Nerd Rating

Tag: EA

  • NCAA ’14 Cover Vote Has A Few Surprises

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    So let’s get beyond the fact that NCAA Football 13 was a bit frustrating in its overcompensation for NCAA 12’s problems with blocking, punt coverage and defenders blind swatting balls. Instead of showing us how they will be trying to improve NCAA 14, EA wants you to go vote for which school will represent the game on the cover.

    Okay EA, I will play along…for now.

    Voting is done through the game’s Facebook page by just liking the page then voting for your favorite school. You can continue to vote on all the schools until halftime of Monday’s BCS National Championship game and then the top 32 teams will move on to the next round of voting.

    Some of the teams in the 32 are a little hard to believe they have a shot to win much less be in the next round of votes. For example, Kentucky is sitting at 14th. You know, that great Kentucky football program that has has such classic games as………and that magical championship run in…….. Army is sitting at 32nd and Penn State is in 10th. Jokes are too easy to come by with that so let’s just all agree that they should not be anywhere near a video game cover for a while and the fact that USC fans are too lazy or don’t care about their program enough to vote enough for this tells me that Lane Kiffin’s job may not be very secure.

     

     

  • Developers Want Dark Souls 2 To Be “More Accessible”

    In the newest issue of Edge Magazine new [amazon_link id=”B006YDPU48″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Dark Souls 2[/amazon_link] directors, Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura, discuss how they intend to make the game instantly ready for new gamers that are not familiar with the first Dark Souls title (i.e. its soul sucking difficulty). I know a lot of Dark Souls fans are afraid that this means the sequel will be dumbed down for the masses and honestly I can’t blame them. Let’s read this quote by Shibuya:

    “Accessibility to players who haven’t picked up Dark Souls is definitely a key topic.Right in the beginning when players first pick up the game is something that I will definitely focus on. To not immediately throw them into Dark Souls but provide a good introduction in terms of what the game’s about and how the game should be played.”

    “Hopefully that adjustment at the very beginning of the game will help draw in players and get them addicted right away without immediately making players feel rejected by the game system itself.”

    Now I admittedly have not played the first Dark Souls but I know of stories of people who have and enjoy the mind-crushing difficulty and as a fan of the Mass Effect series I can say that when reading that statement I can’t help but hear the same words coming from EA and Bioware about Mass Effect 2&3. Mass Effect 1 was a true space opera RPG that dumb down combat, leveling and almost everything else in the name of “accessibility”.

    I hope I am wrong Dark Souls fans.

    http://youtu.be/rPJaJ5ys_G0

  • Medal of Honor: Warfighter Gets Zero Dark Thirty Inspired Map Pack

    Want to be a member of Seal Team Six without all the years of blood, sweat and tears? How about killing insurgents while hunting Osama Bin Laden for ‘Murica? Well EA is here to grant your wish with the Zero Dark Thirty map pack for [amazon_link id=”B0050SY5BM” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Medal of Honor: Warfighter[/amazon_link]. The new DLC is based on the part of Pakistan where the United States carried out the mission to kill the terrorist leader as well as the name of the upcoming film about the mission.

    The new DLC will cost $9.99 but will be free to the people who purchased the limited edition of the game. Also, EA will donate one dollar from every map pack sold to help military and veterans families. Classy move EA.

    Medal of Honor: Warfighter Zero Dark Thirty map pack will release on December 18th.

     

  • New Mass Effect Has A Late 2014- Mid-2015 Release Window

    Take heart Mass Effect fans, EA and Bioware are already hard at work on the next game in the series.

    The fact there is going to be a new Mass Effect game is no surprise with Bioware’s Casey Hudson tweeting about this back in November but now Mike Gamble, producer on Mass Effect 3, has given the game a very early release window.

    “Late 2014 to mid-2015. I honestly can’t tell you an exact because full development on the game started a month or two ago.”

    So I guess we can be pretty safe to say that the next title in the franchise will be on next-gen consoles. The game will be a completely new story not involving Commander Shepard (for obvious reasons). It has not been announced if the title will be a prequel or a true sequel.

    Gamble went on to talk about the use of a new engine for the game and more.

    “The game isn’t far along in development so I can’t comment on specifics because they isn’t any yet. Frostbite 2 is a really good game engine that we are also using on Dragon Age 3. As far as release date, there’s nothing to be announced yet. You’ll hear more about the new Mass Effect game in 2013.”

     

  • Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 Covers Are Quite Legendary

    EA has released details on their next PGA game, [amazon_link id=”B00A7QA0Q6″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14[/amazon_link], revealing that like previous years there will be a standard and collector’s editions that will feature a different set of cover stars.

    The standard edition features Tiger Woods along with legendary golfer Arnold Palmer while the aptly named [amazon_link id=”B00A7Q9ZQM” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Masters Historic Edition[/amazon_link] has last year’s Masters winner Bubba Watson paired with the greatest amateur to ever play the sport and co-founder of The Masters tournament, Bobby Jones.

    The Masters Historic Edition will feature five additional courses including the par 3 course at Augusta and the course as it appeared in 1934. Bobby Jones also helped design the historic course.

    Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 will release on March 31, 2013.

  • Crysis 3 Release Date Confirmed

    EA has announced that [amazon_link id=”B0050SY77E” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Crysis 3[/amazon_link] will release on February 19th for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC. Everyone should prepare accordingly meaning if you own an Xbox 360 or PS3 you should pre-order the game and if you own a PC it means it is time to buy a new video card or PC altogether.

    People that pre-order the game will receive extra weapons available in multiplayer, a level 5 upgrade and a digital copy of the first Crysis game.

    This release date give Crysis a rather slim one-week window before the video game floodgates open on February 26th with Bioshock Infinite. After that it only gets more crowded.

     

  • PC Version Of COD: Black Ops 2 May Have A “Mass”ive Mistake

    Let’s Hope You Have A Good Internet Connection.

    It seems that some PC owners are going a little bit farther in the future than they were promised with today’s launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

    Forums began getting reports this morning that some PC owners of the newest Call of Duty game were given a Mass Effect 2 disc for the second disc of the game. This disc art reads correctly but when installed into the users PC it said that the information on the disc was a copy of Mass Effect 2. That is not the kind of thing that people want to see especially on the release of the biggest game of the year.

    How many copies of Black Ops 2 that are affected by this are not yet known. Users with a Steam account can download the second disc info from the site so let’s hope they have a good internet connection or it may be a much longer wait to play Black Ops 2 than anticipated.

     

  • Casey Hudson Announces New Mass Effect Game Is In The Works

    Producer Wants Your Input For The Future Of The Series.

    Most fans knew a new entry in the Mass Effect saga would be coming eventually but now we have definitive word from the main man behind the best-selling franchise.

    Casey Hudson, executive producer of the Mass Effect series, sent out this tweet yesterday morning to the delight of fans.

    Bioware has already said that anything in the future for Mass Effect would not involve Commander Shepard but this is the first concrete evidence that the team is in fact at work on another game.

    It seems they are still taking all of the fan outcry from Mass Effect 3’s ending (which I had no problem with) into account with Hudson asking fans to give their suggestions for what they would like to see in the next game.

  • Mass Effect Movie Gets A New Screenwriter

    Legendary Pictures Still Has Faith In Film Adaptation.

    Legendary Pictures purchased the rights to a Mass Effect film way back in 2008 but like most video game to movie adaptations it has become stuck in the well known “development hell”. Things seemed to be heading in the right direction when screenwriter Mark Protosevich, who had written the story for Thor and the screenplay for I Am Legend, was brought in to write a script.  Now it appears that his draft of the script is being scrapped and a new screenwriter is being brought in.

    Morgan Davis Foehl, who has worked as an assistant on Rescue Me and the Adam Sandler movie I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, has been brought on to start the script from scratch. Foehl is a big Mass Effect fan and the studio has liked some of his other action movie scripts which may have helped in him getting a high profile gig such as this.

    This can not be an easy script to tackle considering how large the story for Mass Effect is and not knowing if the movie will be a hit enough to warrant sequels. Does Foehl concentrate on the first game, try and fit in the basics of the entire story in a single film or go in a completely different direction altogether?

    Should Hollywood even try to attempt to make a movie based on Commander Shepard at all? Let us know what you think

     

  • Next Mass Effect Will Be Shepard-less

    Series Producer Says Commander Shepard’s Tour Of Duty Is Over.

     
    While this is what most people have thought would happen with the series this is the first time (to my knowledge) that a higher up at Bioware has actually confirmed that the next Mass Effect will feature a new hero…or heroine.

    Fabrice Condominas, a producer at Bioware Montreal, had this to say:

    “There is one thing we are absolutely sure of – there will be no more Shepard, and the trilogy is over. This is really our starting point. Now the Mass Effect universe is vast, and very, very rich. So at this point in time, we don’t even know what kind of time frame we’re going to be in. All we’re doing is more gathering ideas from the teams, gathering feedback to see several things.”

    It will be interesting to see how the Mass Effect universe will continue on after the whole fiasco about the game’s original ending (which I had no problem with) that may have led to the departure of Bioware co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk from the company earlier this year.

    EA and Bioware are still releasing multiplayer content for Mass Effect 3 on a regular basis and a new single player mission named Omega will release on Xbox 360 on November 27th. You can find my review of the previous Mass Effect 3 single player DLC, Leviathan, here