The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

EA aquires Bioware and Pandemic

Bryce Prewitt

Well, to be honest... 

Posted Saturday 13th October 2007 01:02 GMT

BioWare haven't ever exactly released anything spectacular since the Baldur's Gate and MDK series.

NeverWinter Nights: Late, shitty

Jade Empire: Late, shitty

NWN 2: Was this thing even beta-tested?

KOTOR: Late, buggy

KOTOR 2: Still waiting to play the finished game

As far as Pandemic goes: Are you fucking shitting me? Full Spectrum Warrior was fun if you enjoy excel spreadsheets and micromanagement but aside from that it's been (to quote Gordon Ramsay) "crap on top of crap made with crap using crap."

Why the hell would anyone be fearful of their quality going down? As far as I can tell both companies all ready release shit. At least now they'll be a bit faster about pushing it out the door.

Steve Rowsell

Re: To be honest 

Posted Saturday 13th October 2007 16:38 GMT

Some of Bioware/Pandemic's games may have been late and/or buggy, but at least they were vastly more original, fun and playable than EA's 'Generic Sports game 07/08' series generally are, where the onus is on simply re-releasing the same game year on year with slightly shinier graphics and a new gimmick.

I think its a damn shame that even more studios have been swallowed up by the Borg-like EA. In a few years time when there is a real dearth of originality in games, people will wish they'd been a bit less apethetic when all the quality developers were consumed.

Even though I hate bugged releases with a passion, I hate lack of originality and banal gameplay even more.

I don't even agree with your rather skewed views on the games you've listed. Perhaps for a more balanced and realistic impression of these games, we should have a look at the Metacritic scores:

NeverWinter Nights: 91

Jade Empire: 81

NWN 2: 82

KOTOR: 93

KOTOR 2: 85

and just for the record,

Full Spectrum Warrior: 80

Full Spectrum Warrior 2: 70

Conclusion - none of these games are as you have so eloquently described, 'shit'.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that from your comments, you appear to be a bit of a tool and you should perhaps refrain from posting such ill-informed rubbish.

alistair millington

@Steve 

Posted Monday 15th October 2007 09:35 GMT

Flame

Dude have you actially played those games, who in the right mind believes metascores? If you all believed them every game would be 9/10 or 81% so the law of averages mean there is never any game ever released that wasn't very good and yet there are tons.

Also they don't review how EVERYBODY finds a games, KOTOR was good ish, KOTOR2 was a clone that didn't make sense (anyone understand why the guy was on a half dead ship floating around anyway?), had a massive bug that meant you couldn't get the voice module form the first HK robot, this making it unfinishable for a large % of players. Also the bug of the woman (mira) and wookie on the jabba's moon and the legendary bandit encounter that never happened, thus stopping the game. Yet your score is 85.

NWN. you play and do everything and the last item you get before fighting the lizard people and their queen in their lair is an amulet you need to be a certain level to wear. I did everything and couldn't wear it. Killed everyone, did every quest and still couldn't wear the only thing I had to survive that encounter. 91% not for me, for me it was a rip off.

EA buy nice little companies and turn them to shit. (Westwood - C&C, DICE - battlefield 1942) being the two I can name.

BF1942 was great, no bugs and ran like a dream. Ea released BF2 and BF 2142. Widely regarded as buggy and hack ridden (the fly yourself around pods, spawn with no beacon, walk through walls). 2142 has the same bugs that the BETA did. (key mapping and tank rear armour bug) Ea also famously gave us the now in use spyware that tries to sell us Lloyds bank accounts on billboards in game.

EA rush clone jobs based on good stuff and don't have a QA department.

Why don't you play these games and get online to experience the true horror that EA release instead of quoting some fanboy magazine articles that is so far out you need a telescope. Or do you believe the Supreme commander score as well, 9/10 for the buggiest (Can't install CD check errors) resource hungry (Minimum 2GB ram, Dual core) turkey since Vista.

Ea buying more games companies....

Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!

paul

KOTOR II/NWN II are not really Bioware games 

Posted Monday 15th October 2007 11:02 GMT

Bioware did not make KOTOR II or Neverwinter Nights 2.

They handed over the engines to Obsidian Studios.

Steve Rowsell

- Alastair 

Posted Monday 15th October 2007 15:41 GMT

Actually, I own and have played all but 2 of the games listed, 1 of which was not made by Bioware; NWN2, (as has been correctly pointed out by Paul). The other was Jade Empire, which I do intend to buy.

I've read through your post a couple of times, and you appear to firstly be bashing my defence of Bioware and Pandemic, and then rather oddly, bashing me for liking EA?!? Let me see, how can I make this clear?

I DO NOT LIKE EA - I DON'T WANT THEM TO SWALLOW UP ALL THE SMALLER STUDIOS.

Sorry to shout, but obviously I need to reinforce the point I already made quite clearly in my original post.

I stand by my original comments, and feel playing games that may be shipped with a few bugs, but have quality gameplay, plot and replayability are infinitely preferable to the processed garbage that EA churns out with appalling regularity.

And with regard to your point about Metacritic, I'd rather believe an overall score taken from a large number of publications and websites that I read regularly and trust through experience, than pay attention to someone who can't even read the post he is supposed to be trashing/trolling.

There - understand now?