been on the wall for a while, it still came as a bit of a shock this past Monday when John Riccitiello left his position as EA’s CEO. Citing lower than expected financial targets, Mr. Riccitiello’s turn as EA’s CEO will officially be done on March 30, where he will be replaced by Larry Probst (EA’s former CEO from 1991-2007) for the interim. Riccitiello said this about his departure in a letter to the company:

This is a tough decision, but it all comes down to accountability. The progress EA has made on transitioning to digital games and services is something I’m extremely proud of. However, it currently looks like we will come in at the low end of, or slightly below, the financial guidance we issued in January, and we have fallen short of the internal operating plan we set one year ago. EA’s shareholders and employees expect better and I am accountable for the miss.

As part of his separation agreement, Riccitiello will receive 24 months of payment, which is not a shabby deal, all things considered.

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As the announcement of Battlefield 4 draws every closer (seriously, they just teased the reveal trailer on Twitter), the last piece of DLC for Battlefield 3, End Game, has hit. With dirtbikes, Capture the Flag, and Air Superiority, End Game is throwing a lot at the wall. Does it all stick? Luckily for you, I’ve made a video summarizing my thoughts on End Game. Give it a watch, will you?

It’s not exactly the best way to close out Battlefield 3, but it’s not awful, either. As a final piece of DLC we could have gotten much worse. Unlike Armored Kill, I could see the maps from End Game easily slotting in alongside the Aftermath, Karkand, and vanilla maps. Has anyone else been playing End Game on PC? Any YouTube experts want to give me some constructive criticism? Go!

Time for another edition of Random Encounters, where I share my thoughts on a variety of subjects that are currently on my mind:

1. I have no proof and only baseless Internet speculation, but I can’t help but wonder if Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag was originally a side-story like the Ezio trilogy and was rebranded as a numbered sequel in order to take people’s mind off the bitter disappointment that was Assassin’s Creed 3. It just seems odd that the AC 4 is in roughly the same time period and is a prequel, which means it might not even forward the Desmond story set in the future. We will have to wait and see, but if that is the case, it’s kind of disgusting, akin to Square Enix allegedly releasing Final Fantasy Versus XIII as Final Fantasy XV.

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I’m one of the lucky few that has managed to put in some decent time with Simcity. This makes me both a target of envy, admiration and hatred for certain people, but I am okay with that. It hasn’t been a smooth ride the entire way so far, but I’ve managed to keep my cool and have a lot of fun with it.

But what strikes me as problematic is the size of the land you are given on which to build your city. It’s small. This is nothing new: it has been a concern for quite a while, going back to early previews of the game. But here we are, not even a week out and my city’s space is at capacity, with a population of just over 50,000. Granted, this is my first attempt at a city and I imagine the next attempt will be more efficient and better suited to increasing the population, but I can’t help but wonder if the smaller cities is a detriment to the overall experience.

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With Dead Space 3 firmly in our rear view mirror, Anthony and I thought it would be a good idea to give the series a send-off in podcast form. This is something we’re looking in to doing more of as a site where we dedicate an episode to our favorite games or series, so let us know what you think.

Fair warning, as we’re talking the Dead Space series as a whole, this podcast will contain a ton of spoilers for every game in the franchise, so beware if you haven’t played them yet. Also, I’d like to apologize up from about the stress my microphone put on my “s” sounds. What you’re hearing is after I’ve tried to reduce the noise, so you can image how painful it was at first.

Anyways, listen to the podcast, rate the podcast and be sure to leave any parting thoughts on Dead Space if you wish. Until next time!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

So you guys might have heard about this game called Sim City that came out this week. Apparently lots of people are playing it, and everything that EA has done with the launch has been so brilliant that people are throwing parades for it, both in their game’s city streets and in real life. It’s being heralded as the way to do a launch right, and a bastion of hope for how to do an “always online” DRM.

OK, none of that is true. At all. In fact, lots of people can’t even play the game yet.

In what might have been a worse launch disaster than Diablo III, Sim City points to a somewhat grim future for “always online” single player games on the PC. The game’s servers have been so overloaded that people are having trouble playing, saving cities, seeing their friends and more. In fact, EA is having to turn off features that supposedly made “always online” necessary in the first place, just to help people connect.

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It’s Stop The Presses Thursday!

The announcement that Dead Space 3 has a microtransaction option was merely the opening salvo in what appears to be an all-out assault on your wallet by EA. The publishing giant revealed today, via Develop, that they plan to make microtransactions a major part of their strategy by including them in all future releases, at least for the foreseeable future. But let’s face it, much like an unwanted house guest, once these things get in, they are never going to go away.

CFO Blake Jorgensen, speaking at Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, said:

“We’re building into all of our games the ability to pay for things along the way, either to get to a higher level to buy a new character, to buy a truck, a gun, whatever it might be, and consumers are enjoying and embracing that way of the business.”

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When Dead Space 3 was first announced at E3 last year, it was met with a chorus of skepticism. With the addition of co-op and a revamped combat system, this formerly slow-paced horror game looked more like a Gears of War knock-off. Although Visceral games has said repeatedly that Dead Space 3 will still adhere to the series’ roots, developers are known to embellish a little.

The final act of a trilogy carries a lot of expectations, especially when the people making them add a bunch of new features and try to rework tried and true conventions. How does Dead Space 3 fare under the microscope?

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Like many franchises before it, Dead Space 3 has been coming under fire for its sudden shift in tone. Where the first two games were heavily geared toward survival horror, Dead Space 3′s added co-op partner and upgraded arsenal supposedly give players more ways to take down armies of necromorphs than ever before. Even though our very own Mitch insists that the game still has its own share of scary, there are others who disagree.

Naturally, there are pockets of gamers that are extremely upset over this change in mechanics to a game that they love dearly. To some, it’s “selling out.” But Gears of War honcho and former Epic Design Director Cliff Bleszinski has some different ideas about what’s happened to the Dead Space franchise. In a recent Dead Space 3 blog post, Bleszinski calls the game an evolution of the franchise, and uses that term endearingly. And according to him, “You can either fight it or embrace it.”

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To continue our theme of What We’re Playing Monday, I thought I’d take us on a dismal tour of my future, one in which I gain 100 pounds, lose my job and become a hermit that only plays Sim City.

OK, so maybe the future isn’t set in stone yet, but seeing as how much I enjoyed my time in the closed beta this weekend, there’s certainly some kind of dark timeline where all of this takes place. Although, considering how much fun the game is, maybe it’s not necessarily a dark time line after all?

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Dead Space 3 will be hitting our screens very soon, but some news about the game dropped this week that may sour your anticipation. According to Eurogamer, Dead Space 3′s new workbench, where you can custom-make your weaponry, will include a microtransaction store for buying some additional resources.

While players will still be able to scavenge the materials for themselves or use scavenger bots to gather crafting resources in-game, real-world money can always be used to circumvent the collection process. This doesn’t mean that eager players can drop a ton of cash at the beginning of the game and get all the top-tier weaponry; they still have to wait for those guns to be unlocked as part of the narrative progression.

Even though this is the first instance of microtransactions in Dead Space, giving quick boosts for cash is nothing new in EA titles. Mass Effect 3 had this, as did Battlefield 3 and I wouldn’t be surprised if SimCity has something similar. What do you guys think about this? Is this a harmless addition for those of us flush with cash but strapped for time? Is it a foul on EA’s part to try and get their mitts into your wallet after you’ve already bought the game?

Source – Eurogamer

Continuing my trend of reviewing the DLC for Battlefield 3, like Close Quarters and Armored Kill, I’m going to sit down here and rap with you for a bit about Aftermath, DICE’s newest contribution to the steadily growing stable of post-launch content for their combined-arms FPS.

Like the previous two pieces of DLC, Aftermath has a “theme” to go along with it, and in this case it’s picking up from the single-player story by giving us four new maps set in a post-earthquake Iran. This means rubble-strewn pathways, and in the case of Epicenter, aftershocks that will shake your camera around a little bit. It’s not too noticeable that it will affect your aim, but you do have to compensate for it a bit.

The new maps are more in the style of the vanilla BF3 maps, having several choke-points leading to wider areas for you to mess around in. Coming off of the Armored Kill maps, which sometimes felt a little too big, this is a welcome change of pace. The maps are more suited to infantry combat, as tanks are a rare sight even on 64-player Conquest. The new hotness is the customized vehicles, which are basically civilian vans and Humvees with a grenade launcher and a machine gun bolted on. They’re a ton of fun to rip around in, and in a nice change of pace from the armored jeeps of the main game you can actually kill the occupants with a few bullets or a grenade.

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As excellent as Mass Effect 2′s Lair of the Shadow Broker was, BioWare might have shot themselves in the foot when it comes to post-release DLC. While it would be unrealistic to expect that every piece of Mass Effect DLC would be up to the same standards, it kind of laid the implication that any quests given to the player outside of the main game would advance the story, or at least fill in some background information.

To BioWare’s credit, Mass Effect 3: Leviathan did dredge up a more fleshed-out history of the Reapers, but the newest effort for Mass Effect 3 DLC, Omega, doesn’t add anything new to the story, or change your perception of the established characters you’ll be interacting with.

Shepard is contacted by Aria T’Loak, the Pirate Queen of the space station Omega, to help her take her throne back from Cerberus, who threw her out before the main campaign of Mass Effect 3. Because of Aria’s dislike of your squadmates, you’re going in without any familiar faces from the Normandy. I’ve never bought into the character of Aria as much as BioWare seems to want me to, and being saddled with her for a couple hours just demonstrates how one dimensional she is. While the end of the Omega campaign has her softening a bit, for most of the time she grunts and threatens her way through dialogue sections, being so predictable that a new character, Nyreen the female turian, calls her on it. It doesn’t help that the voice actress behind Aria, Carrie-Anne Moss, sounds like she’s collecting a paycheck for most of her lines, only occasionally dipping into having any emotion besides bored anger.

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It’s almost like EA is goading us on purpose now. The recently announced Mass Effect Trilogy collection sounds pretty neat and looks even cooler (what with the unified designs on the disc labels) but it will only include the DLC that came free with the various Online Passes associated with the game, and you’ll have to pay for the other bits.

I’ve never heard of a collection of any work where parts of it were purposely left out and you had to buy them separately. Hell, George Lucas kept adding stuff when nobody wanted it. For those curious, here’s a breakdown of what you will get with the package in terms of DLC:

On PC, Mass Effect will include Bring Down the Sky and Pinnacle Station on disk. For Mass Effect 2, Cerberus Network will be included which features Zaeed – The Price of Revenge, The Firewalker Pack, Cerberus Assault Gear, Arc Projector heavy weapon, and Normandy Crash site mission. For Mass Effect 3, Online Pass will be included granting players access to co-op multiplayer.

On Xbox 360, Bring Down the Sky and Pinnacle Station are not included with Mass Effect, however they are available as stand-alone downloads through Xbox LIVE. For Mass Effect 2, Cerberus Network will be included and Online Pass will be included for Mass Effect 3.

Information on PlayStation 3 DLC will be available soon.

Not bundling Mass Effect 2 with Overlord and Lair of the Shadow Broker is baffling, because those two add-ons were fantastic, and in the case of Lair, essential to the series’ story. Arrival I can take or leave, but regardless, I think that all the DLC should be bundled in.

What do you guys think about this? Should EA throw in the DLC or am I just making too much of a fuss about this? I get that EA is a business, but this just seems like an unnecessary cash-grab.

Soruce – Mass Effect Trilogy

If there’s any franchise that I have an unrequited love for, it has to be Battlefield, DICE’s multi-arms warfare FPS. It’s kind of hard to believe that it’s been ten years since 1942 introduced us to an almost new style of gameplay with wide-open playgrounds and a multitude of vehicles. When you look back at the release dates for the Battlefield games, they actually came out at a fairly fast clip (one every two years for the most part) but the wait between each game felt like a long time to my young mind.

My favorite game in the series is a tie between Battlefield 2 and 2142. It’s kind of funny to look at my stats for both 2 and 2142 because it felt like I played them for hours, when in reality I’ve spent more time in Battlefield 3. Battlefield 2, 2142 and Bad Company 2 were all played in groups with friends, with the numbers slowly dwindling over time. As people move on and computers get more expensive to upgrade (for some of us), my BF crew got whittled down to myself and my friend Chris, with occasional guest appearances by Eddy and his brother.

While Battlefield is best played with friends, the game still offers up plenty of sublime moments even if you’re playing solo. No Battlefield game is perfect (by any means, all of them have been heavily patched and still launch with some pretty glaring flaws) but DICE is up to the challenge of balancing and fixing their games, sometimes completely changing the way the game feels and plays.

Do you guys have as long and storied a history as I do with Battlefield? Anything to say on its tenth anniversary? What are you hoping for in the future of this franchise? Go!

Battlefield 3′s third expansion Armored Kill dropped last Tuesday for Premium members, and because I am part of such a prestigious club, I’ve been playing the maps and have had enough time in them to form a pretty solid opinion.

In a big change from the last DLC, Close Quarters, Armored Kill is good old fashioned Battlefield fun. I’m talking Battlefield 2 type of action here, with huge maps, tons of vehicles, and lots of carnage going on everywhere. The four new maps, Death Valley, Alborz Mountain, Armored Shield and Bandar Desert, feature big swaths of open terrain, with Bandar Desert being the largest Battlefield map in the series history. It doesn’t hurt that these maps are really good looking either, from the rural countryside of Armored Shield to the almost Skryim-esque landscape of Alborz Mountain. DICE also removed the damn blue tint that really downplayed this game’s otherwise great style, so props to them for that.

Armored Kill adds a couple new vehicles to the mix, namely the AC-130 Specter Gunship and the new Tank Destroyers. The Tank Destroyers are great fun as they’re essentially Infanty Fighting Vehicles with a huge cannon strapped on top, meaning they have greater maneuverability than the MBTs and can take out a full-health tank in a couple of shots. Being based on a lightly-armored chassis, they’re fairly vulnerable themselves, but a tank push with a couple Destroyers for backup can devastate an enemy position.

The AC-130 was one of the features that was touted the most leading up to Armored Kill, but it isn’t as big of a deal as you may think. Sure, in Rush mode when the attackers have the gunship and are railing the mostly static positions of the defenders it can be a little infuriating, but in Conquest mode, getting killed by the gunship is more of a momentary annoyance than anything else. The gunship is available to each faction, they just have to hold and control the capture point associated with it (denoted by a little plane icon beside the flag). I’ve only had a couple kills with the gunship, as it’s such a big target for jets and AA emplacements that it doesn’t stay in the air long.

If you were hesitant about the BF3 expansions after Close Quarters, rest easy because Armored Kill is DICE at the top of their game. Ripping around gorgeous maps with explosions going off all around you, shooting down fully-loaded transport helicopters with a Tank Destroyer and parachuting in from the circling AC-130 is all classic Battlefield. While playing the maps one after the other (especially on high ticket-count servers) can be a little draining, once they get inserted into rotation with the vanilla and Back to Karkand maps, they’ll be a great compliment to your BF3 experience.

Has anyone played Armored Kill? What do you think of it?