A day late on the review of the past week, but here it is, nonetheless.
A lot has been said about the Video Game Awards on Spike TV, you can read my live comments here and some of my comments about what others said here. I will sum up my thoughts on the VGAs with a haiku:
Spike TV, so wrong
Video games are more than
Babes and Rap. Puhleeze.
I haven’t commented much lately on Electronic Arts, but things are starting to look scary. First they score an exclusive agreement with the NFL and the Players Association for the next 5 years. After that, they start buying Ubisoft stock. And now they’re going after DICE. Scary. There has been some severe backlash against EA. I can’t link everything, but you can look here, here, and here. Of course, the best comment is definitely this one. This isn’t good press for EA, already reeling from the EA Spouse (which is still going strong) revelations and their impending lawsuits. It must be hard making crappy football games and having the prospect of no one wanting them. Of course Midway, in true Midway-rip-out-a-spine fashion has given a big, fat middle finger to the NFL and EA and are going to make a mature, drug-ridden football game complete with babes and booze. Great.
To further thin the sports gamer herd, Microsoft has closed shop on their sports games division, too. I would wager a guess that 90% of the sports gaming public don’t really care. They want to be spoon fed EA titles year after year, and I think EA has done a huge disservice to sports gamers by charging full price on each seasons “updates”. They hook you with a new feature, a-la playmaker controls, or the match-up stick, or the juke-jive-and-wail or whatever to get you to buy, at full price, a moderately updated, mostly rehashed, version of last years game. If EA would price their sports games between thirty and forty bucks they would make even more piles of money than they already have (and don’t share).
I like reading AFK Gamer, I like reading the current goings-on over at World of Warcraft. I like reading because ever since I swore of MMOGs (Neocron being my last foray) I’ve been pining to return to the fold and WoW seems so appropriate for me since I love Blizzard games (I logged countless Diablo 2 hours). I still can’t do it, but when he posts funny stuff like this, it makes me want to go back.
Finally, before I wax eloquent on the Top Ten lists of 2004, here’s the Gaming Gaffes of 2004.
Leave a Reply