Electronic Arts and the Icky Monsters

In today's gaming climate, hating on Electronic Arts is sort of like a Borat impression about a year or so ago - everyone was doing it, regardless of ability to do so. It's cool to hate EA. Aside from the relentless spend-monkeys who slave over each years' copy of $60 NFL Roster Update (also known as the Madden series), you're simply not permitted to approve of EA's products. And crappy games aside, the truth of the matter is the company put it upon themselves. There are only so many subpar games they can release based on monopolized sports leagues and movie licenses before the gaming community wakes up and lashes back in its trademark over-reactive manner. Buying beloved developers certainly doesn't help, and that goes double when other purchases in the past have lead to the death and mismemberment of independent developers. In the end, all that was left was decidedly "EA" - and "EA" is code-speak for "Just good enough to get some return on the investment". But in the last couple years, EA has tried very hard to improve the image, to get us all to re-embrace them and not give them the ol' stink eye. The developement of new, original IPs is a great place to start, as is the idea that developing groups are given a broader sense of freedom - able to craft the games they invision and not train-wreck bullshit ala Goldeneye: Rogue Agent, a game that I use as my own personal symbol of everything EA means to me. I think if you give it a shot, Rogue Agent might fit yours as well...


...sigh. See, I try to put things on the good foot and end up still spewing bile. It's not my fault, I've been trained to hate. What my topic here really is is that I think EA might actually be on the up and up on all of this. Sure, as of late, the sports division has had some issues (competition helps iron out stuff like this), but at least some of the newer stuff coming down the pipe looks promising. I did, however, get bitten once by the "new EA" already. Army of Two looked good, and the concept sounded foolproof - but it's actually a very linear and rather boring affair, and it's got a hell of a lot of holes. I mean, they couldn't even get the game's big ending right - adding it as DLC months after the game had been released (and returned to my local GameStop). It looked good, but was a flawed experience. Now though, I'm becoming more and more curious of Dead Space. The game originally looked kind of dull, but now that I see more video and hear some rather positive word of mouth from the recent E3 hands-on demo, I'm getting kind of psyched to experience it. It looks like it could be the perfect blend of sci-fi and horror, which a nice dab of both Event Horizon and The Thing - and who doesn't love The Thing? I like the complete lack of a HUD, relying mostly on holographic displays given off by guns and your inventory. It's a nice touch. And the atmoshpere looks to be spot on, full of spooky space stuff. But even though the game looks so promising, I can't help but wonder how the ball will be dropped - so to speak. Will it be glitchy? Hard to control? To difficult? To short? Too easy? Boring? I should probably stop being such a negative dick, but the good news as that making Dead Space into a hit that people agree is great will go a long way towards proving EA is turning it around. Who knows, they actually might do it...