Tag Archive for 'EA'

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CoD & Battlefield Heroes

By Alex McLarty on June 27, 2009 in News and Thoughts. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

Those crazy cats at Aspyr have released the original Call of Duty and it’s expansion pack:

    Call of Duty Features:

  • Play through 24 epic single-player missions on four interconnected campaigns, or go online for Axis versus Allies team-based multiplayer action.
  • Intense battlefield moments put you in the heat of the action, capturing the chaos of battle like never before.
  • Together with your squad, take on Nazi forces through a variety of authentic combat missions.
  • Move through the ranks, taking on more dangerous missions such as sniper missions and ambushes until you are promoted to tank commander.
    Call of Duty: United Offensive Features:

  • 13 new Single-Player missions!
  • 11 new Multiplayer maps and 3 new modes, with vehicles including tanks and jeeps!
  • Fight in tanks, jeeps, motorcycles, even a bomber.
  • Work with your squad through snow and rain, using new weapons including flamethrowers and deployable machine guns, or by calling in artillery strikes.
  • Join the 101st Airborne for the climactic moments of the Battle of the Bulge.
  • Fight as a British airman shooting down German ME-109’s from the gunner position of a B-17 bomber, before transferring to Churchill’s elite S.O.E. and clearing the way for the invasion of Sicily.
  • Finally, follow your Russian comrades into the Battle of Kursk, one of the greatest tank battles of all time.

Also, EA and DICE finally got around to releasing Battlefield Heroes, their casual, pay to customise shooter that’s playable in your browser. I haven’t had a chance to play yet, but Jim at Rock, Paper, Shotgun certainly didn’t seem that impressed:

I only spotted a couple of people who’d bothered to spend money upgrading the ultra-bland insta-soldier that you spawn with. I’m not quite sure how looking ridiculous helps you have more fun on the field of battle, but it’s never hurt the hobo clown denizens of a hundred MMOs, so I guess it’s going to work out here too. I can’t knock it too hard: if it pays to keep the landscape of gaming a little broader, that’s fine. But there’s not a chance in the multiverse that my sad, crumpled cashmoney is heading anywhere near those particular micropayments, and I doubt I’ll sink much more than an afternoon into this.

As there isn’t a Mac version available, I’ll have a play around with Heroes in Windows. I’ve contacted EA to see if a Mac version is coming.

Digging and playing

By Alex McLarty on June 17, 2009 in Thoughts. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Apart from digging, digging, digging my almost weed free garden, I have actually been gaming:

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Shame on me, it’s been Mirror’s Edge via Boot Camp. Beautifully sparse environments, clean cityscapes, somewhat spoiled by a lackluster story that fizzles out to nufink. It’s rather short too, but still a refreshing change from the ordinary run and gun malarkey. One of the focuses of the game is to evade and escape enemies, but that makes a challenge of jump kicking them in the sugar lumps, snatching their weapons and proceeding to shoot up call centre coloured environments.

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Gooball by Ambrosia, the now bloody hard Super Monkey Ball (but better) inspired roller. When Gooball went Universal Binary they updated the physics engine. It’s now bloody difficult. More often that not, off you go, spinning, wobbling into oblivion. The game says, in a suitably patronising tone, fallout. Arr! Demo here.

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I’m still playing and working on Prince of Persia. I like it, but in the same way you’d watch and enjoy a Friends episode and feel guilty afterwards. The story is unfolding in a suitably predictable fashion, but as I said - Ross and Rachel!

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It’s quite an odd title. One of the most beautiful I’ve seen; ridiculous airborne contraptions, vast, abandoned cities, dark and wonderfully realised enemies. But the gameplay is quite often mere button mashing. It’s still very entertaining, but perhaps not skilful or even challenging.

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What are you guys playing?

The Sims 3: no mo wee watching

By Alex McLarty on March 13, 2009 in News. 3 Comments Tags: , , .

Macworld show us a sneek peek of The Sims 3 for Mac:

It actually looks like EA have done some pretty cool things to expand the world while at the same time focusing the game. Instead of making sure your Sim doesn’t wet itself and go to work, you focus more on dreams and aspirations of your digital self, roaming neighborhoods and actually enjoying yourself.

Could go all a bit Barbie, we’ll have to wait and see. I hope you can still make swimming pools, let your Sims go for a swim, remove the ladders and watch them drown. Or remove all the doors from a house and watch your Sim starve. Once your Sim is dead, sell the gravestone for hard cash! Hardcore! Yes, I did remove legs from spiders as a child. And dogs. And people.

I think it’s safe to say that The Sims 3 will fairly popular. Oh, and the game is being Ciderized. No love for Aspyr then.

The Sims 3 for Mac

By Alex McLarty on February 16, 2009 in News. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

I had another look around for Sims 3 information and finally found something on EA’s website. I looked last week, didn’t find a thing. This week, the information comes to me. I’m in the zone.

Press release here:

The Sims 3, developed by The Sims Studio, is also in development for Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch and mobile devices.

From the press release it seems that the title isn’t being wrapped up in Transgaming’s Cider technology or ported by Aspyr. An interesting move, as every other Sims title has been ported and released at a later date than the PC version.

IMG: Sims 3 coming to Mac

By Alex McLarty on February 5, 2009 in News. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , .
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IMG have posted that The Sims 3 is coming to the Mac this summer, alongside PC and iPhone versions.

I followed the link on the post but couldn’t find a specific reference to the Mac version, just that the game is launching June 5th in stores.

If the game is being produced for the Mac (which is likely), I wonder if it’ll be coded in house by EA or will come wrapped up in Transgaming’s Cider technology? I have my reservations about Cider, but the technology has improved markedly since the early days of BF2142 for Mac.

A genuine ‘made for Mac’ port would in theory perform better than Cider and would show a genuine interest in developing for OS X.